Protected status is an often-overlooked feature of Stack Exchange. It’s based loosely on Wikipedia’s semi-protection, and like that tool is meant to be a reaction to persistent abuse from anonymous or unproven participants: when a page attracts a lot of noise or vandalism from outside the community, Protecting it reduces the amount of clean-up needed later on.

Protected questions are not answerable by folks who haven’t earned at least 10 reputation from activity on the site where the question resides. This effectively means you need to have posted an answer somewhere else that’s attracted an up-vote or a question that’s earned two. …