Q:

Should trending questions be auto-protected?

I noticed today that a request for protection came up due to the the large number of me-too answers on a trending question I answered recently.  This got me thinking, since trending questions get far more attention than the average question, should questions that trend be automatically protected?
On the upside, this does seem to be a common problem and the auto-protection could be put in place only while the question is trending.  On the downside, it would make it more difficult for new people to participate in answering a trending (highly visible) question so it could be a barrier to entry.
Thoughts?

A:

As soon as three posts from low-rep users are deleted by mods or the community, the question is auto-protected. This threshold is pretty good in my opinion, it avoids shutting down external users from the start, while still protecting the true crap magnets.
Protecting is a far more dangerous tool than it appears at first glance, as it can prevent good content from ever being written in the first place. I think we should generally be careful when to use this tool.

A:

As Anna Lear points out in another question, proactively protecting questions is generally a bad idea.
I generally keep an eye on Hacker News and other programmer sites for when our questions hit the front page. We as moderators try to keep an eye on these questions and actively moderate the bad stuff out quickly.  
There is the possibility of 'going too far' and over moderating a post just because it's highly visible.  We want to keep that from happening, as that can color the outside world's opinion of Stack Overflow.

