Recently I flagged this question for a moderators attention stating in the comments that it was a possible question that may need to be protected due to popularity.
Is this the correct procedure for notifying a moderator that a question has become hot and may need to be protected?
I'm no moderator, so don't take my word as law, but simply put, I don't see whats wrong with that.
The use of flags is for getting the moderators attention to a specific issue. It doesn't always have to be pointing out a bad comment or a bad answer, that's why there is the 'other' field.
I see no other way you could have reliably informed the moderators that a question needs protecting other than the flag system either.
So in a word 'Yes'.
In slightly more words, 'Yes, and thanks for contributing to maintaining the site!'
In general, whenever you see something that is out of the ordinary or that could create problems beyond what the community can handle on its own, it's a good idea to flag the post for moderator attention.
In cases where a question is getting a lot of low quality answers from users new to our site, protecting the question may help minimize the damage and prevent it from getting out of control.
If the post is at least two days old, you can also consider dropping a link to the question in The Water Cooler chat room, as users with at least 3500 reputation can protect questions that meet certain restrictions:
Any question, even a deleted question, can be protected and unprotected, subject to the following restrictions:
- The question must be at least a day old
- A user can unprotect a question protected by him or herself, but not one that has been protected by someone else
