The karma requirements on the help page do not mention minimum karma needed to answer questions (I currently have karma=1). I tried answering a question, but it keeps failing without any error message.
Privilege Required Karma
Upvote 1
Downvote 100
Upload File 10
Edit posts 200
… …
The help page may also benefit from suggestions of ways to gain karma.
Were you trying to include a clickable link in your answer? You do need karma to do that...
Ah, yes I was. That must've been it.
This restriction is in place to prevent spammers from posting malicious/obnoxious links. If you are new and would like to add a link, you can wait until you have enough karma and then edit your original post. We will add something to the help page to make this clearer.
Thanks Neal. Also it would be good if it failed noisily instead of with no explanation.
I haven't seen the problem myself. I have made some changes that should make it easier for new users to make posts.
If you mouse over "Karma" next to your username it will list all of the rights that you have currently, just so that you can confirm your current level of authorization.
Also be sure that you entered the "captcha" text correctly at the bottom, or use the audio alternative if it is difficult to make out the text on your screen.
Thanks. I tried the captcha text a half dozen times.
At karma=11, the karma hovertext does not mention answering questions; yet I just successfully answered a question.
Based on my experience I think answering questions requires karma > 10 [edit: this is the case for answers that include hyperlinks].
Thanks to me asking this question, my karma got bumped up to 11 and I was then able to successfully answer a question. I hope we can improve the help page and hover text to guide beginning users on this. Attempts to answer questions should fail noisily if the user does not have enough karma.
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