Related questions:   .       Dictionary aids:  -  -     Right after a new user registers for this site (and/or related ones), such user is quite limited in what he/she can do on these sites. I think I understand why. Such user cannot comment anywhere because the required privilege was not earned yet.  So such user needs to start "doing things on SE" to "earn" the required (eg 50) points somehow. But with all imposed limitations for such user, it is quite frustrating. Here are some examples of what it is like to be a :   If such user finds a question and wants to ask a related question, then he/she typically wonders about one or more of these possible questions (pretty sure there are other questions ...):   Should I post an answer? Am I actually allowed (already) to post an answer (maybe it requires a privilege I do not have yet)? I want to answer but I don't know for sure how to do actually so (and I want to avoid making a bad first impression). If I post an answer it might not comply with the guidelines (I want to prevent being perceived as not following them, as illustrated also by the rather scary ""). I don't know what could happen (I'm too new to realise / predict the possible consequences, due to lack of experience with how this community typically reacts).  Comments are disabled (see above), so that's not an option 'yet'. Sure there is a badge awarded for 'visiting' the  ( ...), but what does that really mean? How about making that specific batch (way) more difficult for it to be rewarded? Note to myself: did anybody ever file a  about that? Thanks  for suggesting visiting the help center as a possible (partial?) remedy.   So it appears that if such user doesn't 'answer' the question, he/she will not get any closer to being able to get out of what appears to be a newbie loop.  My Question: How can such user get more information, or just suggest something to the original poster (Note: often abbreviated as OP-er, whereas OP=Original Post ...)?  Credits to all participants for teaching/suggesting me (sometimes quite challenging ...), Especially to "James", a real SE "mentor". Start 'lurking' via his profile page to learn 'AbitMORE' and consider voting (up!) any of his impressive questions, and answers.  Notes to myself (haven't found a feature, or earned some privilege, to make it invisible ...): I'm the OP of this question, and " learned some other lesson" recently about the "power" that an OP seems to have regarding some hidden feature that is NOT documented (yet) in the official help pages ... at least I have not found such documentation yet. Todos:    File a  about it (or is it a ?) ... What are "my" options if I would want to "overrule" the voting to consider this question as a duplicate (I do not question that anymore, but just want to learn about such options). If I can't figure it out, I'll probably "ask" people like ... James! What's a 'catch 22' ? I do know what "lesson 101" is ... that doesn't help of course. It's tough to be a non-native-english SE-er ... awel, "merci mes amis"!
6634
I have been reading Stack Exchange for years - mostly not logged in, and have never posted (this is my first). I'm simply not very talkative, and very good at googling.  Recently a few occasions have come up when I've wanted to comment on a question.  I wanted either to ask for, or provide, clarification which did not warrant a new answer.  How do I gain enough reputation to comment without:   asking questions which have already been answered or that I can figure out on my own, or posting my comment like as an answer (i.e. being  rude)?
83044
This is related to  question. I think we should discourage "Belongs on S[OFU]" type comments. I think they encourage the OP to go to the indicated site and re-ask the question. Flagging/voting to move on the question should be sufficient. Assuming this is the case, would it be proper to flag those comments for mod removal to hopefully get them removed before a new user sees them and duplicates the question?  Or, another example:    Or, even worse, but this new (!) user probably just doesn't know better:
67837
Meta already has a page with same title as this question: , but it doesn't answer its own question.  So, to repeat, what is an "Established user"?  Secondary question (if permitted): Of course this is a peer-reviewed site, but is it possible, on Meta Stack Overflow, to get some adult supervision? My motivation is my seven-word naive question , which got hammered.
10317
I recently posted an "answer" to a self-asked and answered question with basically no votes. I was hoping to ask the poster a specific question about his code, but a moderator deleted it basically saying that it wasn't an answer and I should follow the rules.   This happened to me twice now, except the first time I wasn't deleted, just down-voted into oblivion. How am I supposed to ask questions and participate to earn reputation if I don't have any reputation to ask questions/participate within the guidelines? I came very close to 50 reputation points and then people went through and voted down my discussions with the OP.  This is almost akin to the "you can't get a job without experience" conundrum, and I feel an easy solution would be to lower the amount of reputation points required to comment on posts. It's ridiculous that this community is so hostile to someone who is only trying to contribute instead of just taking without giving back.  EDIT: Thanks, to whomever went through and voted up enough things to get me to 50 reputation points!
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What this question is about:  It occurred to me that even experienced users occasionally forget that they either:    received viable answers to existing questions or  need to edit existing questions to get more appropriate answers.   What this question is not about:   I'm not suggesting that we badger "or otherwise nudge" users into accepting answers to their questions, as per this discussion:  I'm not duplicating the discussions about reminding/educating new users to accept answers to their questions, as discussed here:  and elsewhere.   My personal rationale:  I suspect that OPs occasionally hesitate to accept an answer in hope that someone will later post a better answer even though there may already be acceptable answers provided. I know that I have done this in the past and then forgotten about my question, only to remember months or years later that I hadn't yet accepted a viable answer to my question.  For busy people, it's inconvenient to go through your activity history and find the question with the upvoted answer that still was never accepted. The inconvenience factor is enough of a deterrent that busy people don't always do it.   My proposal:  For a question with unaccepted answers for over a year, could we please alert the OP with a link (this is the key feature) to their question with a suggestion to perhaps review their question to edit it if no acceptable answers have been provided (or something like that)?  Perhaps there could be other criteria to prevent obnoxious reminders, such as the question needing to have at least 3 suggested answers or that the suggested answers must have been upvoted at least 3 times or that the question has been upvoted at least once or something like that.
76890
We currently require that new users have 5+ reputation to participate in meta support discussions (bugs, feedback, governance, etc). This is primarily because the use case for meta is not intrinsically obvious, so we require a modicum of "experience" with the site before jumping into it.   But that blocks new users with legitimate questions about their own posts.  Setting aside any arguments about new-users-are-evil-and-suck-the-life-out-of-our-community, I would like to propose a very specific path for new users to ask about their own question provisionally.  Instead of blocking a new user with this message:     You must have at least 5 reputation on &lt;site> to ask a question on meta.   We can change this to:     You must have at least 5 reputation on &lt;site> to post on meta, but you may ask a question about your own post specifically.      Link to your post: &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;      ask about this post   cancel    The system will check whether the linked question provided belongs to the author. . The user can then proceed with the post provided they leave the template (below) intact:     Title &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;      &nbsp;         &lt;!--Do not remove-->   &lt;!--Note: Questions not about your post will be deleted-->      I have a question about the post:       &lt;!-- Your question below: -->   &nbsp;     Not only is this a great and gentle introduction to the proper use of meta, but it stands to help new users just when they need it most (learning to use the community).   Of course this doesn't 100% guarantee that someone won't get it wrong on occasion. But this is an awful lot of in-your-face guidance without simply telling people "read our FAQ" (which they never do). And if a user manages to step over all that guidance and still manages to misuse meta, I have no compunction about summarily removing a question they should never have posted.   But this just-in-time learning is a very effective way of learning a new site in a gentle and thoughtful way. If this is abused more often than not, it is easy to disable. But it's better than assuming clueless newbie every time.
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I joined a new community and asked a question ()  People are commenting &amp; asking questions, but I cannot answer them back. Even "Comment Everywhere" privilege requires 50 reputations and I have 101 reputations.  Am I missing something?
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This morning I posted a question on a SE site. Then realized a different SE site would be more appropriate.   I proceeded to delete the question on the first site and copied it to the second, but I got the dreaded "You can only post once every 40 minutes.", even if the question was deleted from a different SE site.   I have only the affiliation reputation on both of those sites. Now I'm sitting here waiting for the 40 minutes to pass.  Paradoxically, as a trusted user in SO, I'm more likely to come to other SE sites to ask a few things about topics that are new to me (as opossed to answering in SO), yet I feel more limited.   Maybe trusted users from other sites should have slightly lower restrictions than &lt;125 on the fellow communities? In particular in order to ask a couple of questions.
1364
I know SO's policy is &quot;you don't have to register to ask questions,&quot; but there are so many new members and so many hit-and-runs... The majority of the questions I see now are coming from new users (i.e., it's their first question). Although unregistered users should still be able to ask questions, I think we should encourage users to create an account. Here is a couple of ways we could do that:  Explicitly encourage people to get an account: there's currently nothing telling people to do that. Maybe tell people something like &quot;Get an account, it's easy!&quot; and maybe show some of the perks of having an account (and having rep).  Maybe give a few bonus points for registering; and have that enable a basic privilege. It could be taken from one of the , for example.   Of course getting people to register is just half of the battle. I don't know what the stats are on this, but I think there's a number of users who create multiple accounts anyways. We could curb that by:  Having smart(er)? duplicate account detection systems, alerting someone who is about to create a new account and possibly has an account already. Give them a message like &quot;Hey, it looks like you already have  account, are you sure you want to create a new one?&quot;  Create a new privilege (10k? 20k?) that gives users tools to detect possible duplicate accounts, eg: &quot;List users with the same e-mail,&quot; &quot;List users with the same IP addresses,&quot;  etc. (without revealing said emails and IPs). Then the 10k/20k can look at other stuff (e.g.: posts) and refer the new user to a moderator for a possible merge.
79284
I understand that reputation can be gained by answering questions. However, it seems that more often than not the questions do not contain all the required information to give an answer. Since new users can not comment questions and ask for more details, this creates a sort of catch-22.  Any good advice on how to get initial reputation, given the new user restrictions?
39014
Meta only requires a reputation of 1 in order to add comments to a question, however most other require 50 or more. As someone pretty new to using Stack Exchange, I find it frustrating because there are a lot of questions which require clarification.  I find lots of questions where I have lots of knowledge, but I need to ask clarifying questions to properly answer their question. It doesn't feel right for me to put that in an answer, but makes sense to do so as a comment to their question.  What is the best practice for obtaining clarifying information when unable to post a comment?
39875
Pretty much what the title says, but I think context is needed.  I already read , by the way, but this one is not a case of one no longer fulfilling the criteria but rather, at least in my opinion, never having met the criteria in the first place.  At stackoverflow.com, I answered  about C++. I originally intended to comment on one of the existing answers (the one existing answer, technically), but either couldn't find (after three minutes) a button or link to do that, or I do not have the required privileges to comment answers yet. Thus I opted for adding my comment as an answer.  When I posted the answer, the page notified me that I have earned the "Teacher Badge" for "answering a question with rank +1 or more" (not exact wording). With it, I also got some privileges such as chat mode. However, what I did does not technically count as answering the question, as it was a comment on an existing question -- the question itself is, already, answered. For that I feel it is kinda unfair that I have earned the badge and privileges, so I'd like to ask if there is a way to un-award the badge, remove the privileges or something.  Unfortunately I'm not that self-criticizing as to downvote my own answer, and besides it is possible the site awards me with yet another badge if I did it anyway, thus adding to the irony.  Thanks in advance.
100844
on Ask Different appears to have no name due to invisible Unicode characters:    he's the #2 user on the site:    Why is that allowed? I think it is confusing for users, e.g. when they will see at the bottom of an answer:    It's not clear who answered, not clear what the rep numbers and badges are related to, and not clear how you can @reply to that user in the comments!
69851
Do not allow people to post the minute they created an account.  Let them ask the question but not allow them to post.  Let them stew for 30 minutes and force them through a nice animated tutorial on what they should do before they post and enforcing the fact that bad questions will not get an answer.  If they had a Need to know! basic rules introduction forced on them asking them at the end to check a box I understand! some might ask better questions and help the community instead of flooding the site with bad questions.  The presentation should be on a timer without the ability to skip and highlight the similar questions asked before that might give them the answer.  Also for the first next 9 posts they should have to check a box next to the first 5 of each similar questions before posting.  I do not mean to be harsh, but the truth is I see more negative votes on questions then positive. It's like 90% of the time people give -1 to first questions.
60942
Is it just for me, or has the privilege to review new posts and late answers changed for everyone?  I recently started being more active in reviewing, but the rep requirement just shot up and I can not review anymore? The rep requirement has shot up to 500. Is this just for me, as a 'process", or has it been changed site wide?
15115
I just ran into this while writing .  [I originally wrote:     you need a minimum of X reputation to comment on questions that are not your own, and on answers that are not to your own questions   But had to shorten it to:     you need a minimum of X reputation to comment]   First, it didn't tell me that I'd gone over the character limit for the title until after I had already tabbed out of the title field.  Second, it didn't tell me how much I'd gone over or anything. I had to copy-paste the text I'd written into my text editor in order to get some real-time feedback on the exact character count, to help figure out how to best shorten it.
1700
Possible Duplicate:          I've been  for maybe a year to get answers to questions I couldn't find on my own.  I always make an attempt first to find the answer on my own.  As of this posting, I've asked 14 questions.  I only once gave an answer, and it was to a non-technical question, and only because I was really bored and had too much coffee to drink.  I wasn't intending to answer any other questions in the future, because on on my best days I'm only a mediocre programmer, and there are some real geniuses here on StackOverflow who can answer other peoples' questions faster and more accurately than I can.  It actually is my nature.  I am an Aquarian.  We are asker-listeners.  Today I discovered Meta Stack Overflow and started browsing around.  I became familiar with the concept of the "Help Vampire".  I seem to qualify.  I continued reading more posts on the topic and got the distinct impression that people who only ask, and never answer, are less than welcome here, rather despised.  So, should I just go away?  Or should I start contributing answers just to have a answer-to-question ratio of 3-to-1 (I read somewhere that's the average) even though I am less than one eighth as knowledgeable as the 10K+ guys and gals?    Or should I continue as I have begun?  I mean, doesn't a 0-questions-asked user like Jon Skeet need a Blankman?  Yin and yang, you know?