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This bug report was brought on by this question: Help identifying a motor and how to control it with an Arduino. Here is its timeline. The summary is that a new user attempted to post a question with some images.

This, of course, is not allowed due to previous problems with the posting of...er...unsavory content by new users. The New User Restrictions state that new users cannot:

  • post images
  • post more than two hyperlinks at a time, either in a post or their user profile
  • contribute answers to protected questions
  • ask or answer questions too rapidly

This all makes sense. In an attempt to work around this problem, the user uploaded some images to the web and posted two hyperlinks to allow viewers to open those images. This is a very normal response for a new user.

Unfortunately, the user neglected to use the "shift" key throughout the entirety of the post. This is also a very normal response. I attempted to correct the illegible question and unprofessional post by inserting the images in Revision 2 and posting a comment requesting that proper capitalization be used.

Less than an hour later, the user responded by editing the post and making the desired corrections. Fantastic, right? We've now got images inserted by a 10k mod (so those should be fine) and some changes to the text of the question by the OP. Everything is working as desired - until this showed up:

enter image description here

The new user didn't post an image. They didn't touch the lines in which the image uploading code was posted. New users should be allowed to respond to feedback on their post by editing the question, even if additional hyperlinks or images have been inserted by other users.

The check for whether or not the new user has violated the new user restriction should exclude text added by users who are past the new user restrictions.

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    \$\begingroup\$ I'm glad it at least tells you why you're prohibited from posting images, instead of just saying "No." \$\endgroup\$
    – endolith
    Feb 19, 2012 at 0:37
  • \$\begingroup\$ I might even strive to say that the new user restriction could be removed completely at this point. I assume the restrictions are to prevent spam, which makes sense. But if a question has already received an edit like this, it is probably safe to say the user is a real person asking a real question. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kellenjb
    Feb 20, 2012 at 13:44
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Kellenjb - The normal way that the restrictions are removed is when the question gets two upvotes. That bumps the users' rep to 11, and removes the restriction. We need a more active voting community, but that's another topic. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Feb 20, 2012 at 20:17
  • \$\begingroup\$ My first comment would be why you didn't just improve the entire post instead of only part of it...but I guess that isn't what you're going for, eh? \$\endgroup\$
    – Rebecca Chernoff
    Feb 22, 2012 at 6:22
  • \$\begingroup\$ @RebeccaChernoff - Nope, that's not what we're going for. I don't want to teach users that they can post junk and we'll clean it up for them, plus, I have more important things to do. I want the new user to make an effort to create a presentable question. In this case, it worked, and I think it's far more likely that their next question will be acceptable than if I'd just fixed the entire thing. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Feb 22, 2012 at 19:28

1 Answer 1

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The next build will allow new users to edit their own posts in this case.

Essentially, we disable the image/anchor restrictions for new users once the post already contains the requisite content.

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