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There have been a few occasions where new users have had the same problem as others, but the issue hasn't been resolved. For example Ben in this Super User question. Unfortunately he has asked if the issue has been resolved as an answer to the question, obviously due to the fact that he doesn't have enough rep to comment.

In my limited experience with Super User thus far, I have come across this situation a few times now. I am wondering if we can grant new users the ability to have a limited ability to comment on other's answers/questions. Maybe only 1 or 5 comments a day/week or something along those lines. This would help to keep answers relevant to the question and not cluttered with "useless" material, but still grant ability to new users to inquire further about questions or answers that they come across.

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    See 50 reputation for making comments is too high on the main meta, where there seems to be a consensus for not changing that. Nov 5, 2010 at 21:25
  • Intriguing idea though.
    – ChrisF
    Nov 7, 2010 at 23:50
  • @Giles I looked at it, and I agree that we don't want clutter by giving new users some abilities but I feel that in this situation our limitations have only added clutter instead of prevented it. Nov 8, 2010 at 23:05
  • Totally new users shouldn't be able to comment, but 50 rep might actually be too high for this site. While a single, rather stupid answer (along the lines of googling the API documentation and linking to it) can easily get multiple upvotes on SO, on this site it's more of a challenge -- at least in my experience.
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Nov 12, 2010 at 0:09

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This question was raised on MSO here and Jeff declined it. From his answer here

As it says in the /faq, new users can post comments on their own questions and answers, as well as any answers to questions they own.

Beyond that you can refer to my previous answer on this topic.

New users can't ask for clarification except as answer

Further to this, any question that attracts a lot of "new" attention will generally be flagged and protected to disallow users posting to it unless they have 10 reputation. We are working hard to get users out of the forum mindset, and into the Q&A mindset. Anything that encourages forum behavior is bad, especially on a site like Super User. We are strict for a reason, since we are driving high quality content which other sites do not offer.

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  • Well I don't exactly like it, but I guess it's not really gonna change. Nov 15, 2010 at 13:30

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