According to the [help center][1], new users with less than 10 reputation can't post more than 2 links:

> New users cannot:
> 
>  - post more than two hyperlinks at a time, either in a post or their user profile

I always thought that this applied to all links, until I came across [this answer][2]. The answer in question was posted by a user with 1 reputation and had, before I edited it, 3 links: 2 to screenshots on imgur and one to a Stack Overflow question.

I thought that seemed strange so I decided to test it with a 1 reputation sock puppet. I tried the following markdown code, which contains the 3 links from the answer:

    [screenshot][1]
    
    [screenshot][2]
    
    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9887621/accessing-localhost-of-pc-from-usb-connected-android-mobile-device/42607979#42607979
    
      [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/46wUs.jpg
      [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/Hq43b.jpg

I didn't get any error message for this code. I also tried to replace `stackoverflow.com` with `superuser.com` and `meta.stackexchange.com` and it still worked. But when I tried to replace it with something that's not Stack Exchange, for example `example.com`, I got the error message "You need at least 10 reputation to post more than 2 links". I also tried to replace it with a Stack Exchange site that doesn't exist, for example `oiqewjr.stackexchange.com`, and I got the error message.

So it seems like new users aren't allowed to post more than 2 links to non-Stack Exchange sites but they're allowed to post as many links as they want to Stack Exchange sites. But I can't find anything in the help center that says so.

So what links count for the 2 link limit for 2 users? Only links to Stack Exchange sites? Why is this? And can the help center be made more clear about this?


  [1]: https://superuser.com/help/privileges/new-user
  [2]: https://superuser.com/revisions/1185437/1