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The rule (I find just absurd) forbidding any user to comment if its credit is lower than some_value_I_do_not_remember leads to some inconvenience at least in one particular case we can discover in this question :

user Foobar offers a bounty on another user's question, incidentally bringing their credit under the commenting privilege threshold and consequently depriving them from any possibility to interact with the authors of the question / answers. (apart from posting answers that are not answers).

I'm afraid that asking for dropping the condition for commenting is just a lost cause… so, could, at least, an exception be made, to the benefit of the user having offered a bounty for the time the bounty is opened ?

EDIT after acknowledging terdon's arguments :

Limiting the value offered for the bounty to user_reputation - commenting_privilege_threshold could most probably be simpler to implement than an exception while preventing users to inadvertently deprive themself from an important privilege.

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The rep threshold for commenting is super important to avoid spammers flooding the site with comments advertising viagra or whatever. This is one of the rules that have a very clear, very important reason. We get absurd levels of spam (most of it is caught by the wonderful Charcoal team, so you might not see it, but believe me it is there). It is also very, very low: 50 rep points which can be achieved through just five upvotes on your posts. It really is a low bar.

As for adding an exception, as far as I know there simply is no way of doing that. Presumably, an SE developer might be able to but there is no existing infrastructure for such exceptions.

Yes, in this particular, extreme edge case, the person who gave the bounty cannot comment. It does make sense to ask for a new feature where the user with an active bounty is allowed to comment on the bountied question and its answers even when their rep is too low, but that would have to be a new feature request. And I really don't know if it's worth it, this isn't a very common occurrence.

In this case, the user who offered the bounty posted an answer and a mod converted the answer to a comment. Mods are, first and foremost, human exception handlers. This, a user who offered a bounty and yet cannot comment, is very much an exception and it was handled so maybe we don't really need anything else.

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  • ACK! I updated my question with a possibly easier way. BTW… you wrote : "It is also very, very low: 50 rep points which can be achieved through just five upvotes on your posts. It really is a low bar." Hmmm… actually not regarding that particular user just getting… 0 post on U&L… ;-P BTW I only insist on that since I can remember this user having post useful comments (in the time they had the privilege). I do believe the community lost something valuable (per this user self-acknowledged inadvertancy)
    – MC68020
    Sep 30, 2022 at 11:03
  • @MC68020 yes, but still. It is one user, one time. This is hardly a common occurrence. And yes, 50 rep is indeed very, very low and very easy to get if you spend a bit of time here. Even the user in question had the rep, they just chose to give it away.
    – terdon on strike Mod
    Sep 30, 2022 at 11:21
  • Fair enough ! For the sole sake of the symbol (since I don't think you actually work hard for earning credits) I upvote this answer (because I acknowledge this being an edge case as well as I value the efficient work mod's achieve in dealing with exceptions (in this particular case upon some user request though ;-) )) I'll however won't accept it. My edited suggestion would have prevented the community to lose one valuable member who (please re-read their own now-comment) did not, as you writes it "chose to give it away" but more certainly inadvertently gave it away.
    – MC68020
    Sep 30, 2022 at 14:43
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    @MC68020 well no, not really: giving a bounty is a gamble. There is no guarantee that the bounty will result in the answer you are hoping for. In any case, I agree that it makes sense for the person who offered the bounty to have commenting rights, but that would be better posted as a focused feature request on Meta Stack Exchange.
    – terdon on strike Mod
    Sep 30, 2022 at 14:57
  • < kidding > Why do you absolutely want me to give away the hard earned 143 kudos I own on Meta SE ? < /kidding > First time I went there, was it following some Jeff's advice (no hardfeeling Jeff) I faced a dozen downvotes and last time, I managed to avoid bankruptcy but only (I believe) thanks to the kindness of some open minded community manager… < kidding > Ha yes ! I remember ! You had given me the secret passphrase : "Woaaaa!" < /kidding >
    – MC68020
    Oct 1, 2022 at 1:07
  • Epic Fail ! Recent (utterly disgraceful) event demonstrating that it is actually very efficient to trust in mods (not to say in one in particular ;-) ) for dealing with exceptions… particularly with exceptions among exceptions… then… I would feel unjust not to accept your answer. Therefore I change my mind… accept this answer and… of course… thank you personally.
    – MC68020
    Oct 2, 2022 at 17:52

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