You can edit some of the questions, and some of them need editing badly. Each accepted edit is two points. Took me a while to break through, but I learned a lot in the process. Other actions to gain points: question voted up +5, answer voted up +10, answer is accepted +15. +2 edit approved

K7AAY - I posted question to say that the website has to change, not to figure out how to get points.

I must be missing something. To answer a question you need a reputation score of just 1. You actually cannot get a rep score lower than that. Even answering protected questions only requires a reputation score of 10. What exactly were you trying to do?

Just wondering myself if he is getting commenting and answering mixup.

...and that turned sour quickly

A link to the specific question would be helpful, but it sounds like it might have been a protected question. They're questions that have too much traffic for their own good, and attract spam or "me too" non-answers. But I'm surprised it let you start writing an answer if that was the case.

@Oli Even protected question require 10 points while Steven has 56. Strange though.

@StevinJed Can you edit this to include links to questions that the system kept you from posting answers on?

@Kulfy OP had 1 point reputation at the time he posted the question. In a sort of "let's help the guy who puts effort in being part of the community", others and I upvoted the question. That's part of the explanation why OP gained point so quickly.

@Oli That makes sense.

@guillermochamorro I didn't question about how OP got this many reputation and I wasn't sure that they had 1 rep point before posting this question. Although I'm against such kind of voting since this is similar to "voting irregularities" and yeah I know it's good to encourage users to participate on the site more but here I'm not sure how the mods, SE employees and the users who are more into the moderation will react.

@Kulfy I see your point and I thought about it when I upvoted, knowing that is irregular (after advicing him to post here). I guess that what moved me is seeing so many questions with little or no effort at all, users that just touch and go (as is their right of course), that when somebody with genuine interest of participating in this place shows up I want to help them in the extent that I can (upvoting bah).

I does not mean I upvote any question or answer from low rep users, I always have in mind if the Q or A are meaninful and helpful for the site, IMHO.

@Oli, it was 10 days ago when I only had 2 rep. pts. that I was attempting to answer askubuntu.com/questions/1008474/cant-watch-4od-uk. Someone converted my answer into a comment, so you can still see it there. Having posted this question, it was migrated from askubuntu.com to meta.askubuntu and around the same time I suddenly went up to 56 rep. pts, which made me feel a bit uncomfortable with the points system, but that's a separate discussion. I still stand by my view that it would be nice if it was made clear whether a user has enough points before answering a question.

I think this might be the reason. You suddenly got some reputation points due to your question, people read your question, open your profile, check your answers and , if appropriate, upvoted some of them, so did I and I'm sure, others.

@mook765 You're right, I've figured out where the 55 points came from - 3 answers I posted ages ago all got voted up as 'useful' within 20 mins, 2 days ago. Happy to give more details if anyone interested.

The question you tried to answer is protected, so you have to have at least 11 reputation points which you didn't have at the time you posted the answer. Question about problems with AU and how to use this site belong here on meta, AU is only for question about the OS, that's why this question was migrated.