[alexsherrick]

A lot of people are dogging acconrad, but I have to agree with him. I was having a problem with rails, and I found the answer on stackoverflow. The right answer had no upvotes, so I figured I would upvote it; this way the original "asker" would know it is the right answer. However, it said I didn't have enough rep to upvote... I'm sure he'll figure it out but this would save him from checking the other "solutions".

[phwd]

This is to prevent "voting rings" using new accounts. It is a small measure of activity. All it would have taken from you was 15 rep,

1 Upvoted Answer (+10) and 1 Upvoted Question (+5) or 1 Question Upvoted (3 times) (+15) or 3 Upvoted Questions (+15)

(It is actually 14, since you start off with 1 rep)

That is really not a lot of activity/work needed from an individual.

Most likely a next user would have seen the answer on rails and voted by now.

[smackfu]

The weird thing is how it doesn't tell you that you can't upvote until you try to do it.

[cruise02]

It tells you in the FAQ. http://stackoverflow.com/faq#reputation

[smackfu]

I meant that it is surprising that they don't hide the controls that you can't use.

[alanh]

Hey, let’s all downvote alexsherrick and tell him he’s an idiot for not understanding site policy instead of recognizing that he is pointing out an undesirable effect of that policy!