I just created an account here because I wanted to write an answer. Since I'm an experienced long-time user of the stack exchange network, I got the +100 rep association bonus (see profile). However, that still prevents me from answering How to deal with an untrainable junior dev?.
One could argue that I don't have the minimum 10 rep on this site specifically, because I have not contributed anything that yields rep here. But the association bonus is supposed to go past basic restrictions. Here's what the reputation help page says:
If you are an experienced Stack Exchange network user with 200 or more reputation on at least one site, you will receive a starting +100 reputation bonus to get you past basic new user restrictions.
I have tried reloading the question, moving around the site and voting a bit, and going back to the question. I have not logged out and in.
I come here often through the hot network questions, and those sometimes get protected, which is useful. But for experienced users that decide to actively participate on one of the newer SE sites being unable to answer those kind of beats the purpose of attracting new users.
Probably in order to answer that specific question I just need to go write an answer that gets an upvote, or do a few edits.
Still this smells like a bug.