Inline images prevented due to min. 6 chars requirement

Question

In some cases I feel inlining an image in OP is a better way to faster see a problem instead of having to read, then click on a link, then go back.

New posters don't have the option of inserting images directly so I edit some of these posts when I find them to make the image they link to inlined.

However, lately I cannot do this as I get an "Oops, minimum of six non-space chars needs to be changed" (or something in that line). Inlining an image is often just to prefix the existing link with an ! (one char).

I would like to discuss what is the preferred practice and if that 6 char limit should be removed (seem artificial to me), alternatively if there are other ways to get around (other that re-uploading the image and so forth) or if we should leave links as-is.

Answer 1

That issue has been endlessly discuted on the main Meta site…

To summarize the outcome of these discussions:

This will not be changing. — Jeff Atwood♦

Answer 2

Here's an easy workaround - why not use HMTL?

So, if it was http://area51.stackexchange.com/favicon.ico ...

...make it <img src="http://area51.stackexchange.com/favicon.ico" /> - adding <img src=" to the start and /> to the end, which is more than 6 characters.

Confirmation it works:

Or, what I do is, I quite often select the link, cut the link, then use the wysiwyg button to re-add it as an image from the web. That moves the url down into a footnote, which counts as more than 6 characters difference.

Answer 3

If you have time to pull up an image explaining the answer, you have time to explain what we're looking at.

Besides, it makes things easier for search engines who can't read the image!