Bug? You can avoid the character restriction

[TechnoBear]

See also

Strange behaviour of emoticons in character count

Continuing the discussion from Notifications not clearing properly unless visited from menu: I was replying to a question of @sam’s, which really just required a “yes” or “no” answer, but of course, Discourse has a 20 character minimum requirement. Stuck for inspiration, I threw in a smilie and found that apparently counts for at least six characters, as you can see.