Our Jira is set up so that only the original reporter or admins can edit issues (we had issues w/in our teams and locked down permissions).  I opened an epic so that people could link their issues to that epic.  The reporters of the issues could see the epic, choose it, click Update and then Jira gave them "issue updated" message.  However, they could not see the epic they originally chose.  It took me a while to find other people with this same issue.  

If you all have decided that you will not change the permissions needed to link Epics, can you at least fix it so that Jira doesn't allow people to see the epics and then get told their issues were updated to link the Epic if Jira won't allow it?

I also disagree with the argument that needing Edit+Link vs just Link has anything to do with changing the concept of what an Epic is or how it should be used. Frankly, this bug is illogical and prevents Epics from being used properly in an environment where reporters are limited from editing each other's issues.

Until Atlassian recognizes this folly, we will have to find a workaround. I imagine what most people do is they just open up the Edit permission to essentially match the Create permission, but this isn't a great tactic with larger development and testing teams potentially stepping on each other's toes (editing things having nothing to do with Epic links).

I haven't played with the issue security features, maybe there's a potential workaround there such that Epics could be editable by everybody but other issue types are restricted to only the reporter....

If you create an issue,
epic is linked right after,
but there is a delay

I can't get linked epic on creation anyhow
if i try with jql+cron i run into this delay

Martin Jopson, I also disagree. By that logic editing the time estimates for an issue should require edit permissions in its linked epic, as you are "editing the known work". I find it very hard to believe this is your true justification for rejecting this. The architectural reason for requiring both permissions is well known: an Epic Link is defined both in the main link tables (hence needing the Link Issues permission) and in the issues themselves (requiring Edit permissions). It seems far more likely to me that it is too much hassle to fundamentally reimplement how Epic Links work, and essentially make them identical to a normal issue link. Given this issue didn't get any votes that is something I can fully appreciate, but I think Atlassian should be aware that this is added to a very long list of frustrations existing users have with implementing JIRA, especially at scale.