Your Trust Level determines what you can and can’t do on the Community.
The higher the level, the more you can do.
New members are limited to let them ease in, discourage spamming for personal gains and help to keep the posts of spambots low.
- NOTE: while we migrate the existing users from the Forum to this new Community, People get Trust Level 1 to start from. That’s because I want to enable the migrating users to continue in a seemless fashion without running into Trust Level 1 restrictions.
Starting from Jan 15th 2022; all new users will start on Trust Level 0
Trust Level 0:
From January 15th 2022 on, you enter the community as a new member on trust level 0
Users at trust level 0 cannot …
- Send personal messages to other users
- “Reply as new topic” via Link button (UI removed)
- Flag posts
- Post more than 1 image
- Post any attachments
- Post more than 2 hyperlinks in a post
- Have actual links in the ‘about me’ field of their profile (will be silently and temporarily converted to plain text)
- Mention more than 2 users in a post
- Post more than 3 topics
- Post more than 10 replies
- Edit their own posts after more than 24 hours
Trust Level 1
When the community launched, it was in ‘bootstrap mode’, meaning everybody was instantly level 1. I re-enabled bootstrap mode again, as the next step will be convincing the remaining regulars to come to the community.
Get to trust level 1 by…
- Entering at least 3 topics
- Reading at least 15 posts
- Spend a total of 5 minutes reading posts
Users at trust level 1 can…
- Use all core Discourse functions; all new user restrictions are removed
- Send PMs
- Upload images and attachments if enabled
- Edit wiki posts
- Flag posts
- Post edit time is still 24h
Trust Level 2 – Member
Members keep coming back to your community; they have not only read, but actively participated long and consistently enough to be trusted with full citizenship.
Get to trust level 2 by…
- Visiting at least 7 days, not sequentially (default 15)
- Casting at least 0 like
- Receiving at least 0 like
- Replying to at least 3 different topics
- Entering at least 10 topics
- Reading at least 40 posts
- Spend a total of 60 minutes reading posts
Users at trust level 2 can…
- Use the “Invite others to this topic” button for one-click onboarding of new users to participate in topics
- Invite outside users to PMs making a group PM
- Daily like and edit limits increased by 1.5×
- Ignore other users
- Edit their own posts for up to 30 days after posting
Trust Level 3 – Regular
Regulars are the backbone of your community, the most active readers and reliable contributors over a period of months, even years. Because they’re always around, they can be further trusted to help tidy up and organize the community.
To get to trust level 3, in the last 100 days…
-
Must have visited at least 30% of days
-
Must have replied to at least 10 different non-PM topics
-
Of topics created in the last 100 days, must have viewed 5% (capped at 500)
-
Of posts created in the last 100 days, must have read 5% (capped at 20k)
-
Must have received 20 likes, and given 30 likes.*
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Must not have received more than 5 spam or offensive flags (with unique posts and unique users for each, confirmed by a moderator)
-
Must not have been suspended or silenced in the last 6 months
-
These likes must be across a minimum number of different users (1/5 the number), across a minimum number of different days (1/4 the number). Likes cannot be from PMs.
All of the above criteria must be true to achieve trust level 3. Furthermore, unlike other trust levels, you can lose trust level 3 status. If you dip below these requirements in the last 100 days, you will be demoted back to Member. However, in order to avoid constant promotion/demotion situations, there is a 2-week grace period immediately after gaining Trust Level 3 during which you will not be demoted.
Users at trust level 3 can…
- Recategorize and rename topics
- Access a secure category only visible to users at trust level 3 and higher
- Have all their links followed (we remove automatic nofollow)
- TL3 spam flags cast on TL0 user posts immediately hide the post
- TL3 flags cast on TL0 user posts in sufficient diversity will auto-silence the user and hide all their posts
- Make their own posts wiki (that is, editable by any TL1+ users)
- Daily like and edit limits increased by 2×
Admins can change these thresholds by searching for TL3 in site settings.
Trust Level 4 – Leader
Leaders are regulars who have been around forever and seen everything. They set a positive example for the community through their actions and their posts. If you need advice, these are the folks you turn to first, and they’ve earned the highest level of community trust, such that they are almost moderators within the community already.
Get to trust level 4 by…
- Manual promotion by staff only
- (Possibly via a to-be-developed election system in the future)
Users at trust level 4 can…
- Edit all posts
- Pin/unpin topic
- Close topics
- Archive topics
- Make topics unlisted
- Split and merge topics
- Reset topic bump date
- Daily like and edit limits increased by 3×
- Any TL4 flag cast on any post immediately takes effect and hides the target post
- Can send personal messages to an email address
We believe this trust system has been a success so far, as it leads to stronger, more sustainable communities by carefully empowering members, regulars, and leaders to curate and lead their own communities. But like everything else in Discourse, the trust system is evolving over time as we gain more experience with more communities. We’ll continue to update this post with any changes.
