Hi, I have a difficulty with that setting: approve unless allowed groups.
This is my setting (TL1 to TL4 have been set, screen capture is in French):
Based on the above setting, I expected my TL2 users posts not to be requiring approval, but they are. I may be misunderstanding the setting or another setting is interfering with my goal that TL1 and above TLs are not to be approved? Thanks for your ideas.
did you try it with just TL1? lower levels are inherited (ie: TL3 = TL2 + TL1 +TL0)
This setting is working as expected for me. I set it to TL1 like yours. when my test user was TL 0, their post needed approval
as soon as I changed it to TL2, they could post (and the old un-approved one stayed in the queue)
This is a good related bit of reading:
I will try with TL1 only. But I don’t understand why adding upper levels would interfere with that logic.
can you verify your test user trust level settings? because I just tested the same way with TL1,TL2 and TL3 as allowed, and my test TL0 user still needed approval. it shouldn’t matter if you add higher levels.
Ok this is what I did:
As I understand the logic, it shouldn’t isn’t it?
Note, my setting " approve new topics unless allowed groups" is the same as “approve unless allowed groups”
Oh wait, this was the first topic from that user, but posting the second topic did not go into the queue, so far so good.
So I moved my test user to TL2 and posted a new topic, and… it went to the approval queue… And it shouldn’t, I am completely lost 
I am an hopeless case 
I will approve all the posts and topics for the time being.
Thanks for your interest anyway !
I am still not understanding what the problem is. I also tested the settings for approve new topics unless allowed groups and they work as expected.
I have the following settings:
And my test user that is TL1 cannot create new topics but can still make reply posts, which is exactly what is expected. TL0 requires approval for replies and new topics, while TL1 can post replies but cannot start new topics without approval. TL2 and above can do both without approval.
Perhaps the setting description is a bit confusing with a bit of a double negative in the words “unless” and “cannot”. 
Yes using your settings my TL2 users replying require approval and they should not.
Hmm… Is your category settings maybe set to New Posts require approval? If so the category permission I believe will take precedence over the site setting if not mistaken.
Did you enable different approval settings?
Like the approve post count site setting or the Require moderator approval of all new replies and Require moderator approval of all new topics setting of the category?
It’s also confusing because it assumes that the person configuring the setting understands the internal implementation of trust level groups. Taken at face value, I’d assume that the default configuration of the setting was saying that any user who is not an admin, moderator, or TL0 user would require their posts to be approved. The setting is actually configuring the minimum trust level group that does not require approval.
The setting’s default value (admins, moderators, trust_level_0) configures the site so that any user can post without approval (ignoring settings mentioned in @Heliosurge and @Moin’s posts). To require TL0’s posts to be approved, you’d remove trust_level_0 from the setting and add trust_level_1, etc…
The person configuring the setting needs to know that membership in a trust level group also grants membership in lower trust level groups. The setting’s description doesn’t make that clear: “Posts created by users not in these groups must be approved.”
Very much agreed. Discourse has so many over lapping layers at times it can be intimidating and quite a challenge to figure out things just right. With achieving the desired results.
Agreed with the latest comments, it’s difficult to understand. I will check all my related settings.
My settings:
approve post count = 1
The two other settings in my categories are set to no.
Sure, I wish the setting would be described as “Groups posts that do not need approval”, simply. And the other setting “Groups topics that do not need approval”
Note: adding that for non native English speakers like me, the double negation is another hurdle.
I think that’s why the first post of a tl1 user needs approval even if you set approve unless trust level to tl1.
Yes but posts queued in my case are not the first ones, so there is something else playing up.
There are a bunch of different things that could be going wrong on you site, and helping you is going to be a game of whack a mole for the rest of us.
My suggestion to you would be to revert a lot of the site settings that you’ve changed back to the default and see how things go. For most communities the defaults are perfectly fine and you don’t need to change them.
If you find that in your particular case you need to make some changes, for example to prevent spammers from signing up and posting, I wouldn’t change too many settings at a time to make troubleshooting any problems that come up easier for yourself.
I agree many site setting descriptions are confusing and can be improved. We welcome concrete suggestions of better words, especially from people who don’t speak English as their first language and are confused by double negatives, peculiar english phrases, and so on.
@simon we tried fixing the descriptions in some places, like personal message enabled groups.
Allow users in these groups to CREATE personal messages. IMPORTANT: 1) all users can REPLY to messages. 2) Admins and mods can CREATE messages to any user. 3) Trust level groups include higher levels; choose trust_level_1 to allow TL1, TL2, TL3, TL4 but not allow TL0. 4) Group interaction settings override this setting for messaging specific groups.
If we did this everywhere it would add tremendously to the copy, and add to the feeling that discourse is overly complex. Maybe the answer here is to add a validation so that you can only add one trust level. If you try to add more than one, it will pop up a warning explain how trust levels and permissions work.
Right, there are indeed two issues here, mine, and the Discourse clarification one. Thanks for your clear explanation.
The confusion comes from treating trust levels as groups instead of as “levels”. It’s semantically clear that if a person has a certain trust level, they also have lower trust levels. Unless you understand the internal implementation, it’s not clear that if a user is “in” a trust level group, they are also in lower trust level groups.
It would probably be more trouble than it’s worth, but it would be clearer if these types of settings were split into two settings:
approve unless trust level (defaults to TL0)approve unless groups (defaults to “everyone”)The default values of the current setting are appropriate for most sites, so I doubt the setting gets adjusted very often.