We came across a collection of rather active users who for some reason did not get promoted to TL2. Under closer scrutiny, we realised that they did not meet the criteria when restricted to public areas of the forum. E.g. they casted 20 likes, sent 5 messages and got likes back, but none of them in the public area of the forum. This is unexpected at the very least, but most likely just a plain bug. If not, it should be documented much more clearly, including at the respective admin panel. Also I am quite positive that TL3 criteria are including private categories…

One aspect that is a little difficult to check is that the posts are replies to someone else’s topics. Asking a question and replying to those replying to you doesn’t count. This was the cause in Trust level promotion from T1 to T2 not working?

What do you mean by public area? I just tried to reproduce it, and while all posts and the like given and received happened in a category limited to TL0, the user was promoted. Are you referring to personal messages? I don’t think those are included in TL2 requires topic reply count as messages aren’t topics. To me, it makes sense to exclude them; otherwise, they could easily be abused by two new users to get a higher trust level without interacting with the community at all.

I mean only categories publicly available in the forum, in contrast to access-restricted categories. Considering that promotion works a bit differently dependent on the trust level, I would not be too surprised if TL0->T1 works differently.

I tested promotion from TL1 to TL2 in a private category, which is only available to users with TL0. All 3 replies to other users’ topics and the likes happened in that category, and my test user was still promoted.

I have a user with about 80 read topics, 500 read posts, 6 h read time about 20 likes cast, but all of them in a restricted category received likes, some of which in public categories posted replies into 3 public threads, and more private ones has been registered forever The only plausible reason for their non-promotion, disregarding intricate bugs, is that likes cast in restricted topics do not count.

[image] Steradiant: about 20 likes cast, but all of them in a restricted category Just to be absolutely clear: you mean an actual category, not personal messages under /u/username/messages, right?

Moving this to support until we’re sure it’s a bug – so far, I can’t repro either. Do you have any other users in the same situation?

I must say it is quite tedious to manually check the criteria carefully in cases like this – especially to track down where the expected behavior slightly deviates from the actual behavior. Wouldn’t it be easy to add an overview for TL2 requirements just like we have for TL3 already? So far, I haven’t found another example, some other criterion has always been missing.

That’s it. Only two of their replies have been to topics they haven’t created themselves.

I recall having a conversation about this issue (the fact it only takes public categories into account) in another topic sometime over the last week or so. I also find it problematic that private categories aren’t taken into account.

TL2 promotion seemingly only counts public contributions

Product Support

pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman) February 19, 2026, 12:03am 3

That’s right. Trust level data counts only publicly verifiable data. I’m pretty sure it’s documented, though I’m not sure where.

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TL2 promotion seemingly only counts public contributions

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