# Ability to disable trust level auto-promotion?

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-disable-trust-level-auto-promotion/28677
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** trust-levels
**Created:** [May 12, 2015, 6:37am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-disable-trust-level-auto-promotion/28677 "2015-05-12T06:37:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![childofsol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e19adc/32.png) [@childofsol](https://meta.discourse.org/u/childofsol)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2015, 6:37am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-disable-trust-level-auto-promotion/28677/1 "2015-05-12T06:37:21Z")

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I’m setting up a community and we’d like to disable auto-promotion so that we can use the trust system but have more manual control over it. More specifically, we’d like to leave levels 0 and 1 working with auto-promotion, but levels 2+ would require manual promotion

I haven’t seen any option for doing this. My current plan of action is to just set unreachable limits, but wanted to see if there is a proper to do it before applying my duct tape 😉

Thanks!

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### Author: ![sam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/sam/32/102149_2.png) [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2015, 6:53am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-disable-trust-level-auto-promotion/28677/2 "2015-05-12T06:53:03Z")

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> [@childofsol](#):
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> but levels 2+ would require manual promotion

Should be fairly simple, just make tl2/3 impossible to achieve via site settings. That is in fact the proper way of doing it.

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### Author: ![Benno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/benno/32/40721_2.png) [@Benno](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Benno)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2015, 7:05am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-disable-trust-level-auto-promotion/28677/3 "2015-05-12T07:05:55Z")

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Would it be an idea to have a toggle per trust level (enable / disable automatic promotion) instead of having the admin enter multiple unattainable values to disable automatic promotion?

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### Author: ![sam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/sam/32/102149_2.png) [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2015, 7:16am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-disable-trust-level-auto-promotion/28677/4 "2015-05-12T07:16:54Z")

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Its so rare to want I am not sure its worth adding.

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### Author: ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2015, 7:19am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-disable-trust-level-auto-promotion/28677/5 "2015-05-12T07:19:43Z")

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We also do not want people to disable this unless they have very good reason to. Part of the promise of Discourse is that the community is trusted to help moderate itself. Turning trust levels off is counter to that philosophy.

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### Author: ![childofsol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e19adc/32.png) [@childofsol](https://meta.discourse.org/u/childofsol)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2015, 6:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-disable-trust-level-auto-promotion/28677/6 "2015-05-12T18:30:15Z")

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I think we may attack this problem using custom user groups instead. It seems to be the proper way to do this (we’re still wrapping our heads around the system). Is there any word on when group administration features, specifically, granting a user permission to add/remove users from a group?

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### Author: ![riking](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/riking/32/170938_2.png) [@riking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/riking)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2015, 9:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-disable-trust-level-auto-promotion/28677/7 "2015-05-12T21:16:39Z")

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That’s on the wishlist, and I think some of the technical foundation has been laid already. Needs quite a bit of UI work, I think.

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### Author: ![Andrei\_Cristof](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/andrei_cristof/32/75927_2.png) [@Andrei\_Cristof](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Andrei_Cristof)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2017, 8:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-disable-trust-level-auto-promotion/28677/8 "2017-07-28T20:42:03Z")

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Understandable. However, it depends on the use case. For forums/communities, what you said makes perfect sense. But I want to use Discourse as a blog, and this feature request would be valuable, I don’t want to have blog visitors promote themselves to more rights all of a sudden.

So, a vote from me as well for this feature. Until then, I will do the same workaround but it would be nice to have it.

(Sorry for ressing an old topic, I needed to ask the same question so I found this).

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### Author: ![sam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/sam/32/102149_2.png) [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2017, 8:45pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-disable-trust-level-auto-promotion/28677/9 "2017-07-28T20:45:40Z")

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> [@Andrei\_Cristof](#):
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> But I want to use Discourse as a blog, and this feature request would be valuable.

Thing is, it is doable today, just make the promotion impossible to attain and … problem solved 🌟

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### Author: ![ghufransyed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/ghufransyed/32/187888_2.png) [@ghufransyed](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ghufransyed)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2020, 5:00am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-disable-trust-level-auto-promotion/28677/10 "2020-09-07T05:00:46Z")

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Is there any way to make promotion impossible for tl0? I want anonymous users to be able to read a particular category, and specific logged-in group members (“contributors”) to be able to post, reply etc. I have this working already.

I now want to give anonymous readers without an account the option to sign up, but I want to restrict them to tl0 unless I manually promote them. That way they can get notifications etc, but can’t post/reply etc.

I am setting the default tl for invited users to tl1, but I can’t figure out how to prevent tl0 getting automatically promoted to tl1. I guess I could set “tl1 requires topics entered”, “tl1 requires read posts” and “tl1 requires time spent” to some ridiculously big number, but it seems a little inelegant, is there a better way I’m missing?

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### Author: ![HAWK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/hawk/32/86627_2.png) [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2020, 5:14am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-disable-trust-level-auto-promotion/28677/11 "2020-09-07T05:14:16Z")

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> [@ghufransyed](#):
>
> I guess I could set “tl1 requires topics entered”, “tl1 requires read posts” and “tl1 requires time spent” to some ridiculously big number, but it seems a little inelegant, is there a better way I’m missing?

Nope. That’s the way to do it!

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### Author: ![ghufransyed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/ghufransyed/32/187888_2.png) [@ghufransyed](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ghufransyed)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2020, 5:28am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-disable-trust-level-auto-promotion/28677/12 "2020-09-07T05:28:45Z")

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Thanks! I think I actually needed [Understanding groups and category permissions](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-use-category-security-settings-to-create-private-categories/87678), as long as I can control which groups new users automatically join
