Why should I know? I know really good I don’t need messages telling me about badges or TLs.
How do you define rarely 
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Well upon the first trust level message, at least there on the bottom of it it should have an opt-out button so one doesn’t get the next one too.
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I don’t get it. What is it that bothers you about these messages? Trust level promotions actually do materially change what you can access on most Discourse sites, so it’s useful to most people — but beyond that, they are so infrequent that having the option seems like more noise, bother, distraction than the notification.
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Most users will only ever see two of these messages. Dismissing those already sounds like far less work than picking through your preferences to find a setting to disable two PM notifications.
Are you sure? That’s not how these topics come across. Discourse has tens of millions of users worldwide and has existed for a decade. If these were all legitimate issues you would have found scores of topics on the matter to respond to, rather than create your own.
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Well, my users have asked why they get PMs that actually doesn’t mean much. I mean transitions from TL0 to TL2 are quite… not-so-important. At my circles anyway. Same thing with badges.
They weren’t even annoyed, just asking if those can be disabled. My solution was stop using badges, giving zero value for likes, promoting to TL1 right away, make reaching TL2 a bit harder and eliminate automatic TL3 totally. Minor problem solved.
But yes. I’m living in dream world without spam and badly behaving adults
I totally agree building opt-out/in for such trivial notices is far away from useful benefit/expence ratio. But no matter how many is using Discourse world wide CDCK just doesn’t know what users think or ask. So that can’t be an argument.
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Maybe I’m the only one on this entire “Meta” (that’s all it’s called on my cell phone’s app info) who has never been an “admin” (of this mysterious software with no name )! Yup, a lowly regular user, (with an advanced degree in computer science 
)
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We do get a lot of admins on here. 
Personally I enjoy getting feedback from a diverse range of Discourse users (even if I don’t necessarily agree with it all ).
There are some people who do really dislike the badges and the notifications they deem ‘non-relevant’, and it has cropped up a few times before (especially from those who have joined multiple Discourse sites). We do have the opt-out for some onboarding as you reference in Excitement Opt-Out Panel, but I do agree with @mattdm that a change in Trust Level is a significant enough change to inform people about as it often grants new abilities that people would find useful (and which can be tailored on a per-site basis, so no ‘Discourse-wide’ absolutes).
Just as a small extra note, the fact that you’re engaging in UX and ‘meta’ discussions about the software itself I think raises you a couple of notches up from the ‘lowest end user’. I should see if I can rustle you up a badge for that…
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I’m guessing you don’t use Mastodon either? And you are naming your documents as office365? Or web-sites are named after browser?
This has nothing to do with software, Has never been. Is is matter of a site, or forum here. You don’t like name Meta here. That’s fine, it is your opinion. But never ever my forum wan’t be Discourse next to second Discourse on user’s phone.
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Okay, just the other day I opened up one of those promotion trust mails, and it said I was supposed to reply to the Discobot to start a tutorial. I would offer a good old-fashioned link to the tutorial in addition.
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Completely agree. The people who don’t want these notifications are likely people who wouldn’t want to change any settings. But I think there should be a site setting to turn them off.
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It really goes against the fundamental point of trust levels to elevate the level of access a user has without informing them in some way, doesn’t it?
They’re there as much for the users as they are the site operators. How would anyone know they can now send a PM if they aren’t told? At TL1 users are also prompted to complete their profiles, something they may not want to do at the point of registration. I find that profile data to be pretty helpful when responding to people. A site setting would dead-end these things.
If people are fussing about two messages which let them know they have a greater degree of access and freedom, then they’re leading pretty charmed lives.
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Not so much, actually. TL1 → T2 isn’t giving that much. And because of that, and when likes aren’t de facto in use TL-wise it is totally same to keep standard user at TL1 and raise them manually to TL3/4 if needed.
Or an admin uses settings that doesn’t send those messages. Notificatons shows anyway.
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I think I’m getting caught in the crossfire here!
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Maybe I can “block the things that are sending me these”
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You could ask the admins of the site you’re on to disable badges and discobot.
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Aren’t the promotion notifications meant to inform you of your trust level promotion? Without them, it would be hard to know if you were promoted.
I’m saying Albert Einstein for instance. He is just is busy writing down his formulas and posting them, and doesn’t want to bother with anything else.
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Maybe Discourse is not the right tool for (this version) of Mr. Einstein. These things which you don’t like are meant to increase involvement and engagement in the site, making it not just a repository where one dumps bare information but rather a destination where a community can develop.
And in fact, not just “meant to”. Are generally quite good for, as shown by years of real-world use and refinement.
Are they perfect for everyone? Obviously not. But… I think on the balance these are good features. As noted, admins can turn off badges and the greeter bot — and even the trust level notification — if they want a more bare-bones experience.
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This gets me thinking, I bet there are still some things that users should be allowed to configure, not only admins.
Are you guys sure you’ve given the maximum amount of control to users that you could have?
Yes, as always, I’m talking about the default distribution to thousands of sites. Not any individual site.
No, not having ever been in admin myself, I’m not familiar with all the stuff admins can control. I just find occasionally some things that it makes sense to allow users to adjust, but they’re not allowed to get their hands on it.
Sure, you might say well I could just install a version and being admin on my one person system and explore it but. From the point of the minimal end user: “all I own is a cell phone.”
Anyway, on the other hand one wouldn’t want to make the interface too complicated.
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Anyway, older users sometimes “end up on systems.” And that’s the only place they’re going to be for the rest of their life. So we children would like to go in and sometimes adjust some things for them. But we’re not admins. This would be an example of where allowing users uses to turn those things off would be useful.
For instance, Grandma uses gmail. I tried to tell Grandma there’s a better program to use but let’s just say be thankful that she can even use Gmail. So I at least in Gmail I can go in and adjust some things to make it easier for her to use.
Anyway in Discourse we can adjust some things. But there’s a few more things that would be great to be able to adjust. Even if we’re not admins.
Let’s take Grandma again. None of the site trust levels would have any relevance to her. Telling her about them would only make it seem like she did something wrong and her account is going to get closed or something.
Sure I can say, “Grandma, just READ the message.”
But, well, try it on your own grandma and see.
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