I think we should be able to see this on our user profile. It’s nice to see what more we have to do.
AI-generated summary
The discussion centers on a feature request to allow users to view their progress toward Trust Level 3 (TL3) on their profiles, aiming to reduce moderator workload and increase transparency.
Initially, hunterboerner expresses a desire to see TL3 requirements to understand what remains. codinghorror raises a technical concern, suggesting that absolute minimums for topics and posts viewed are necessary to prevent TL3 from being easily achieved on small sites, proposing thresholds like 200 topics and 500 posts.
The core debate focuses on whether displaying these requirements encourages “gaming” the system. neil is hesitant, fearing users might post low-quality content just to meet numerical targets. Mittineague argues that TL3 is a recognition of participation rather than something to be “earned,” suggesting alternative badges for those seeking status. Joebuhlig notes that users often want to maintain access to specific areas like the Lounge after losing TL3.
However, sam strongly supports transparency, arguing that opaque rules create a negative “game” experience for trusted users and that the current system leads to annoying private messages from confused users. manuel agrees, noting that gamification inherently encourages specific behaviors, and if the desired behavior is reading more posts, transparency helps. He argues that quality control should be handled separately rather than hiding the metrics.
In response to concerns about revealing exact numbers, manuel proposes a compromise: showing a rough estimation of progress with conditional tips without disclosing the specific underlying formulas or numbers. This approach aims to motivate users while maintaining some abstraction. Other posts clarify technical details, such as jomaxro confirming the job runs daily, and riking distinguishing between manual and group-based trust levels.
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Hmm this reminds me @neil we probably need absolute minimums on posts read and topics viewed, otherwise a Discourse with only, say, 20 total topics would make TL3 awfully easy to get.
Maybe set TL3 absolute minimums at 200 total topics, and 500 total posts? As in “site must have this much content to even support anyone getting to TL3?” don’t even bother processing any TL3 events at all until the site has at least that much content.
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The defaults kind of depend on the type of site one is running. I know of at least one Discourse install (not my own) where those default values would probably never be reached.
One thing I liked about OSQA (when it was being maintained) was a “bootstrap mode” that dropped all the values for things like this down to a smaller (still sane) level while the site was new. Then admins could be bugged to disable that mode and go back to the “real defaults”.
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Funny, we used to have that at StackExchange as well. But… wouldn’t default trust level 1 just cover the same ground? Turn it back to 0 when done.
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It is very, very unlikely you would need TL3 user help (e.g. re-categorizing and re-titling of topics) with such a small site. I think the thresholds are fine. With a site that small, the admin alone could mod it all with ease.
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I’ll add minimums for total topics and posts viewed, with site settings. Not sure about showing the requirements on a user profile though. It could encourage people to make low quality posts just to achieve the trust level.
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Is the min total topics and total posts for TL3 configurable from admin panel?
Yes, all the TL3 variables are in site settings, and this one will be too.
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What about showing the progress bar towards TL3 Instead of full summary?
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For now i only see the requirements for LT2 in admin cp. am i looking at the wrong place?
I really like @downey’s suggestion and I think @codinghorror misses the point because..:
It’s not just about the help, is it. I assume they’re called trust levels for a reason. You want to show those early adopters in your community that you trust them to be your civil discourse champions. You’ll both need and want to acknowledge these people a long time before you hit critical mass.
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This – especially if you’re adding Discourse to an established community rather than starting one new with the platform.
It’s been really frustrating to me having so many new users (but long-time community members) confused about why they can’t do some very simple things because Discourse treats them like outsiders.
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If the community is new, then inevitably some people will be treated like unknown new users. That should be temporary.
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When migrating existing members from old to a new Discourse, is there not some way to take their post count, length of membership, “awards”, “demerits” or other criteria into account and start them off at a higher TL?
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Our community is 10 years old, but there’s no way to recognize their social status and longevity in a default installation of Discourse as they start signing in. As a result, many people who have been around years have felt frustrated with the defaults that prevent certain behaviors until they’ve “been around” a while.
(Manually increasing their trust levels seems to be the only way to override this pain, but that doesn’t necessarily scale when you have a large community and you’re trying to encourage them to start using Discourse.)
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I’m missing how seeing the “progress” would help here. I really think this this should be done when the accounts get imported.
But I get the feeling you’re past that point. Any way to do it retro?
I have yet to find any way to import a list of accounts, either in GitHub documentation or in the HOWTOs here … let alone automatically set trust level when that happens.
It’d be helpful if possible.
For now, we’re stuck waiting for people to sign in via SSO which initially creates their accounts.
Maybe @santouras or @HAWK can give some guidance as to what’s involved.
AFAIK, invites are disabled when using SSO. 
If you are confident about the validations on the SSO side you could make trust level 1 the default. You could also turn down the thresholds for TL1, if you like.
1 Like