Can we separate the general discussion about trust level groups and this support issue regarding post approval?
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Hi, me again 
In my attempt to understand why my TL2 users posts go to the approval queue, I was thinking may be that setting: âcategory experts posts require approvalâ (which is set to active in my settings) plays a role?
Because the TL2 user which posts went to the approval queue is a category expert⊠So may be something to dig in here?
I will deactivate that setting temporarily to see.
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Isnât that working then exacly how you wanted 
Well, no, that hypothesis was not confirmed today since a TL2 user posted a reply that went again to the approval queue even though the setting âcategory experts posts require approvalâ was disabled.
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I wonder if the issue I have might be related to the minimum scores because for example I have this analysis:
In particular âminimum score to hide the messageâ is at 8.0 and my user is at 6.0 ?
I will dig into that scores concept in the documentation because I am not familiar with it.
As Tobias mentioned, it will be very hard to debug which settings are affecting this, especially without being to see your site and all the settings youâve changed since it sounds like youâve made a lot of changes (including category settings and so on)
Could you search âapproveâ in site settings and show a screenshot of any settings youâve changed? (forum.example.com/admin/site_settings)
Here are the default settings:
I also recommend only changing settings one at a time depending on your community needs as they come up â the default values are configured to work for most communities.
For the minimum scores, they donât affect the approval flow for posts. This is for hiding posts like when posts are flagged by the community.
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From reading the topic, I would like to clarify what your needs are. I am unsure specifically what you want the approval flow to be. Can you please clarify if these are correct:
- all first posts by trust level 0 & 1 should be approved
- all posts by trust level 2 should not be approved
If these are what you want, I suggest these settings:
First setting: The first setting should already handle those points because it puts the first post by TL0 & TL1 (new and basic users) into the approval queue. If you want the first 3 posts by TL0 & TL1 users to go into the approval queue, then you would change it to 3.
Second setting: If you want all posts by trust level 0&1 users to require approvalâthe whole time while they are trust level 0&1 (not just the first post)âthen you would change the second setting to be "admins, moderators, trust level 2â.
Third setting: The last site setting in that picture has to do with TOPICS rather than individual posts. If you change this and not the second setting, a user will be able to still make several replies to other peopleâs topics, but their first topic will still need to be approved.
But my ultimate recommendation is probably to try and avoid having to approve all peopleâs new posts unless you have a very large spam problem or similar, and nothing else is working to stop the spam.
Because for new users, being able to post and connect with others and get feedback on your posts (likes, comments) soon after youâve signed up for a site makes it more likely you want to keep coming back and contributing more.
If youâre finding that you have to approve a lot of posts that are absolutely fine and arenât at all spammy or problematic, then maybe it might also be worth considering whether it is worth putting them all through the approval queue. Because otherwise it is creating unnecessary friction for users and unnecessary work for yourself and other moderators.
If 90% of posts are fine, you can let new users post them without approval. If there are 10% problematic posts, you can use some other tools to deal with them rather than having to approve all posts. [See other tips on dealing with spam on this topic: Tips for Preventing Spam]
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Correct for the first statement.
For the second statement, I wish âall posts by trust level 1 and above should not be approvedâ (this is why in my current settings I put TL1)
Agreed.
I would like all posts by trust level 0 users to require approvalâthe whole time while they are trust level 0 (not just the first post), so if I understand your instruction, I would put TL1 in that setting is it?
Understood.
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Hi, me again 
This is the latest post made on my site which went to the queue and considering all that discussion, that shouldnât. I made comments on the screen capture of the post in the queue.
My approval settings have been reverted to default yesterday
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Are there any âreviewâ settings, such as âreview every postâ, that are not default?
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Bingo my friend ! That was it, it was set to active. Will deactivate that setting, probably the end of the mystery.
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Amazing! Moin managed to win whack a mole! 
thank you for persisting!
I wonder if there are any learnings from this experience that we can use to improve the product? For example, itâs interesting that you couldnât deduce from the review queue which setting was causing posts to be flagged.
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I think this is the only setting that doesnât show the reason in the review queue. All the others I tried showed the reason.
In general, itâs difficult to find all the settings that cause a post to be added to the review queue for approval. Some are in the spam setting section, others in the posting section. Watched words and category settings are somewhere else.
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Clearly, a number of factors played a part, not least the complexity, or should I say richness, of the options, which offer numerous settings. Having said that, Iâm glad rather than sorry for this complexity, even though my lack of knowledge of the system is obviously largely responsible for my difficulties. On the one hand, itâs my responsibility, but on the other, itâs normal that people launching a Discourse site canât master everything right away. Iâm well aware that this forum is there to help them - the proof is in the pudding! However, some settings could be better explained, as weâve discussed here. As for the Flag story, it could clearly benefit from a better explanation. There are certainly some improvements to be made. In any case, many thanks to all those who have contributed and persevered. I confess I was a little discouraged, even though, like everyone else I suppose, I suspected an incorrect parameter was the cause.
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