I’ve been reading a lot of reviews comparing Discourse to other forum software. Inevitably the reviewer will mention the Trust Level system. A typical example:
Discourse aims to meet the needs of modern communities with features like a trust system that grants tiered access to users based on their ongoing community contributions. This feature helps brands regulate the behavior of new and existing users and reduces spammers from negatively affecting their online community.
Sure. Sounds useful, I suppose. It’s just this blurb papers over the nuance of Trust Levels. In order to earn basic rights such as sending private messages (PMs) or post links on their profiles, new users must spend a few minutes reading posts on the site. That does a lot to prevent spam because spending ten minutes on a site just isn’t worth the effort for people who don’t care about the community.
But Discourse didn’t stop there. When a new user joins, fills out their profile and doesn’t read anything on the site, the system automatically flags the user for moderator attention. With a push of a button, a moderator can delete the account and block their IP address. While handling flags on College Confidential, I never saw a false positive from this automation. The people who design Discourse understand how spammers behave and set up defense in depth to stymie them.
Discourse could have used a number-of-posts threshold to identify new users and checked off that feature box. What separates adequate from excellent community software is the degree to which it guides community members to good decisions. Joining a site and posting before reading is a sure sign you aren’t interested in being a part of the community. So if you want to send a PM, you need to spend a bit of time understanding the community first.
Discourse isn’t perfect, of course. I wish it did a better job organizing hundreds of categories, for instance. But the company that develops Discourse continues to improve the product. I have every reason to believe that will continue since the company uses Discourse themselves. To steal a line from Warren Buffet, they eat their own cooking.
It’s a real plus that Discourse has an active community who happily assist people who run into difficulties using Discourse. Most questions get answered within a few hours. It’s also a good place to find people who can provide more extensive advice for a fee. Several expert consultants monitor the marketplace category on Meta Discourse for leads.
This post is an edited version of a review I wrote on my blog. That version is longer and a touch self-promotional.
Celebrating praise for Discourse! It’s always rewarding to receive accolades, especially when it comes to our community platform. Recently, 
“Discourse understands how spammers behave and sets up defense in depth to stymie them.”
