In a discussion titled ‘Exempt TL4 from max consecutive replies’, EricGT shares an experience where, as a TL4 user, they were blocked by the ‘No more than 2 consecutive replies are allowed’ limit after posting a summary, closing, and reopening a topic — actions they felt should not count toward the limit. Firepup650 suggests workarounds, including adding content to close/open posts to avoid triggering the limit, which EricGT successfully implements. JammyDodger clarifies that the default limit is 3 consecutive replies and notes that admins, mods, and topic owners are already exempt — proposing that TL4 users, as trusted members, should also be exempt. They also suggest excluding small action posts (like closing/opening) from the count, since they serve a different function. Firepup650 questions whether such an exemption should be an admin setting, but JammyDodger argues it’s too granular for a separate setting — recommending either full TL4 exemption (like category moderators) or excluding action posts from the count while keeping the limit for regular replies. The discussion centers on balancing moderation tools with trust in experienced users.
As a TL4 user
Created a summary with the Discourse AI bot and posted it as a reply.
Closed the topic because it was inactive for more than 2 weeks.
A user sent me a direct message that the topic needed to be opened because the topic was noting a problem and the problem was not fixed.
Then created a reply post but upon trying to add the post was greeted with the message.
I was surprised to get the message.
Does either or both closing and opening a topic count?
I really do not want to delete any of the current 3 items, summary, close and open as they leave a record for others to see.
Side note: Wanted to link to the closed notice but even with text the ability to select a link for it is not available. However knowing how to construct the URL by hand does still work.
As you can see from the description, topic owners, admin, mods and category moderators are already exempt, so this would be mainly for TL4s.
It is interesting that the small action posts have been counted for that as well though. It might be worth not including those in the count as they generally perform a separate function than the one the setting is targeting.
Though a TL4 should be trusted enough not to be limited by that behavioural nudge as well, so I can see an argument for removing that rate-limit from them too.
To be honest, I think it would likely be too granular to warrant an extra setting for something like that. I would say we can could have either TL4 are experienced/trusted enough not to need this (in the same way as cat mods), or we could not count small action posts to avoid a ‘mod’ action triggering it but leave it in place otherwise.
