The good news: I was able to update the trust level with some simple API calls and it worked great.
The bad news: by moving a user up to TL2 (so I can have them Ignore other users), it triggers them getting a badge, which creates a notification and info about a batch that says “Thanks for being a member for weeks.” Not great, especially since many of my existing members are still trying to wrap their heads around TLs (brand new forum software!) and what that’s all about.
The worse news: I got 4 separate emails from discobot inviting me to the advanced tutorial, since it thinks I’ve been using the site a lot and I guess that triggers this. I’m not sure why I got 4… could it be each time I called the API or something? My community members-- not tech savvy, already very grumpy about moving to new software-- will not like this. So I’m going to have to fix this.
Just an FYI for others. I’m off to figure out how to disable that tl2 badge and the advanced discobot message.