On the upside, the system of requiring the receipt of 20 likes, and the giving of 30 likes during the last 100 days for Trust Level 3 – Regular is simple, transparent, and avoids the ambiguity of some of the reactions. A downside is that it ignores those reactions, which constitute data that could reflect upon the quality of the concerned posts.
Would it be possible, and not overly cumbersome, for someone to quantify the number of likes and the number of reactions that have been applied on this forum since the time that reactions have become available as an option? If this can be done, it might help us judge whether ignoring reactions for the purpose of awarding trust levels is a significant issue.
There is the possibility of using AI to apply sentiment analysis to replies to posts in cases where the person who replied has also invoked a reaction that might otherwise be seen as ambiguous. But my sense is that this might entail a large amount of work that delivers only a small amount of benefit. In addition, sentiment analysis inevitably would incorporate some systematic cultural bias into the process of awarding trust levels. This is also true of assigning numerical values to reactions.
So, the above leaves me inclined to wait for itemized statistics on the use of reactions before my forming an opinion. That brings us back to the issue of the discussion, Enhance About page website statistics. Implementing the proposed feature could help us here.