Hello everyone,
Been looking into Discourse as a potential replacement for our actual solution but even after reading the documentation I’m a bit lost with trust_levels and groups.
What is the best practice?
Use the trust_levels already created or creating ourselves our own different groups and only deal with them?
Your feedback would be very appreciated, wishing you a good day.
Hi @Jarjar , welcome to Discourse Meta!
May I know what exactly are you trying to achieve? Private categories? Categories to be viewed only by logged in users?
Hey,
Thanks for the warm welcome.
Actually both, in every cases most of the content I want accessible to logged in users only but on top of that there will indeed be multiple private categories and channels so I’m rapidely lost with the trust_levels.
I wonder if simply removing them and doing my own groups wouldn’t be easier but it might not be the best practice, the trust_levels existing for a reason I guess ^^
You can’t “remove” them they’re built into the entire foundation of discourse they aren’t simply pre-made groups, groups sit on top of them and all groups use the trust level system. But yes you can lock categories to either/both.
You might want to read the Trust Level guide which explains what they do, because any group you make will be reliant on this. A group is just a group of users, all of which have a Trust Level: either static (every member in the group gets the one assigned to the group), or independent where they all have whatever level they’re naturally at.
Trust levels essentially act as a safeguard for both your new users and your community at large. A good analogy to understand them is imagining they are a stranger in your home. When they first visit you don’t know them well enough to trust them so you wouldn’t let them walk around unsupervised. And from their perspective, they haven’t been to your home before so they don’t know their way around.
Trust levels are a way that you can safely allow someone into the community in a sand-boxed way so that they don’t have access to functionality which could be problematic. They can’t PM strangers, they can’t drop spam links etc. As they spend time reading and engaging, they prove they are there for the right reasons so they get more functionality. They are now familiar enough with the forum to understand how to use it.
So leave those in place with the default settings, but remember that you can tweak those later if necessary. Then build your custom groups on top, which will dictate who can access what content on an holistic level.
To make it accessible to logged in users only, make the category only accessible to TL0 users. Since every logged in user is a TL0, this can be done.
See, when you are a TL1, you are both a TL0 and a TL1. When a TL3, you are a TL2, 1 and 0. Therefore, making categories only accessible by TL0s allow topics in there to be private.
Or just have login required turned on…
I totally get that but for my user case for example rights given from TL3 are already too high and even some from TL2 I would want to remove.
I do get they were made to empower the community but it allows them to do stuff only mods should do for our user case.
I see the benefit in TL0 & TL1 but above is too much.
Does that make sense to just increase requirements for those levels so basically no one can reach them?
Sorry coming from the other Disc thing it’s a bit confusing to me and I want to make sure I get it all right and do it properly from the beginning.
As an example on disc I have:
Unverified users (would be TL0)
Verified users (would be logged in users in Discourse)
Trusted users (would be TL1)
No use of TL2 equivalent
Mods (TL3 & TL4)
Staff (TL3 & TL4)
Admins (TL3 & TL4)
Which ones are you talking about? There are a lot of “… allowed groups” settings that allow you to customize those rights. For example, edit all topic groups if you don’t want TL3 users to be able to edit titles, categories, and tags of topics written by someone else.
TL3:
TL2:
Change edit all topic groups
Change tl3 links no follow
There is also invite allowed groups and personal message enabled groups
I use Trust Level Permissions Reference to find the settings
Ok so this isn’t completely stupid from me to want to do that and changing TL settings are something other people managing communities do too?
I just want to make sure I get it all right and start on a good feet instead of doing it wrong from the beginning ^^
Sorry to bother you with that but I see you’re the co-CEO so I’m sure you will know about this.
Like said earlier perms are a bit hard for me to understand coming from the other Disc community tool, I spent a lot of time reading the different documentations but it quickly start to be complicated with some reference being articles from 4 years ago while changes were made since then so I have to cross reference to find what I need.
Anyway, now I understood the different trust levels and that user will automatically get it, with more perms as they are more and more active in the community so I started working on the groups.
I’m a bit confused with the staff role since I don’t see the point of it, admins are admins and moderators are moderators.
Trying to understand that I came on an article that was saying that the default moderator was giving way too much perms to mods allowing them to export customer data for example and there is also category moderators so now I’m completely lost at sea: Admin vs Moderator vs leader - #14 by robmc
Is there a way to contact someone from Discourse to get in a call so I make sure I understood it all properly? Against compensation obviously.
I really see benefits for us to transition to Discourse but can’t afford any mistake.
Hey there, welcome to Discourse.
I would be happy to help you and walk you through doing these, as well as explain how trust levels and moderation work in Discourse and how to achieve what you want.
I’ve worked with Discourse forums since 2015 as moderator/administrator, and have worked in community management/moderation for a decade. I’ve also done administration & moderation on Discord, so I can explain the similarities and differences. I understand that if you’re coming from the roles-based model similar to that, it can be confusing since Discourse has a lot of built-in moderation associated with its trust levels.
Feel free to PM me, and we can figure out time to do a video call.
If you want, I would be happy to volunteer as a moderator/admin on your site for the medium-term to help you get set up. I really love working with Discourse and I want more communities to use it. (I’ve done volunteer admin/moderation on Discord too for a friend who was a streamer, because fiddling with all the bots and settings wasn’t her thing, so I totally get that because I like setting those up.)
If you want to open a topic in marketplace and explain that you’re looking for support to set up Discourse, you can also do that.
All the things that you mention should be straightforward to explain and go through.
These are possible to do as Moin mentioned:
Moin mentioned all the settings here, but I can also help you go through those:
And for this next part, I can explain the staff role.
The staff role is mainly to indicate who is an admin/moderator on the site. Admins can change site settings & themes, and moderators on Discourse can handle suspensions, spam and so on. They are moderators for the whole site.
When people are looking for moderators to moderate the content on the site (close discussions, introduce slowmode), usually Trust Level 4 (Leader) is suited best for this.
There’s nothing stopping you from doing this