# TL2 promotion seemingly only counts public contributions

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/tl2-promotion-seemingly-only-counts-public-contributions/396458>\
**Category:** Product Support\
**Tags:** trust-levels\
**Created:** [February 18, 2026, 10:33pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/tl2-promotion-seemingly-only-counts-public-contributions/396458 "2026-02-18T22:33:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![Moin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/moin/32/554653_2.png) [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)\
**Post date:** [February 18, 2026, 11:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/tl2-promotion-seemingly-only-counts-public-contributions/396458/2 "2026-02-18T23:13:24Z")

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What do you mean by public area? I just tried to reproduce it, and while all posts and the like given and received happened in a category limited to TL0, the user was promoted.

Are you referring to personal messages? I don’t think those are included in `TL2 requires topic reply count` as messages aren’t topics. To me, it makes sense to exclude them; otherwise, they could easily be abused by two new users to get a higher trust level without interacting with the community at all.

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