We came across a collection of rather active users who for some reason did not get promoted to TL2. Under closer scrutiny, we realised that they did not meet the criteria when restricted to public areas of the forum.
E.g. they casted 20 likes, sent 5 messages and got likes back, but none of them in the public area of the forum.
This is unexpected at the very least, but most likely just a plain bug. If not, it should be documented much more clearly, including at the respective admin panel.
Also I am quite positive that TL3 criteria are including private categories…
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.