TL3 But Not TL3 Oddity

I hope this is in the right place, if not please feel free to move.

We have an odd situation and I am not sure where to begin with looking into it.

  • User X is reported in the system as being TL3
  • However, they have not met the minimum requirements and should still be TL2
  • Admin logs, check trust level change, show no sign whatsoever that they were manually promoted
  • I manually demoted them to TL2, which is recorded in the action logs

Question: how did they become TL3 if they had not met the minimum requirements and if they had, apparently, not been manually promoted?

Where do we start investigating?

Are you sure they did not meet the requirements before? When you are promoted to TL3, there is a period before the user is downgraded.

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On our Discourse under Admin view it shows TL requirements next to the level and they had definitely not met all of them.

In fact, they were well short for some of them like posts read etc.

Perhaps this helps?

Despite this, they were marked as TL3.

We had another user recently who was only promoted by the system once all checks were green and not before.

That’s a snapshot of the last 100 days and whether they currently qualify for TL3. However, with the grace period as a factor it could be that they qualified for TL3 before that time window and have not yet been auto-demoted (now they no longer qualify). Does that make sense?

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Do you have any groups that automatically grant a trust level when the user is added to it?

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I am trying to get my head around it but find myself struggling.

Are you suggesting that the 100 day snapshot might not be accurate, meaning updated correctly?

The numbers seems to suggest a large enough discrepancy that I am not sure how a grace period would fit in here?

I believe so but this user is definitely not part of one of those groups.

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No, just that it’s a rolling 100 day window. If you could rewind a couple of weeks and look at that 100 day window it may have shown that they had read more posts (or there were less posts to read and therefore a smaller percentage threshold to get a green tick for that requirement). And similar for the other ones they’re not currently meeting.

Eg. Let’s say 100 days = May, June, and July. On May 1st, 2nd and 3rd I was really active and read loads and gave out oodles of Likes, etc. Over the course of the period I then meet the other requirements too and achieve TL3.

But then I taper off in July and don’t really read anything or give any Likes, etc.

When you look at my TL3 Requirement stats on Aug 3rd my super active period at the start of May is no longer part of the 100 day rolling window and those posts read/likes given will no longer count towards my TL3 tally. I’d have a lot of red marks and would look like I should no longer be TL3. However, if I’d only been promoted less than two weeks ago I could still keep my TL3 under the grace period (under the premise that I may well regain it again soon after if my activity picks up again).

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This definitely makes a lot of sense and I appreciate that you took the time to lay it out in this clear manner.

Back to User X though; the thing that concerns me is that I know they have not been active enough to have hit TL3 as per your example.

It is also the only time I have seen this happen. Most other promotions to TL levels appear to happen organically, as I suppose they are meant to.

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If you and @Moin are saying there is nothing untoward happening then I suppose I will just need to put it down to a quirk on our site perhaps?

Appreciate the input and insights.

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It’s hard to say for absolute sure as I’m not familiar with all the details, but it is possible to see a TL3 Requirements page with red on it yet the user is still currently TL3 (based solely on the automatic behaviour with no group or manual TL adjustments).

Glancing over their activity stats in the user directory may show more activity than you were expecting, or possibly a deeper dive with a data explorer query.

Double-checking their groups may show a cheeky one with an accidental TL3 bump.

If they were an invited user you could check the Default invitee trust level and its history to see if that was ever erroneously changed to TL3.

You could also check to see if any of the TL3 requirement settings were ever changed to loosen them up before being changed back again.

Some of this will be more kicking the tyres, but could be worth checking just in case. :crossed_fingers:

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