Understanding Discourse Trust Levels

I am in TL4, but I don’t understand TL5. It’s mentioned here that there are 5 trust levels. Just confused.

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It starts from TL0, so the five are:

TL0 TL1 TL2 TL3 TL4
New User Basic Member Regular Leader
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Oh. :sweat_smile: I did’t notice that.

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Actually… there is six :wink: Staged one is a trust level too.

Yeah, I know. There is a thing called too precise :rofl:

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I don’t think Staged Users count as Trust Levels? I think that’s classed more as ‘User Status’:

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And yet is it, naming is not relevant. It is starting point and doing stuff increases users’s rights. It could be named as TL-0 too, but that would look strange :wink:

It looks like TL and it acts like TL, ergo it is TL — quod erat demonstrandum :rofl:

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I think the key difference is that Staged Users are not called, referred to, or coded as a Trust Level. :slight_smile:

Though they do appear on the general ‘permissions continuum’, so I appreciate the similarities.

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Staged users also never log in so are not really users at all. I often wish they had been called “email users” or some such, because really they are only used so discourse can send and receive email with a person via their email address. In many circumstances (as here on meta where we have group inboxes) most staged users will never log in.

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Do Trust Levels play a role in the rules applied to members, and if so do admins have a way to relax those rules for specific trust levels? For example, I am ‘trusted’ as a moderator and can do any of the things suggested in Level 4, but I also hit user rules that seem to apply to everyone else. I’m regularly reporting spam that leaks through Akismet, but I hit the ‘cannot post more than 4/5 posts in a row’ rule, which is silly. I can understand why such a rule exists, but why should it apply over all trust levels? Can rules be more granularly controlled by admins? Cheers

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Hello and welcome @fuzzmunky :slightly_smiling_face:

Trust Levels do indeed have an effect on the different features, functions, and abilities of users. You can get a general overview in Trust Level Permissions Table (inc Moderator Roles)

As a moderator you should also be immune to rate limits (Understanding user statuses, roles, and permissions). Could you describe when you hit the consecutive posts limit in a little more detail? How are you flagging these spam posts?

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Blockquote

  • Must have received 20 likes, and given 30 likes.*

  • These likes must be across a minimum number of different users (1/5 the number), across a minimum number of different days (1/4 the number). Likes cannot be from PMs.

Blockquote

Can somebody explain to me how this works?

Say a person has 100 likes over the last 100 days, does that mean they must come from 20 different users (1/5) and over 25 different days (1/4)?

This would imply that the more likes somebody has, the more they must come over different days. What happens if somebody has a post on one day that garners over 100 likes, and they end up with 200 likes?

Would they then need to have their likes between 40 different users (1/5) and over 50 different days (1/4) in order to achieve Trust Level 3?

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Is there any way to find out whether a particular discourse has modified the requirements for trust levels?

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No unless ad admin/moderator is nice enough to tell that.

I don’t count likes on my forum because it is rewarding only quantity, not quality — paradox of million flies. Somewhere else the situation can and will be different.

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Usually other sites change their requirements to prevent people ‘farming’ trust levels. For example, if you need x amount of replies to gain TL3 if one knows the requirements they could post meaningless things just to gain the trust level. In terms of meaningful discussion I think its a good idea to change the settings on your site in general.

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What categories can TL1, TL2, and TL3 post in?

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That depends on the settings of the categories. For each category an admin can decide which group can see, reply and write in it. So it can depend on the trust level group, but also on other groups

Understanding groups and category permissions (security settings)

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Note that TL3 lounges are default on most forums. (These are categories that trust level 3 regulars can see and post in)

Example: Lounge

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Actually, the Lounge is no longer included in new installs by default. Though admins are free to create their own if they wish. :slight_smile:

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Retracted because I'm an idiot and it was already answered

I know I’m pinging in late on this. I was just explaining Trust Levels on our forum and linked the blog post. I just noticed this time it says “there are five trust levels” but there are only four defined - the top one being “Leader” which is basically a user manually promoted to Mod.

Was there a fifth level at some point, or are they considering site Admins as “level 5”?

EDIT: Durrr…Level 0 forgot that one… 0-4 = 5. Teach me to reply before scrolling all the way down!

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level 0 is a trust level. thus 5 in total.

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