# User rank should be a little more forgiving and give more insight
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [19 Julho , 2014 21:12 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759 "2014-07-19T21:12:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Sander78](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Sander78)
#### Post date: [19 Julho , 2014 21:12 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/1 "2014-07-19T21:12:44Z")
I reached trust level 3 and yesterday found out by coincidence that I lost it again.
Discourse won’t tell you what you need to get a higher level (not that I know of), but it also won’t tell you when you lost it. I found out because I tried to edit a topic’s category, but the option was gone.
This is very inconvenient: what if you have a topic going on in the Lounge category? You can’t go back.
It turned out my reading percentage wasn’t high enough anymore. But what about vacations, etc? You go away for a while only to find out you lost access to certain things and you have no idea why (this time @codinghorror told me what the reason was).
Edit:
And come on, I’m not reading enough? 😄
---
### Author:  [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)
#### Post date: [19 Julho , 2014 21:51 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/2 "2014-07-19T21:51:36Z")
There was discussion about changing the “requirement checks” from daily to bi-weekly somewhere here.
(sorry, couldn’t find it with Search)
Maybe this change hasn’t been implemented yet?
---
### Author:  [@nahtnam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/nahtnam)
#### Post date: [19 Julho , 2014 23:24 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/3 "2014-07-19T23:24:59Z")
I have never seen the page you took a screenshot off. Where is it?
---
### Author:  [@cpradio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cpradio)
#### Post date: [20 Julho , 2014 00:45 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/4 "2014-07-20T00:45:13Z")
FYI
[https://meta.discourse.org/t/clarifying-the-flag-requirement-for-trust-level-3/17347/8?u=cpradio](https://meta.discourse.org/t/clarifying-the-flag-requirement-for-trust-level-3/17347/8)
---
### Author:  [@elberet](https://meta.discourse.org/u/elberet)
#### Post date: [20 Julho , 2014 01:08 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/5 "2014-07-20T01:08:39Z")
He mentioned codinghorror told him why he was demoted, so it’s most likely a screenshot from the admin interface. 😉
---
### Author:  [@nahtnam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/nahtnam)
#### Post date: [20 Julho , 2014 01:19 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/6 "2014-07-20T01:19:41Z")
Oh ok. That makes sense. I spent like 15 minutes trying to figure out where that panel was located :D.
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [20 Julho , 2014 02:45 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/7 "2014-07-20T02:45:49Z")
I am not very sympathetic here because this is the second time I told you that you are on the very edge. You need 25% of all posts (one out of every four posts) in the last 100 days to be read. That is how it works.
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [20 Julho , 2014 03:14 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/8 "2014-07-20T03:14:13Z")
I think long term we want to make this kind of information visible to end users in some way, its hard to grind to the next level if you have zero progress indicators.
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [20 Julho , 2014 03:19 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/9 "2014-07-20T03:19:54Z")
I conceptually disagree that anyone should _ever_ be “grinding” to anything. That is deeply wrong.
On the other hand I don’t want people to be frustrated if they can’t maintain. In this particular case there were two prior communications, one of which said “hey you are really on the edge there”.
(edit: I wonder, should we automate “you are on the edge” emails to TL3 users at risk of losing it? That might feel kind of naggy, but then they could not say we didn’t warn them, and we avoid general grindy nonsense.)
---
### Author:  [@Sander78](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Sander78)
#### Post date: [20 Julho , 2014 05:21 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/10 "2014-07-20T05:21:47Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> I am not very sympathetic here because this is the second time I told you that you are on the very edge.
I think you’re missing the point here. I don’t mind having whatever rank. But this is the Discourse forum where we talk about the development of Discourse… So I’m just sharing my ideas on usability, etc. And I want to understand why the things work the way they do.
This is not about me grinding for ranks here on Discourse and being all emotional about it. Don’t judge too soon.
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> edit: I wonder, should we automate “you are on the edge” emails to TL3 users at risk of losing it?
That’s (part of) what I tried to explain…
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [20 Julho , 2014 05:23 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/11 "2014-07-20T05:23:29Z")
I’m just frustrated because I _told_ you that you were on the edge a while ago, when you asked the first time why you didn’t have TL3. Then you turn around, do just enough to get it, and ask again, and act all surprised.
Hey, guess what, you are still on the edge. Just like I told you last time.
This is seriously a big surprise to you? Live by the edge, die by the edge. Get off the edge. 😉
(I’m not ruling out other notifications but this specific example is odd for the reasons I’ve explained a few times now.)
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [20 Julho , 2014 06:53 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/12 "2014-07-20T06:53:32Z")
My issue is that we set up a soccer game where the rules are very hard to find, the score board is only visible to mods and the trophy can be yanked away at the drop of a hat
---
### Author:  [@Sander78](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Sander78)
#### Post date: [20 Julho , 2014 07:00 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/13 "2014-07-20T07:00:05Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> This is seriously a big surprise to you?
Of course it is. I simply had no idea you could lose a trust level automatically. And it wasn’t clear from your PM’s either. So that’s why I asked about it again. Maybe it was a bug, how could I know. And because we already spoke about it in PM I went there instead of opening a new topic.
Well, maybe I should have read that other topic about trustlevel being reevaluated every x period. Would have kept me on TL3 as well. 😉
> [@sam](#):
>
> My issue is that we set up a soccer game where the rules are very hard to find, the score board is only visible to mods and the trophy can be yanked away at the drop of a hat
I completely agree.
---
### Author:  [@mcwumbly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcwumbly)
#### Post date: [20 Julho , 2014 14:37 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/14 "2014-07-20T14:37:35Z")
As far as showing progress, there have been very few complaints or inquiries about how to reach TL2 that I’m aware of. So I don’t think its too important to display the score board explicitly, but perhaps there could be some additional badges for some of the other TL3 requirements.
> [@sam](#):
>
> the trophy can be yanked away at the drop of a hat
I think this is still the main issue here:
No one has ever complained about dropping from TL2 to TL1 or from TL1 to TL0, because its not possible, but
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> You can lose trust level 3 status.
Trust level 3 is the only one that has conditionals like these, which is were this volatility stems from:
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> - must have visited at least 50% of days
> …
> - of topics created in the last 100 days, must have viewed 25%
> - of posts created in the last 100 days, must have read 25%
In addition to the 2-week check implemented, another possible improvement would be to have ‘high-water’ and ‘low-water’ marks for these kinds of requirements.
For instance, these could be changed to:
To _gain_ TL3 status you:
- must have visited at least 60% of days
- of topics created in the last 100 days, must have viewed 30%
- of posts created in the last 100 days, must have read 30%
To _lose_ TL3 status you:
- must have visited less than 40% of days
- of topics created in the last 100 days, must have viewed less than 20%
- of posts created in the last 100 days, must have read les than 20%
---
### Author:  [@probus](https://meta.discourse.org/u/probus)
#### Post date: [20 Julho , 2014 17:15 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/15 "2014-07-20T17:15:05Z")
> [@mcwumbly](#):
>
> No one has ever complained about dropping from TL2 to TL1 or from TL1 to TL0
I don’t think most have even noticed the trust levels exist, so naturally you wouldn’t get any complaints regarding those no matter what we did. I don’t even remember what they do tbh except for TL0.
---
### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [21 Julho , 2014 00:14 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/16 "2014-07-21T00:14:13Z")
> [@Sander78](#):
>
> This is very inconvenient: what if you have a topic going on in the Lounge category? You can’t go back.
I think that’s the key here. Access to a category should never be revoked without warning. I know that @codinghorror warned you in this particular case, but I certainly won’t be manually warning everyone on my forum. It’s not feasible.
It does need to be automated.
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [21 Julho , 2014 00:23 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/17 "2014-07-21T00:23:31Z")
I totally get this argument, stripping a few rights is one thing, but cutting you out of conversations you were on is a much more severe action.
I think as a minimum we should create a new group “trust-level-3-alumni” or something then people who want to set it up so conversation access remains, can (by deleting lounge and creating a new one that give access to both trust level 3 and alumni)
---
### Author:  [@Sander78](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Sander78)
#### Post date: [21 Julho , 2014 08:02 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/18 "2014-07-21T08:02:44Z")
Having trust-level-3-alumni makes things quite complicated I’m afraid. I rather like the high and low water idea of @mcwumbly.
---
### Author:  [@cpradio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cpradio)
#### Post date: [21 Julho , 2014 10:32 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/19 "2014-07-21T10:32:11Z")
Or at the very least, sending an automated PM when they are getting close to losing their ability. I’m just not a fan of telling people: “Delete the lounge, and create a new one with these groups”
If you are going that route, make the default include the new group. Build it internally.
---
### Author:  [@Air\_Cooled\_Nut](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Air_Cooled_Nut)
#### Post date: [21 Julho , 2014 18:38 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759/21 "2014-07-21T18:38:54Z")
Hey, where is this Value - Requirement table? I’m an admin on our site and I can’t find this. Version 0.9.9.13.
[Próxima página](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-rank-should-be-a-little-more-forgiving-and-give-more-insight/17759.md?page=2)