Understanding Discourse Trust Levels

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Understanding Discourse Trust Levels

Jeff Atwood June 25, 2018

The user trust system is a fundamental cornerstone of Discourse. Trust levels are a way of…

  • Sandboxing new users in your community so that they cannot accidentally hurt themselves, or other users while they are learning what to do.
  • Granting experienced users more rights over time, so that they can help everyone maintain and moderate the community they generously contribute so much of their time to.

As documented in Community Building on the Web, there is a natural progression for participants in any community.
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This seemed like a great starting point for our user trust system. Thus, Discourse offers five user trust levels. Your current trust level is visible on your user page, and a summary of all trust levels within your community is presented on your dashboard.

Trust Level 0 — New

By default, all new users start out at trust level 0, meaning trust has yet to be earned. These are visitors who just created an account, and are still learning the community norms and the way your community works. New users’ abilities are restricted for safety – both theirs and yours.

(We also want to hide any “advanced” functionality from new users to make the UI less confusing for them as they gain more experience.)

Users at trust level 0 cannot …

  • Send personal messages to other users
  • “Reply as new topic” via Link button (UI removed)
  • Flag posts
  • Post more than 1 image
  • Post any attachments
  • Post more than 2 hyperlinks in a post
  • Have actual links in the ‘about me’ field of their profile (will be silently and temporarily converted to plain text)
  • Mention more than 2 users in a post
  • Post more than 3 topics
  • Post more than 10 replies
  • Edit their own posts after more than 24 hours

Admins can change these limitations by searching for newuser and first_day in site settings.

Trust Level 1 — Basic

At Discourse, we believe reading is the most fundamental and healthy action in any community. If a new user is willing to spend a little time reading, they will quickly be promoted to the first trust level.

Get to trust level 1 by…

  • Entering at least 5 topics
  • Reading at least 30 posts
  • Spend a total of 10 minutes reading posts

Users at trust level 1 can…

  • Use all core Discourse functions; all new user restrictions are removed
  • Send PMs
  • Upload images and attachments if enabled
  • Edit wiki posts
  • Flag posts
  • Mute other users

Admins can change these thresholds by searching for TL1 in site settings.

Trust Level 2 — Member

Members keep coming back to your community over a series of weeks; they have not only read, but actively participated long and consistently enough to be trusted with full citizenship.

Get to trust level 2 by…

  • Visiting at least 15 days, not sequentially
  • Casting at least 1 like
  • Receiving at least 1 like
  • Replying to at least 3 different topics
  • Entering at least 20 topics
  • Reading at least 100 posts
  • Spend a total of 60 minutes reading posts

Users at trust level 2 can…

  • Use the “Invite others to this topic” button for one-click onboarding of new users to participate in topics
  • Invite outside users to PMs making a group PM
  • Daily like limit increased by 1.5×
  • Ignore other users
  • Edit their own posts for up to 30 days after posting

Admins can change these thresholds by searching for TL2 in site settings.

Trust Level 3 — Regular

Regulars are the backbone of your community, the most active readers and reliable contributors over a period of months, even years. Because they’re always around, they can be further trusted to help tidy up and organize the community.

To get to trust level 3, in the last 100 days…

  • Must have visited at least 50% of days
  • Must have replied to at least 10 different non-PM topics
  • Of topics created in the last 100 days, must have viewed 25% (capped at 500)
  • Of posts created in the last 100 days, must have read 25% (capped at 20k)
  • Must have received 20 likes, and given 30 likes.*
  • Must not have received more than 5 spam or offensive flags (with unique posts and unique users for each, confirmed by a moderator)
  • Must not have been suspended or silenced in the last 6 months

*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.

All of the above criteria must be true to achieve trust level 3. Furthermore, unlike other trust levels, you can lose trust level 3 status. If you dip below these requirements in the last 100 days, you will be demoted back to Member. However, in order to avoid constant promotion/demotion situations, there is a 2-week grace period immediately after gaining Trust Level 3 during which you will not be demoted.

Users at trust level 3 can…

  • Recategorize and rename topics
  • Access a secure category only visible to users at trust level 3 and higher
  • Have all their links followed (we remove automatic nofollow)
  • TL3 spam flags cast on TL0 user posts immediately hide the post
  • TL3 flags cast on TL0 user posts in sufficient diversity will auto-silence the user and hide all their posts
  • Make their own posts wiki (that is, editable by any TL1+ users)
  • Daily like limit increased by 2×

Admins can change these thresholds by searching for TL3 in site settings.

Trust Level 4 — Leader

(Only Discobot has this Trust Level here at Mudspike. Everyone else who meets the criteria of Leader is an Admin.)

Leaders are regulars who have been around forever and seen everything. They set a positive example for the community through their actions and their posts. If you need advice, these are the folks you turn to first, and they’ve earned the highest level of community trust, such that they are almost moderators within the community already.

Get to trust level 4 by…

  • Manual promotion by staff only
  • (Possibly via a to-be-developed election system in the future)

Users at trust level 4 can…

  • Edit all posts
  • Pin/unpin topic
  • Close topics
  • Archive topics
  • Make topics unlisted
  • Split and merge topics
  • Reset topic bump date
  • Daily like limit increased by 3×
  • Any TL4 flag cast on any post immediately takes effect and hides the target post

We believe this trust system has been a success so far, as it leads to stronger, more sustainable communities by carefully empowering members, regulars, and leaders to curate and lead their own communities. But like everything else in Discourse, the trust system is evolving over time as we gain more experience with more communities.

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Lol. Thats not gonna work. We all love each other too much. We would all vote for each other and end up with EVERYONE at level 4 :smile:

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Not that beach guy though. No way I’m voting for him.

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to me this particular sentance

you can lose trust level 3 status

isnt about trust to me. its about discobot being supreme ruler here and we should try to please him by following the rules so we could be granted with some levels.

I could be introverted, as I am as helicopter pilot :slight_smile: , but I am forced by the rules to be someone else by posting more, by giving likes etc.

I thought about MS as about happy family. and I felt thiis way in the past.

I dont know if I feel the same anymore. and it didnt started just now after reading this rules. it started in the past already and these rule just made me to get out from my stone to express my observations.

I am happy to accept these things btw. happy to be follow my own personal expression of activity rather than follow some rules.

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It’s not about pleasing anybody. It’s simply a system that allows users who frequent the site often and use it regularly, to become a Regular user. :slight_smile:
This means they get access to the lounge, where we can post stuff that we don’t want outside visitors and lurkers to see. They are also allowed more freedom in their posting, as a spammer isn’t going to put in the effort to reach that level. The system isn’t perfect, but the categorization of members helps moderating this forum by letting discobot know who’s a newbie and who can be allowed more, before shutting the spamtrap, for instance.

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When I set it up I liked the idea of a non-subjective automatic algorithm deciding who saw Lounge rather than people picking favorites. You’re a Regular if you do a lot here recently, rather than you used to and ‘know a guy’.

I can’t see Lounge anymore and I created it.

Having said that, that was the initial thinking years ago and might not be good now. I think @Troll and the current Regulars could (and probably should) tweak all that and do whatever works, e.g. just manually assign for people they know.

Just my 2 cents, because of the history of how it was set up.

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Whats wrong? We have nearly the same userbase barring some losses both to the forum and the real world.
Maybe things on the outside are affecting things on the inside a bit but there is still no group of people I like more than the Mudspike crew.

I don’t have enough time to dedicate to DCS anymore and prefer my stuff in an ace combat bite size chunky way due to life changing but i still spent a horrific amount of time on here, i enjoy it very much still

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You built this place. I’m just the janitor.

California Sign GIF by LA Fashion Festival
But I guess I see your point…
We could lock the level for those who have reached it.

Would that work for everybody?

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I do kinda like that idea! :slightly_smiling_face:

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How about on a case by case basis?

e.g. Hey guys I’m going to be offline/away for the next couple of months, can you please lock my ‘regular’ status until I get back… that way I don’t have to jump through the hoops to re-earn it.

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This.

It is the first browser tab I open every morning - coffee & Mudspike is how I start my day :wink:

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sure that, in other words, you are not ‘good enough’ anymore according to allseeing discobot :slight_smile:
it has nothing to do with you being treath to this community imo.

should you now try to please discobot by intentionaly following the rules going out of your way and current mood?
so I agree that some tweaking could go loong way.

that leads me to

dont get me wrong, all perfect :hugs: but recently I was under impression, that people around here behave in little bit strange manner.
after reading the rules its just clicked for me somehow that people sometimes maybe just chasing the rules to keep their level.
but I could be totaly wrong with this :slight_smile:

and maybe its all good at the same time, as people are more active and it is not going to end up here ghost town :wink: just joking

I still like very much our (one and only) MS group. I am not frequenting any other forum btw.

so I like the idea of locking the level.
but make sure Troll, to ask also others opinion, especially people here who are Lounge -rs.

if they are all good with the current state so am I then.

just wanted to play a Blade Runner role here, chasing the androids and stuff (yep, looking at you discobot) :rofl:

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I’m not thinking of elevating everybody to level 3, so no worries. Just those who reached that level and that’s not that many, actually. I have also kicked up a few that were really close.
There is a slight mismatch in the requirements that I can see. For instance, attendance is just 50 out of 100 days. In those 50 days you need to post just 10 replies. From those 10 posts you need to receive 20 likes. Now, these requirements are matched to let regular users into level 3, not keep them out by constantly reaching for it. And from what I can see, the 20/30 likes requirements is what seems to stop some users. Not everybody are comfortable with likes and, I guess, relate this to social media. We have users who never gave a like, but participate in every other way, for instance. So, while designed to match the typical participation of the regular user, some have been left out and that was never the intention.

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Ah gotcha, yeah I do “upViper” pretty much every post I see, but that has nothing to do with trust levels. That’s just me, I am a bit strange IRL too. Overly excited, constantly blabbering, etc.

I don’t upViper because of the rules, but because I do really like basically everything posted here.

As for the trust level rules, I understand that the “Regular” requirement can be a bit much for some people. I have also lost access a few times in the past. Being unable to privately share pictures of your family with your friends group is not nice, just because you didn’t post enough.

However, from a security perspective, I really dislike giving any account anywhere “access forever” without any form of verification that it is still really you.

This point is not about trusting people, it is about limiting damage in case some e-mail gets hacked, and that account used to belong to a Regular at Mudspike 10 years ago.

So I am strongly in favor of an extension system, whereby Lounge access can be extended, or even requested, on an individual basis, for a limited amount of time. Whether it should be up to @Troll or require some votes from current regulars, I don’t really care. I think it is usually quite obvious who is a regular and who isn’t.

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Which is just on par for this forum… :wink:

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So to summarize my (again way too long) post:

  • Keep trust levels based purely on recent activity, tweak requirements to make more accessible
  • Keep “regular” status forever once gained
  • Manually control exceptions to the activity-based rule, by vote or admin decision

0 voters

I am in favor of #3 but OK with #1, but would not feel comfortable with accounts having access indefinitely.

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There has to be a threshold, but if we can’t trust the admins to administer trust, who can we trust? - #3 for me

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As for Aussies… Can we trust all you ex-cons…? :sunglasses:

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Usually no, but I was actually born in New Zealand :wink:

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I didn’t even know there was a “lounge”area … I just go straight to all topics …:grinning: just checked it and I seem to have access, so I must meet the criteria ( poor delusional fools giving me power cue evil laughter) :smiling_imp::smiling_imp::smiling_imp:

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