If you’re not familiar with Discourse as a community platform, you’ve likely never heard of User Trust Levels. They are not as scary as they sound – here’s a quick run down.
User trust levels are a way of…
-
Sandboxing brand new members so that they cannot accidentally (or intentionally!) hurt themselves, the forum, or other users while they are learning what to do.
-
Granting experienced members more rights so that they can help maintain and moderate this community which they generously contribute so much of their time to.
By default, all (New) users start out as Trust Level 0.
Members who are brand new and have just created an account are likely still learning our community norms and figuring out what’s ok here.
To keep the learning curve manageable we hide “advanced” functionality from new members to make the UI less confusing.
Thus, new members’ abilities are restricted for safety – both theirs and yours.
Members at trust level 0 cannot…
- Send private messages to other users
- Reply as new topic in the right gutter
- 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
- Mention more than 2 users in a post
If you stick around a short while you make (Basic) or Trust Level 1.
You can get to trust level 1 by…
- entering at least 5 topics
- reading at least 30 posts
- spend a total of 10 minutes reading posts
That means you can…
- use all core Discourse functions
- Upload images and attachments if enabled
- Edit wiki posts
- Flag posts
- have all new user restrictions removed
Stick around a bit longer and you’ll hit (Member) or Trust Level 2.
You get there by:
They can 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
Now you can…
- Invite outside users to PMs making a group PM
- Daily like limit increased by 1.5 ×
But wait, there’s more! Become a Gold Member!
Next up you’ll graduate to (Regular) or Trust Level 3.
That automatically qualifies you as a Gold Member.
This is time and activity based, unlike the previous levels. In the last 100 days…
- must have visited at least 50% of days
- must have replied to at least 10 different topics
- of topics created in the last 100 days, must have viewed 25%
- of posts created in the last 100 days, must have read 25%
- 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
*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 these must be true.
Unlike other trust levels, you can lose trust level 3 status. If you dip below these requirements, whether from flagging or the passage of time, you will be jump back down to Trust Level 2.
Gold Members can:
- recategorize and rename topics
- access a private “Gold Member’s Lounge”
- have all your links followed (we remove automatic nofollow)
- spam flags cast on TL0 user posts immediately reach the action threshold
- make your own posts wiki (that is, editable by any TL1+ users)
- Daily like limit increased by 2 ×