What are Trust Levels?
Trust levels help ensure that our community is a collaborative, safe, and harmonious place to learn and share.
Community member trust levels are a way of…
- Sandboxing new members in our community so that they cannot accidentally (or intentionally!) hurt themselves, the forum, or other members while they are learning what to do.
- Granting experienced members more rights so that they can help maintain and moderate the community they generously contribute so much of their time to curating.
The Trust Levels in this community are
- Trust Level 0 - New
- Trust Level 1 - Rising Star
- Trust Level 2 - Champion
- Trust Level 3 - Super Hero
New
By default, all new members 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 our community works. New members’ abilities are restricted for safety – both theirs and yours.
(We also want to hide any “advanced” functionality from new members to make the UI less confusing for them as they gain more experience.)
Members at trust level 0 can
- Cast up to 2 votes in the community on categories where voting is enabled (Feature Requests & Show & Tell)
Members at trust level 0 cannot …
- Send personal messages to other members
- “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 members in a post
- Post more than 3 topics
- Post more than 10 replies
- Edit their own posts after more than 24 hours
Rising Star
We believe reading is the most fundamental and healthy action in any community. If a new member is willing to spend a little time reading, they will quickly be promoted to the first trust level, Rising Star.
Get to trust level 1 by…
- Entering at least 2 topics
- Reading at least 30 posts
- Spend a total of 10 minutes reading posts
Members at trust level 1 can…
- Use all core Discourse functions; all new member restrictions are removed
- Send PMs
- Upload images and attachments
- Flag posts
- Mute other members
- Cast up to 5 votes in the community on categories where voting is enabled (Feature Requests & Show & Tell)
Champion
Champions keep coming back to the 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
Members at trust level 2 can…
- Use the “Invite others to this topic” button for one-click onboarding of new members to participate in topics
- Invite outside members to PMs making a group PM
- Daily like limit increased by 1.5×
- Ignore other members
- Edit their own posts for up to 30 days after posting
- Cast up to 10 votes in the community on categories where voting is enabled (Feature Requests & Show & Tell)
Super Hero
Super Heros are the backbone of our 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 and keep it safe for others to learn and share.
To get to trust level 3, in the last 100 days…
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Must have visited at least 25% of days
-
Must have replied to at least 10 different non-PM topics
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Of topics created in the last 100 days, must have viewed 15%
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Of posts created in the last 100 days, must have read 15%
-
Must have received 10 likes , and given 10 likes.
-
Must not have received more than 5 spam or offensive flags (with unique posts and unique members for each, confirmed by a moderator)
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Must not have been suspended or silenced
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These likes must be across a minimum number of different members (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 Champion. 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.
Super Powers
Members at trust level 3 can…
- Recategorize and rename topics
- Create their own wikis topics
- Edit wikis topics created by others
- Have all their links followed (we remove automatic nofollow)
- TL3 spam flags cast on TL0 member posts immediately hide the post
- TL3 flags cast on TL0 member posts in sufficient diversity will auto-silence the member and hide all their posts
- Daily like limit increased by 2×
Adapted for the Tiller Money Community from Discourse’s Blog post on Trust Levels