I wasn’t sure where to put this so I thought I’d start a new topic! There’s a bunch of great, transparent posts about site rules and expectations, but none quite seemed to fit this question - have there been any changes to the Trust level requirements here?
I recently realized I’ve been missing the camaraderie of the BBS so much of late that I’ve been hanging out here quite a bit. So much so that I (and I bet a bunch of other folk!) should be on the cusp of regularity by now
Since I haven’t seemed to have reached that milestone yet (and given that I have some understanding of the defaults) I figured I’d ask if the requirements have been changed, and if so, figured this would be a great place to add to the overall mod info available.
So what’s someone gotta do to get “into the club” ‘round these parts?
I feel like it was similar to the other place, but I believe you get bumped up after 30 days of consistent activity? (I just remember that it was 30 days for me.)
I’ve been wondering if it’s a percentage thing. Because even though I feel like I’m spending as much time reading here as I did on the bbs, and posting and Liking and getting Likes as much…I cannot keep up with everything here and so I’ve more or less settled into only keeping up with, oh, maybe 12 to 15 topics. Which leaves a ton of topics that I never even look at. So maybe I’m not participating in a high enough percent of the total activity here?
I’ve always hated that this stuff is so opaque in Discourse - The information is tracked in a nice little screen that nods & admins can see, so why hide it from people?
I suppose it’s to keep people from gaming the system.
Either way, I’m just happy this place continues to thrive, regardless!
I got bumped up briefly after the BBS exodus, then dropped back down. Seems like when there were fewer users here, it was easier to achieve higher trust levels.
so, wait, there’s a lounge here, too?
I mostly just follow specific threads. so either I don’t have the trust level, or I have it and don’t know about it. I guess it would’ve told me? anyway, I think I’ve been coming here every day since day 2, but I don’t always post if there’s nothing going on in the ~15 threads I’m in
There’s no Regular Lounge (as in the older separate area thingy) level that I’m aware of. I don’t think we ever felt like we needed one, since the whole place is kinda like a Regular’s Lounge already, ya know? I think there may be a level-locked topic or two but they don’t get used much at all.
I used to be able to keep up with pretty much all the threads but since TOS closed it got too busy for me to manage it. Maybe I’ll catch up someday…
I know there’s a thread or two marked Member-and-up access only, because they were about stuff that we didn’t want random webcrawlers seeing. Other than that, the only thing I know of that trust levels affect here are the number of Likes and such that we get.
I’ve dropped in and out of Regular status since I got here, and it hasn’t affected my experience here that much.
It looks like the only setting that isn’t default is “tl3 requires posts read all time” which is 5000 instead of 500. It looks like that setting was changed in August of 2019 by @tinoesroho, but I can’t recall why. I can see he changed a bunch of settings around TL2 at approximately the same time, though I think that was in the interest of making TL2 easier to achieve. Chances are pretty good that if you’re curious why you haven’t reached TL3 yet, you probably haven’t read enough posts. If this requirement seems too onerous to most, I’m certainly willing to consider a different value.
There is both a #the-clubhouse category for TL2 and above, and a #lounge for TL3 and above.
The clubhouse was created as a lounge-like category with lower requirements. You’ve probably already seen or participated in one of the topics under that category. The Lounge is notably more difficult to get to, but the most recent update in any of the topics in that category was in April of 2024, so this:
I don’t remember why it was set to 5000, I remember there were concerns
I can barely remember what I was doing yesterday and 2019 is many yesterdays ago (ah, the wonders of shiftwork), but I vaguely remember there was concern at the time re: ensuring newer members integrating with board culture. In retrospect, 5000 was probably way too high a bar; the sport of counting to ten thousand in images didn’t quite catch on here.
By coincidence, this morning I earned my “regular” badge.
I’d been away for a couple of weeks, so think I was probably dropped down to L2.
I have no feelings one way or another about the number.
It didn’t seem to take that long to reach L3, what with there being so much to read and such activity here these days.
I think there may be a level-locked topic or two but they don’t get used much at all.
