Trust Levels Issue + Full Tutorial

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New member here, running into a few issues. Going to just run through them as they came up for me.

The full tutorial with discobot is impossible to complete.
One of the steps involves flagging discobot’s post as inappropriate. However, this option doesn’t exist at that user level:

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You can skip it via the skip option, but the prompt probably shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Trust level issues:

From what I’m seeing on the forums, the new user trust level changes are about a month old. I’m not sure if anyone else has run into issues, but I personally hit a bunch of issues on my first day. Some are arguable about how much of an issue they are (and might be things that are worth keeping). Others are… less so, or need fixes.

Like Limit.
It’s mentioned multiple times in the sticky, but I have no idea how high this like limit is.

Onboarding PM is out of date.
Trust levels aren’t really addressed in the welcoming PM with discobot. The only mention of it is this line: “To keep our forum friendly and clean, we temporarily limit what new users can do. You’ll gain new abilities (and badges 1) as you continue to post and participate in conversations.” but it doesn’t direct you to more information about this, even though this is some pretty important stuff.

Several of the notices you get beside the text box don’t make sense for low user levels.
For example, suggesting that the user DM another user to continue a conversation doesn’t make much sense when they’re not allowed to DM anyone.

It’s not clear how to increase your trust level.
Going through the badge page, I found the user trust level sticky in the meta forum. However, there’s a long list of things to do, and it’s not clear if you have to do all of them, or just some. Trust level 1 is limited to an ‘or’, but trust level 2 seems to be an ‘and’, but it’s not really labelled.

Reply lockout
The biggest issue I had (and may still have - I don’t know!) was that, as a basic member, I’m limited in the number of replies I can make in a 24 hour period (around ten posts). This isn’t mentioned anywhere on the ‘User Trust Levels’ sticky, nor is it mentioned anywhere else I can locate. It also applies to PMs, meaning that after a brief back and forth with a choice game author, I abruptly found myself locked out. I even got a reminder from discobot that I hadn’t replied to the tutorial, which was particularly bad because I couldn’t actually reply to discobot, since I was locked out.

It seems like particularly bad design to limit users for the first ten days to only 10 replies a day without even letting them know. The fact that you only find it out after having written an entire post makes it significantly worse, and I had to sit on a long feedback post for a WIP that I’d written up but couldn’t actually post due to the lockout.

Hopefully none of that comes off too critical - I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen, and I’ve enjoyed talking to the people I’ve gotten a chance to. There were a few small errors, but getting locked out for eight hours on my first day for making less than ten posts was pretty frustrating, especially considering it locked me out of replying to received PMs.

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Hey there, sorry you’re having a bad time after just joining.

This topic might help clear a lot of things up, as it spells out exactly what you need to do in order to increase to the next trust level.

Also, as far as I know, the welcome bot is not something that CoG has the ability to change, as I’m fairly certain that’s something that comes with using Discourse.

Regarding the like limit, I have reached the like limit so many times, as have many others. I don’t think it’s anything that the staff can change either, and it’s just one of those quirks that you have to bear.

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There is no “list” of things you have to do do to get your trust level up you just need to be an active forum member, I levelled up to a member relatively fast ( a week active maybe?) then I quickly got to a regular about a month or two after.

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Also, regarding discobot’s impossible flag tutorial, I believe that is a glitch or some sort of bug, because as a basic member you should have the ability to flag posts.

I suppose you could contact Discourse, but really, all finishing the tutorial does is give you a nifty badge, nothing huge.

That is just false:

You might want to check out the topic I linked above.

Also, @Romiress before I forget, here’s a list of formatting commands that the forum accepts.

Sometimes it’s nice to have small text. Sometimes.

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Unless I’m mistaken, the sticky doesn’t actually clarify what needs to be done. Specifically, level 1 says you can get trust level 1 by doing X, Y, or Z, but level 2 simply lists out a bunch of things with neither an or not an and, making it unclear. I assume it’s an and, simply by process of elimination, but it should probably say ‘all of the following’ or something along those lines.

I actually haven’t run into the like limit, and have no issue with the idea of a like limit. However, a general idea of what the like limit is would be helpful. Is it dozens? Hundreds? Saying the limit is x5 doesn’t help much when it’s not clear what it is to start.

The issue I ran into was a reply limit, as I was unable to reply on the forums (or in DMs) at all. Since I have no idea if this is still a thing or is only a day-one thing,

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Oops sorry I didn’t know that existed I didn’t know that :pensive: I wish I knew that earlier.

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I’m sorry but I believe that that’s just an argument of semantics at this point.

Unless there is an ‘or’, you must complete everything listed in order to advance to the next trust level, and also give up to two or three days for the system to catch up and advance you.

The ‘or’ listed in Trust Level 1 simply means that you can bypass all the previous bulleted points if you are invited, that’s it. If you are not invited, then all the bulleted points apply.
Level 1 is also the only one to have this, so every other trust level must meet every requirement.

I hope that clarifies things.

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It is an “and,” yes.

Is the reply limit a new thing? :confused: I’m not seeing it mentioned on the linked thread, and I didn’t remember it being a thing. Occasionally Discourse does change things without alerting users :sweat:

One thing with the like limit, at least at higher levels, there is a notification saying “you have few likes remaining” a bit before you actually run out. I’m not sure what the cutoff is for that, either, but the advance warning is nice.

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Yeah, I don’t see anything about reply limits, only if it involves pictures or links (in an attempt to reduce spambots).

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I’ve turned up this thread, which implies a recent-ish change…

Basically, they had already had limits on posts during a user’s first day, and on June 14th was thinking of extending this to Trust Level 0 in general, which, on July 2nd, they did.

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Oh wow, yeah, that is recent.

@RETowers Are these new limitations something that should go into the trust levels topic?

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Am aware, and have issued a bug report on one thing already myself. (On the flag bit, if someone flags Discobot with the “Something Else” type of flag, it breaks the system, generates an actual flag that I have to resolve, along with bugging me with some spam. Discourse’s response to me telling them that this happens was to tell me this happens, and it only works if someone uses any other kind of flag. [No there’s no typo in that sentence.])

That said, changed the bot’s text to append a couple of notes so that people will at least be aware of what’s going on.

We like our discussions friendly, and we need your help to keep things civilized. If you see a problem, please flag to privately let the author, or our helpful staff, know about it.

:imp: I wrote something nasty here

I guess you know what to do. Go ahead and flag this post as Inappropriate!

(Note that any flag type except “Something Else” will work, but flagging this as “Something Else” will mean I won’t be able to see that you’ve flagged it!)

(Also note that if you haven’t reached the appropriate Trust Level, you won’t be able to flag this. If that’s the case I recommend you spend a little more time more time browsing the forum before returning to complete the tutorial. I’m sorry I can’t tell your trust level, I’m only a simple bot.)

And the warning:

Oh no, my nasty post hasn’t been flagged yet. :worried: Can you flag it as inappropriate using the flag ? Don’t forget to use the show more button to reveal more actions for each post.

(Note that if you’re not yet at least Trust Level 1 you won’t be able to see the flag button. If that’s the case I recommend you go and browse the forums a little more before returning to complete the tutorial.)

Don’t want to change that in case I or Discourse change the limit. (Also, I don’t consider the exact number very important. When you run out, you run out. It doesn’t really impact use of the forums. :woman_shrugging:) That said the standard is 50 IIRC.

It’s an intro. I think linking the Trust Levels right in the opening is information overload.

There’s actually supposed to be a link to DM there. I wonder what happens if you try to use it? Does it let you bypass the requirements? Probably not. I can put another warning.

Consider replying to more people

You’ve already replied %{count} times to @%{reply_username} in this particular topic.

Have you considered replying to other people in the discussion, too? A great discussion involves many voices and perspectives.

If you’d like to continue your conversation with this particular user at length, consider sending them a direct message.

Note that if your Trust Level isn’t high enough, you won’t be able to DM them. If they are a long term member of the community, they’ll be able to DM you though.

Also, I raised the threshold for this back up to 2 sequential replies.

The the or is the only or. Everything else is an and.

Ah, I see where the confusion is now. The or is the first one listed (even though it was a last minute change, so it didn’t really process as such when I wrote it). I’ve changed it, it now reads:

I think that everything else being an and should be understandable without further clarification now.

Okay, to the lockout, it’s it’s only the first 24 hours, and separate from trust levels. (The tooltip in the admin panel says The maximum number of replies a user is allowed to create in the 24 hour period after creating their first post). IDK if you get a warning or what the warning is. I’m inclined to up it (which it say I’ve upped the limit to 25 in the first day). It opens the window a bit more for griefing, but I’ve also changed our forums so that there’s a lot more tools and responses to griefing in other ways, so I don’t really consider that too big a problem.

Lets see, the New user limits are fast enough that I don’t consider them important enough to mention (again, information overload), especially because a user that isn’t trying to grief, or that isn’t just spamming shouldn’t hit those limits except in unusual circumstances. First day user limits now mentioned in both trust levels 0 and 1. I don’t think any other bits are important to mention?

And no, feedback like this really helps me refine how the forums work. The more people tell me about things, the more I know.

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Thanks for the reply! It was comprehensive, and pretty much addressed all my concerns. Especially having the 24 hour lockout noted (and higher!) will hopefully prevent anyone else from headbutting it like I did.

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No, I don’t think anything else in that list reallh concerns members in any way. There’s the suspension information but I don’t see why anyone needs to be privy to that, if they follow the rules there’s no reason for them to ever experience that.

But thank you for addressing this. You’re right in that some of this may be information overload to new users, but it is handy to at least understand what’s going on if a new user is locked out again for a reason that wasn’t listed before.

Thank you again for taking the time to deal with this. :blush:

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I think they may have changed it so that Trust Level 0 is limited in topics and posts even outside the initial day, but I’m having a hard time understanding what they actually changed :dizzy_face: I’m not sure if this suggestion was implemented or just discussed, and I am having a headache of a time trying to figure out what’s actually supposed to be the case for Trust Level 0 right now :confounded:

I’m going off of this post:

Additionally, I was just noticing, from the locked Trust Level thread…

The linked thread on Meta Discourse appears to have become defunct fairly recently. While that does in turn contain a link to a blog post, the thread in question says it will automatically be deleted in five months, so I think it would make sense to replace the old link with the new one.

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Adding on to this, there seems to be a bug in promoting users from basic to member. I’ve checked the criteria from the new user trust level post, and you can view my account to see that I’ve met all of them, but I still haven’t become a member.

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I think it only checks every day or so, so if you’ve only just crossed the threshold, it’s possible it just hasn’t caught up yet. If this has been the case awhile, though, then there probably is something wrong.

This should be something @RETowers can check for you.

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I’ve met all the requirements for two days now, so I don’t think it’s because of time of checking.

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Should be fixed, although it may take a day to kick in, I’ll drop a reminder for me to check then.

Edit: Nvm, I broke the thing I had to check, but you should have it now anyways.

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Just curious while everyone’s taking about level requirements, do you have to have all the criteria on this list to stay on level 3 or just some of them? (I noticed I was back on level 2 the other week.)