culture

Understanding Discourse Trust Levels

Jeff Atwood

Jun 25, 2018 • 9 min read

Originally published June 2018 by Jeff Atwood. Updated December 2025.

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This post has remained one of our most-visited resources for good reason: trust levels form the foundation of how Discourse communities scale healthy participation. While the core philosophy stays constant, we've made improvements to how communities can apply these principles. This updated guide covers trust levels, the trust philosophy and recent architectural changes that give community builders more flexibility.

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.

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.

The Big Shift: Group-Based Permissions

Between 2023 and 2025, Discourse made a significant architectural change. While trust levels themselves remain unchanged, many features that previously required specific trust levels now use group-based permissions instead.

The migration affects over 30 settings, transforming restrictions like "anonymous posting min trust level" into "anonymous posting allowed groups." This means admins can now grant specific permissions to custom groups without elevating users' entire trust level.

Why This Matters:

You can give a user access to shared drafts without making them TL4
Custom groups (like "content_team" or "beta_testers") can have specific permissions
Trust level groups are automatically generated, so TL-based access still works
All existing settings were automatically migrated during the transition

How do users learn about the trust system?

Every new user gets a welcome PM mentioning the trust system and linking to this blog post, explaining that new users may be temporarily limited for safety reasons. They are also invited to start an optional interactive training conversation with discobot.

Upon transition to trust level 1, users are sent a congratulatory PM which also links to this blog post and invites the user to fill out their user profile, or start a new topic.

Upon transition to trust level 2, users a sent another congratulatory PM which also links to this blog post, as well as the tips and tricks blog post.

Upon transition to trust level 3, users are sent a longer form PM describing their new abilities and inviting them to the lounge category to meet their fellow TL3 community members. This PM also links here to this blog post.

(It's also worth mentioning that Discourse starts in "bootstrap mode" where the first 50 users who sign up are automatically granted TL1, and daily digests, to promote growth of the community via early adopters.)

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, edit, and flag limits 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, edit, and flag limits increased by 2×

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

Trust Level 4 -- Leader

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, edit, and flag limits increased by 3×
Any TL4 flag cast on any post immediately takes effect and hides the target post
Can send personal messages to an email address

For a complete breakdown of the permissions granted to each trust level, check out our FAQ on Meta.

How Trust Levels Create Healthier Communities

The trust system addresses a fundamental challenge in community management: balancing safety with participation. Traditional approaches either lock everything down (frustrating legitimate users) or open everything up (enabling bad actors). Both create work for moderators.

Discourse's progressive trust system automates the middle ground. New users can't accidentally harm themselves or others while learning norms. Experienced contributors gain abilities to help maintain quality without requiring moderator intervention. Active members develop stake in the community's success.

In a traditional forum, moderators manually review every flagged post. With trust levels, TL3 users can immediately hide obvious TL0 spam. Multiple TL3 flags can auto-silence spammers and hide all their posts. The community polices itself for clear-cut cases while moderators handle nuanced situations.

Without trust levels, either everyone can recategorize topics (chaos) or only moderators can (bottleneck). TL3 users who've proven their judgment can reorganize content appropriately, keeping the community tidy without overwhelming staff.

The system scales. A community with 100 active TL3 users has 100 people helping maintain quality. As the community grows, the pool of trusted helpers grows with it. Moderators focus on edge cases and policy decisions rather than routine maintenance.

See Trust Levels in Action

Explore communities using Discourse to see how trust levels enable healthy participation at scale.

Discourse Discover

Discover your next favourite Discourse community.

Best Practices for Communities

Calibration

Most communities should tune TL3 requirements - default 50% visit rate is often too high
Monitor your trust level distribution dashboard
Consider lowering reading thresholds for smaller/newer communities
Adjust like requirements if your community doesn't naturally give likes

Strategy

TL3 is your leadership pipeline - these are your potential moderators
Use TL4 sparingly - it's pre-moderator status
Consider custom groups for permissions instead of forcing TL promotions
Watch for users gaming the system (like-trading, low-quality replies)

If you're migrating from another platform, learn about migration options that preserve your existing community structure while implementing trust levels.

Communication

Consider making trust level requirements visible to users
Celebrate TL promotions to motivate engagement
Use the Lounge category to recognize and engage TL3 users

Building Your Own Community?

Discourse communities benefit from built-in trust levels that scale healthy participation from day one.

Explore Real Communities

See how thousands of communities use trust levels to scale healthy participation.