Discourse "Trust Levels" / limitations and permissions for new/active/old users

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While reading @scztt’s very first post I realized Discourse (the software application behind this forum) is currently enforcing a maximum of 2 active links per post to new users.

I feel like we may get rid of it. AFAIK limitations on links are meant for spambots, but should those appear, we can likely take care of them as soon as they get active.

It’s not a big deal in itself, but I think the default set of “Trust Levels” for Discourse is way too complex for our needs, and there may be other limitations we don’t need.

Suggestion: immediately assign “Regular” status to new members?

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We had the same issue on scsynth.org - IIRC I fixed by upping the newuser max links to 20 or something, but ditching trust level 0 also makes sense for a smaller board like this or scsynth.

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yes i agree with all of this, not super in favor of heirarchical board limitations at all

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I also agree. I mostly stick with smaller communities like this, and I don’t remember ever seeing a community have the problems that trust levels are meant to address until they’d been around for a few years and had at least 500 active users, and even then it usually wasn’t an issue.

And it’s not like we couldn’t revert back if there’s ever a reason to.

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we talked about disabling titles / restrictions etc for this forum when setting it up.

there is quite a lot of menus in the admin panel tho, and it is hard to see from here what the site enforces at lower levels --> so thanks for pointing these things out @pixelflowers

i just changed a few settings that should help -> new users should start at trustlevel==3

updating all existing users to this trust level was a little more involved but is done now too

for the record i ssh’d into the droplet, and ran:

cd /var/discourse
./launcher enter app
discourse backup
rails c 
users=User.where("admin=false and trust_level<3")
users.update_all(trust_level: 3)

always happy to improve this site where we can :slight_smile:

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I’m confused. A new user just said they couldn’t post videos, and I saw they had a “new user” status so I made them “regular user” which seems to be associated with the above mentioned trustlevel=3

Currently, according to https://scanlines.xyz/g/trust_level_3 only 5 users have trustlevel=3 and 3 of them are admins. Maybe previous changes by @cyberboy666 got somehow reset?
Maybe I just need more coffee?? :coffee:

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:thinking: :thinking: - yah that is weird. maybe it resets on discourse update. although that seems quite annoying if it does. well anyway good thing that i wrote down the fix above haha. can try running this again and see what happens

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this is an upload test made by @pixelflowers while “impersonating” @huddyglo account set at “Trust Level 3 / regular”
videowht

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another upload test while “impersonating” @huddyglo account, now set at “Trust Level: 1”
videowht

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anyway good thing that i wrote down the fix above haha

lol yes :clap:

also, if this setting change gets reversed, maybe it’s best to change / up the permissions for lower trust levels like @scztt suggested?
I did some tests and moved huddyglo’s account from level 3 to level 1, this still seems to be enough to grant upload permissions.

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seems like new users are still starting at trust level1 with (unwanted) restrictions. bumping this thread mainly as a reminder to myself to have another go at sorting this out soon :wink:

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updated the default trust level for new users to 3 and backfilled all current (non-admin) users in the db as trustlevel 3 also. so should be good for now. will just keep an eye on the default setting to make sure it doesnt reset again somehow

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