Trust levels: how the community moderates itself (and why that matters)
Jetonomy's 6 trust levels hold new accounts to tight limits and lift them as members build a posting history. How they work, why they cut moderation time, and the design decisions behind them.
The reason most community managers burn out is not “the community is too big to moderate.” It’s “every action requires a human decision, even the obvious ones.” A spam post gets flagged → mod opens flag → reads post → confirms spam → deletes. Repeat 50 times a day.
Jetonomy’s trust level system was designed to take the human out of the obvious-decision path. New accounts start rate-limited and cannot upload media, any member can flag content, and the limits lift automatically as a member builds a posting history. The community polices itself for the predictable cases. You step in for the genuinely judgmental ones.
The 6 trust levels
| Level | Name | How they get there | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Newcomer | Default on signup | Read, post, reply, vote and flag, with new-member rate limits; no media uploads |
| 1 | Member | Earned: post count, days active, replies received | Rate limits lifted; upload media; edit and delete own posts |
| 2 | Regular | Earned: more posts and days active, plus reputation | More standing; no new powers on its own |
| 3 | Trusted | Earned: higher post, activity and reputation thresholds | The highest level a member can earn on their own |
| 4 | Leader | Granted by an admin | A recognised senior member |
| 5 | Moderator | Granted by an admin | The top level, reserved for the people you name |
Higher levels lift the new-member rate limits and unlock media uploads. Space creation and moderation powers come from roles, not trust: editing other people’s posts, closing and pinning topics all need a role that carries the capability, whatever a member’s trust level.
Levels 1 to 3 are earned from post count, days active, replies received and reputation (accepted answers add reputation). Levels 4 and 5 are granted by an admin. The default thresholds are configurable on the Trust Level Thresholds card under Settings > Permissions.
What this changes operationally
Most forum plugins treat every account the same from the first minute, so the only lever you have is to manually grant moderator status to “trusted” members and watch everyone else. This is exhausting at scale. You have to decide who’s trusted, remember to demote when someone goes inactive, and field requests like “Can I get mod status to clean up the wiki?”
Trust levels take the routine part of that off your plate. A brand-new account is rate-limited and cannot upload media until it has a posting history, which is where most drive-by spam lives. A member who’s been posting helpful answers for months has those limits lifted without you ever touching their account. Moderation itself stays a deliberate grant: you give a moderator role to the people you want moderating, and trust never hands those powers out on its own.
The design decisions that matter
Why 6 levels (0-5) instead of 3? Granularity. With 3 levels, the jump from “Member” to “Trusted” is too big - you have to make a one-time decision about who deserves it. 6 levels means the system can promote in small steps as members earn them.
Why automatic, not manual? Decision fatigue. Every manual promotion is a decision you have to make. Automatic promotion for levels 1 to 3 removes that. You can override (demote a misbehaving member) but you don’t have to think about it daily.
Why do accepted answers count? Because accepted answers are the highest-signal contribution in a community. Anyone can post. Most people can reply. Only members helping solve real problems get their reply marked as the accepted answer - by the person who posted the question. An accepted answer adds reputation, and reputation is a requirement for levels 2 and 3.
Why no points / badges as the primary signal? Points and badges are great for recognition (Pro adds custom badges) but they’re easy to gamify. Trust level combines post count, days active, replies received and reputation. Upvotes and accepted answers add the most reputation, reported and removed posts take it away, and the days-active requirement means nobody can post their way up the levels in an afternoon.
What trust levels do NOT do
- They don’t replace your moderation queue. Posts from new members can still flow through Akismet + your flagging system.
- They don’t replace your judgment for hard cases. A member at trust 4 reporting another member at trust 4 still needs a human to look at it.
- They don’t automatically resolve disputes. Trust levels lift limits; they don’t confer authority on contested moderation decisions.
The system handles the obvious cases so you can spend your moderation time on the actually hard cases.
How this scales
As a community grows, the newcomer limits slow down new-account spam, any member can flag what slips through, and the people you have given moderator roles clear the flags. You handle the escalations that need human judgment.
That is the difference between moderation that grows with every new signup and moderation that stays bounded. That’s what shipping trust levels is actually for.
A worth-noting design detail
Trust progression needs more than volume. A member posting 100 spam replies in a day still has to clock days of activity, and every one of those posts that gets reported or removed costs far more reputation than posting it earned. A member posting high-quality answers with several accepted builds reputation faster, because upvotes and accepted answers are worth much more than the post itself.
This makes the system resilient to bad-faith actors. And because trust never grants moderation powers, there is nothing mod-adjacent for them to farm.
How to think about it as a community manager
You’re not “delegating moderation.” You’re letting the system surface the members who’ve already been doing the moderation-adjacent work - answering questions, flagging problems, helping newcomers - so when you’re ready to hand someone a moderator role, you already know who has earned it.
This is closer to how real-world communities work. The members who put in the work get the trust. The system just makes that automatic instead of requiring you to track it manually.
Try it
Jetonomy > Users lists each member’s trust level, reputation and post counts, filterable by level. Spin up the demo and walk a fake account through the levels to see the system in motion.