If you empty the pot of coffee, make a new one!
Wow. Is that hundred year wait on deleting withdrawn posts one of the supposed benefits of Trust Level Three?
It provides a chance to change your mind.
A chance? That’s some professional level pensiveness. 
Hey @Monty - Don’t rush him; he’s tinkin’! 
I love that sculpture-Da Tinker.
Whenever things get a little too distracting at home one or the other of us will adopt a sorta Rocky Balboa = not-too-bright well-worn pro boxer accent and announce “Everbody shud up; da Champ is tinkin’!”
This cracks us up every time. We amuse easy.
I wonder if there’s a way to keep track of badge progress?
I made a suggestion about trust level 3 in this thread:
If we’re going to have posters with lesser powers, how about the power to unhide posts? And, assuming the number stays low, how about the ability to unlock threads–if they were autolocked only?
Both are features we don’t want. And while a bot doing it would be better, maybe using our existing resources would be a good idea.
And if this is automated, then I guess I don’t use the SDMB as much as I thought.
Per the Discourse documentation, all these thresholds can be set to different values by the admins.
So I suppose they could be set impossibly high as a way of practically disabling Trust Level 3. Or they could be set rather low to grow the population of TL3 users.
Clearly with the untimely death of Jennie, all these settling-in tweaks that would otherwise be happening in the first few months of the board’s going live on Discourse are on hold.
How long that hold will last is an interesting problem. I wish @Ed_Zotti the best in getting through all this.
I tend to lurk far more than I post and previously I rarely bothered to log in. Since the new system usually leaves me logged in anyway I started reading posts just to deliberately boost my figures and…
I can confirm that merely reading 500 topics / 20,000 posts does not give you promotion to Level 3.
Indeed to actually achieve Level 3 you also need to give out and receive likes which - if I understand correctly - have now been disabled. Therefore, unless I have this wrong, no one now can achieve Level 3 unless the settings are changed again.
TCMF-2L
Likes were disabled on about the second day after we moved to Discourse. I wasn’t even able to login for the first couple of days because I wasn’t receiving the email from the system (and TubaDiva was very helpful in addressing the issue; really this was the only time I interacted directly and personally with her). And yet, I was upgraded to level 3, although I’ve since lost the privilege. So likes are definitely not a requirement. I think that people were able to be upgraded to level 3 was a bit of a surprise to the moderators, as they also thought that it wouldn’t be possible since likes were disabled.
And I’ve been casually monitoring the number of people at level 3. I think it was as high as 41 at one point, and then dropped to 35. (I know for sure because I opened a thread in The Lounge noting the drop in membership.) Today, the count is 22.
It’s been posted before in this thread that some people have been handed level 3 despite never having given any likes.
I just took a look and I no longer have the Lounge on my list of forums. What causes posters to drop off the list? I haven’t been away from the board for more than a day.
From memory, it’s something like you have to have opened 25% of threads from the last 100 days, viewed 25% of posts from the last 100 days, visited at least 50% of days, and responded to at least 10 posts.
It’s a pretty high bar and people can be demoted once they no longer meet the requirements.There is some stabilization in that once promoted you won’t be demoted for at least 2 weeks.
So if I reply to your post 9 more times, I’m back in? 
Maybe? Might have to be 10 different threads.
…also all those other hoops.
I was going by what it says in the help section:
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
* 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.
But I have no idea how you actualy achieve it. Like I said I deliberately viewed 500 topics and 20,000 posts - the games threads were an easy way of getting a few hundred - but no Level 3 for me.
TCMF-2L
If it is responding to 10 unique threads, I think you have only responded to 8 I think in the last 100 days going by your activity?
Per a part of the documentation that @TCMF-2L didn’t quote, all of those numbers given are the default values. Almost all of them can be reset to something else by the local admin(s).
The fact a bunch of people got TL3 early despite not meeting the “like” criteria says that at least some of these parameters have been tweaked.
We regular schlubs have no idea which of the Trust Level 3 criteria have been tweaked to what new numbers.