Thank you @Maggie8K you are spot on!
Our forum provider Discourse has different trust levels. All new members posts are manually approved to avoid bots, spam and to help new users.
The more the members engage with the forum the quicker they move up the trust levels. Trust levels and the criteria are pre-set by Discourse across all of their forums. This might be a useful link from Discourse as it explains trust levels: Understanding Discourse Trust Levels
It might be helpful to know that your trust levels as designed by Discourse do not work on how long you have been a member, but rather on how much you engage, so you can drop down trust levels if you are away from the forum for an extended period of time.
I hope that helps and if you have any questions let me know, my DM’s are always open 