Hi folks,
stupid question, because I don’t remember that from “the olden days” (could be my memory) - it seems like every post I make is waiting for approval before it makes its way into the forums. Difficult if the discussion is going quickly…
I understand the need for this before you’ve earned your merits. My question is: Will I be allowed to directly post in the future, or is the approval process perpetual for everyone?
thanks for hints or pointers!
Elmar.
That’s something I have never encountered. Maybe something new? @Jenny @Carla ?
But I’m an old witch
Well yeah, I took a hiatus 
And you have “Regular” next to your name, so I’ll keep on posting 'til that shows up…
Maybe the system needs a bit of time to figure out that you’re a human and not a bot, or something daft like that!
Have you been naughty? 
…nothing I would admit here… 
The “regular” is an optional title that will appear as a drop down choice in your forum profile. I don’t know what the criteria is. I just found it and decided to be an unregular regular. 
I was also on hiatus from the Forum and when I returned and made a post, it would not go through immediately. I believe it took me a couple of days for my posts to go through immediately.
I suppose I had earned some sort of trust / merit badge.
Good to know Sharon - I’ll be patient and wait until it gets too tedious for the staff
If you’ve not posted in awhile, the forum software that THS uses will require you to re-earn trust, including the ability to post without being reviewed. Not specific to any one person — that’s just how the software works. It could happen to any of us if we were absent for long.
Typically, for context, this sort of thing happens based on security concerns. Like forums don’t want anyone digging up or hacking old accounts and mis-using them for spam or such.
Moderators can decide to put certain individuals on monitoring if they’ve say broken terms of use. But that’s separate from cases of users who’ve been absent for long stretches having to re-earn trust.
For people who’ve violated terms and are under watch, they can cross too many lines and be booted off forums. That’s standard practice in many groups or forums. No one has the right to post whatever they want on what’s essentially a private digital property. Typical business interests.
Before I went on hiatus, there was one particular person who always had something negative to say. And then I did not “see” this person on the forum for a while. Perhaps that person had been “under watch and was booted off” or warned and just left the forum entirely.
And some time ago, posts were moderated more stringently than they are now. If something was said that was rude, mean spirited, or disrespectful on a thread, then the thread would be closed in the blink of an eye.
Thanks for the continual feedback
So… to close the loop myself, here’s the official explanation 
If you’re on trust level 3 / Regular you can loose that level if you don’t fullfill the requirements on a regular basis:
«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.
https://blog.discourse.org/2018/06/understanding-discourse-trust-levels/
Hello everyone,
I can see that @elmi4711 has come back to close the loop with the Discourse blog about Trust Levels (thank you!) - the article shared is the right answer! Hopefully you’ll hit that increased Trust Level soon and won’t have to wait for us to approve your posts.
There are very occasional instances where there might be another reason, but if that was the case, we would normally send a DM to the poster to let the member know what was going on.
Thank you to everyone who has popped on to clarify how things work, it’s really appreciated
Jenny
I was just informed by an automated system message that I obtained the highly coveted Trust Level 3 (TL3) aka "Regular Member” status, thus joining the ranks of 88 other members who have been awarded this badge.
Along with my feeling of excitement, satisfaction and achievement also comes some confusion as to exactly what this means.
According to the Forum Help Section, users at trust level 3 can (among other less distinguished functions):
-Recategorize and rename topics
-Access a secure category only visible to users at trust level 3 and higher
I can’t seem to locate the special hidden category, nor do I see any extra buttons that would allow a TL3 member to recategorize or rename topics. I also see in that list of 88… er.. thanks to me, now 89 TL3 members, some who haven’t been active in over a year, therefore being unable to meet the TL3 requirements in the past 100 days, and yet have not been “demoted” back to TL2.
Hi @idocsteve
Thanks for raising this, and well done on reaching Trust Level 3.
Our forum uses the Discourse platform, but we’ve customised parts of the trust-level system to suit how the community works. This means some of the abilities described in Discourse’s general help pages aren’t enabled here.
For example, features like renaming or recategorising topics, or having a private TL3-only category, aren’t currently active on our forum. Because of these customisations, the way trust levels behave may also differ slightly from the standard Discourse setup. That’s why you may see TL3 members with different activity levels or missing options you expected to see.
If anything changes or new TL3 features are introduced, we’ll make sure to let everyone know.
Jenny 
Thanks. I sort of figured that, however my OCD still had me searching for extra buttons and hidden topics. And worrying that now that I got here I’ll be demoted if I don’t remain vigilant!
Now I can rest easy. 
My profile says trust level regular, does that mean I have also reached level 3???
So exciting 