What the topic says. I joined the forum a while back when I needed help with FEBuilder. Such help is far easier to get on the Discord - and pretty much any other way of interacting with the community that I would consider is more convenient on Discord. Meaning I had no way to interact with the forum itself, until I wanted to share a ROM hack I’ve been working on - just to be informed by the site that I’m not allowed to make a post with links or images, despite the description of the badge I got automatically claiming otherwise.
And while we’re on the topic, why is the basic badge description blatantly wrong - saying that it allows for posting links and images? I can’t imagine it being difficult to fix, and as it stands, it leads to poor experience for new users. I’d think that a forum in large part dedicated to ROM hacking - and by extension game design - would understand the importance of UX. And speaking of UX, it’s also strange that the Drafts function (emphasis on the plural) only allows for holding of a single draft, and while one is there you can’t make a new post, even if you wanted to publish it immediately. Which defeats half of the purpose of the function’s existence. I had to manually back up the post that I was prevented from posting just so I could write this one. Again, poor UX which I can’t imagine would be difficult to fix, even if you don’t want people to have more than 1 draft saved at a time.
Yes, the rules state that “So long as you’re participating normally, you’ll reach trust level 2 after 24 hours.” But I haven’t received it in nearly a month. Because as I said - with Discord being a much more convenient alternative, my participation occurs there. Why am I expected to look through the forum for a topic I could force myself into without being disruptive just to meet some arbitrary participation requirement? When the reason I haven’t done so so far is that I didn’t have anything worthwhile to say on the topics that I have read through. And the things that I considered worthwhile - such as asking for and giving help regarding FEBuilder, I said on the Discord server. And I know I’m repeating myself on that point, but that’s because I find it bizarre that despite the Discord server existing for way longer than even these “trust levels”, there’s apparently no simple solution for this issue.
It also doesn’t help that the description of the requirements is so vague. Though I get that that’s probably an anti-bot measure or some such, so that I can understand.