How to run a WordPress Q&A forum that auto-promotes trusted members

Tom Anderson Tom Anderson 2 4 months ago gamification reputation trust-levels

Our Q&A space has a handful of power users who answer 80% of questions and handle moderation better than most paid staff. Right now I manually promote them to editor roles in wp-admin, which is clunky and doesn't scale as new top answerers emerge.

What I want is a system where the forum itself watches post counts, reply counts, reputation, and accepted answers, and then automatically grants additional privileges to members who cross thresholds I configure. No manual role juggling. Is that a thing on WordPress, or am I stuck writing custom code?

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vapvarun vapvarun 0 4 months ago

Jetonomy has this baked into the permission model via Trust Levels.

  • Trust Levels 0-5 with admin-configurable thresholds for automatic promotion through levels 1-3
  • Thresholds configurable for post count, reply count, and reputation, so you tune it to your community
  • Reputation system awards points for posts, replies, votes, and accepted answers
  • Accepted answers on Q&A spaces let the original poster mark the best answer, which feeds reputation
  • Trust level badges are automatic, so a member visibly levels up and others see it on their profile and hover cards
  • WP-CLI commands for trust level management if you want to script bulk adjustments

Honest limit: Levels 4 and 5 are granted manually by design, to keep the top tiers intentional rather than fully automatic, which is the same model Discourse uses.

Pro adds Custom Badges so you can design your own "Top Answerer" or "MVP" badges and award them manually or via automated rules on top of the built-in trust badges.