A few months ago I lost TL3 posting privileges. At first I thought it was related to reading topics and posts but later with the help of others we discovered that “likes” given (and possibly received) had to be within the 100 day moving average as well. This of course was not listed on the official forum guidelines.
That story ended last November when I attained TL3 status again after “liking” a few random posts. However, now I lost my TL3 powers again but I maintained spamming a few “likes” this time and still have not regained them.
Now, I recently tried to post a link and again was barred from doing so (even if I try to edit an old post of mine with an existing link). Of course I know the trick of using the grave accent character ` to encapsulate a link like my_link_here, but sometimes I want to post a screenshot or something which isn’t as convenient (in the case of an image, it simply displays it with no “clicking-the-link” required).
Can we please have a blue post (or official post) to clarify what the current TL3 requirements are and a transparent way to see your own parameters (to see what you’re missing)?
As an aside, I am not a fan of losing TL3 without warning due to unknown reasons. I would much rather prefer the “if you abuse it, you lose it” system for TL3.
Months ago, I lost TL3 when the forum software was upgraded, i.e. prior to the upgrade I met the requirements, after the upgrade I did not. I filed GM tickets asking for confirmation as to why. I was refused an answer. The only response I got was that the criteria we had in the stickied post on the forums don’t necessarily match the actual requirements, but they wouldn’t clarify what those requirements were. That’s why I gave up on trying to regain it and have been posting less and not bothering to read everything any more (I have hundreds of unread threads currently).
All I got to say these Forum changes have turned these Forums into the goofiest Forums I have ever been on.
I worked my way up to T3 by Liking and Flagging everyone in site that needed one or the other, some Forumers needed waaayyy more than one, by the way.
Now, a couple of months latter, I think I am a T1 again and a T4 Wannabe, all over again !
These Forums used to be Player User friendly , now they are Forum Player User friendly.
I still can’t find the or the buttons!
Not covering requirements = possibly missed some requirement by a little
Silent ban for something = unlikely*
Bug = possible coding error in calculating eligibility
For the forum ban, if you get an actual forum ban, you are emailed about it. I’m not sure what happens if 5 people “flag” your posts. Do you get a warning or is the post silently deleted? I’m not aware that any of my posts have been deleted.
Never got the TL3 even though I qualified according to the posted criteria. When no one was able or willing to clarify, I just gave up on it. Even though it could be useful to be able to post links every once in a while, overall, it’s not worth the hassle if you ask me.
What you are describing is basically the MVP program, or used to be. Only it just came with green text. The CMs, or Forum Support Agents, selected individuals who were helpful to other players and generally able to follow the rules.
There are some who got TL3 manually based on posting history and writing guides/info for other players. They are not green though - and there is not a current D3 MVP program right now.
As for requirements, the CS folks would not have insight into that. Even the web team at Blizzard does not always know everything about it because Blizz does not make the Discourse software themselves.
TL 3 can be buggy though - I will confirm. I actually had to have someone restore mine for the WoW boards due to a bug in my MVP access group. It impacted me, but not all of us. It was odd… It was like the settings forgot a flag or something. This is not something that the average person can put in a ticket for though, at this time. It is was a quirk of a custom group that was set up.
I have no idea specifically what caused you to lose TL3. In my case it was a TL3 permissions for a custom group. I talked to the MVP contact who set up the group so he was able to fix it for me. This is not something normal CS folks can do for the average poster.
Your issue is related to the automated permissions. The forums have no way for CS, or us, to see what the TL3 settings are, and where you stand on achieving them.
To make it more complicated, each game forum can be customized to have different parameters. So even if you figure out Overwatch (for example), that does not mean Diablo 3 is exactly the same.
You are going to just have to do what you did last time - poke around at the parameters and hope you can figure out what you need to bump again. Otherwise, if a CM or mod sees this and feels there is a bug, they can point it in the direction of the Web Dev team. That team would have to work to get the bug fixed, if it is actually a bug.
True, if it’s actually a bug they can fix it but I think they should at least improve the transparency of the whole automated system by providing the up-to-date requirements and some indicator which shows what requirement is or isn’t met (it would be even better to see a 100 day timeseries plot of your activity in each category).
The response I got to my first ticket was a link to a forum thread detailing the criteria, and suggesting that I check I had satisfied those criteria. When I escalated the ticket, I specified that I far exceeded the criteria in the thread, i.e. I had read 100% of the threads, read 100% of the posts, issued enough likes, received enough likes, visited the forums on every single day since they went live (so definitely had 50 days visited from the last 100 rolling days), and so on. Literally there wasn’t a single criteria, that I had access to view, that I wasn’t fulfilling. Also, prior to the forum upgrade, I had TL3. After the forum upgrade, I had TL2. Root cause analysis would suggest that something definitely happened during the forum upgrade. Anyway, the response to the escalated ticket was that the thread listing the criteria for TL3 (that the initial GM had told me to look at) wasn’t an accurate reflection of the actual criteria. Now, if the GMs don’t have access to what the actual criteria are, how do they know the thread listing them isn’t accurate?
Also, I remember early in the days of the new forums going live, I started a thread, and the original post in that thread received flags. I got a system notification stating that it would be reviewed by a GM and if the flags were upheld, i.e. the post broke the rules, punishment would be issued. I received no punishment for it, which would suggest GMs reviewed it and decided it didn’t break the rules, but the post remained in the “greyed out” state where you had to click on a link on it to be able to view it. When the forum software was upgraded, maybe those flags (which weren’t upheld) counted for “he’s a bad boy” and cause the removal of TL3.
At the time I lost TL3, there wasn’t a single criteria I could have improved upon to try and regain it, because I had 100% participation. I raised the GM ticket to ask them to confirm if it was due to flags, as that’s the only criteria that an end user cannot check themselves. As their response to me asking why was essentially “Don’t ask why.” I decided not to bother trying any more. It’s why I no longer bother to post much in the Bug Report / Tech Support forums as I can’t post embedded screenshots to help.
and Flagging 
and a T4 Wannabe, all over again 
!
, now they are Forum Player User friendly. 
or the 
buttons! 
