We should start off with a trust level that lets us post images and only have it withdrawn if it’s abused. In order to gain the trust level to post images I pretty much have to spend more time posting and reading in the forum than I do playing the game.
Well, anyone being able to post images at all is new to these updated forums, even if it takes some time to get there, you’re basically starting with what you had in the forums originally and moving toward bonus abilities like links and images.
You don’t have to spend all your time on the forums, just every other day for a few months, or 50 days consecutively. And read some posts. That’s basically it. If you’re not coming to the forums at least semi-regularly to read posts and share your opinions, then why would you need to post images anyway?
A bonus of the trust system starting from zero and building up is that people can’t just log onto a new level 10 forum alt, post material that goes against the ToS, or links to gold seller sites, or viruses, or anything else. It’s not worth it to meet all the criteria just for an elaborate troll or phishing attempt. And if you’ve been a forumgoer around here for a while, you didn’t lose anything. You can simply gain more now.
Or perhaps you can just look at it from a different angle. When you are no longer able to get to trust level 3 you have something that those who are trust level 3 don’t have. And that is the ability to post more risqué things without being worried you will never get to trust level 3.
You can use a similar site like wowhead or use discords.
Make friends with someone who is trust level 3 and they can post things for you on your behalf.
Have a bit of perspective on the matter. There are dozens of other places you can post gifs and images openly that will get a lot of attention if not more attention. Just because you can’t post them in this one spot is really no big deal.
The only way to ‘cheat’ is in the ‘reading’… Whether you actually read the posts or just scroll through them the forum software can’t tell… You can’t cheat the rest… You still have to spend the number of hours etc on the forums in order to get trust level 3.