Ranks and Trust Levels

The user trust system is a fundamental cornerstone of LotusElan.net. Trust levels are a way of…

  • Sandboxing new users in your community so that they cannot accidentally hurt themselves, or other users while they are learning what to do.
  • Granting experienced users more rights over time, so that they can help everyone maintain and moderate the community they generously contribute so much of their time to.

Our Trust Levels are listed below:

Spectator - Netral or Newbie:

By default, all new users start at Spectator, meaning trust has yet to be earned. These visitors just created an account and are still learning the community norms and how we work. New users’ abilities are restricted for safety – both theirs and yours.

Spectators cannot

  • Send personal messages to other users
  • Flag posts
  • Post more than 1 image
  • Post any attachments
  • Post hyperlinks in a post
  • Have actual links in the ‘about me’ field of their profile
  • Mention more than 2 users in a post
  • Post more than 3 topics
  • Post more than 10 replies
  • Edit their posts after more than 24 hours
  • The first 2 posts are manually reviewed

We believe reading is the most fundamental and healthy action in any community. If a new user is willing to spend a little time reading, they will quickly be promoted to the first level.


Pit Crew - (2nd Gear)


A Pit Crew member is developing their knowledge and familiarity with the members.

Pit Crew members can…

  • All new user restrictions are removed
  • Send PMs
  • Upload images and attachments if enabled
  • Edit wiki posts
  • Flag posts
  • Mute other users

Driver - 3rd Gear


Members return over several weeks; they read and actively participated to be trusted with being a Driver.

Drivers can:

  • Use the “Invite others to this topic” button for one-click onboarding of new users to participate in topics
  • Daily like, edit and flag limits increased by 1.5×
  • Ignore other users
  • Edit their posts for up to 30 days after posting
  • Edit wiki pages

Crew Chiefs - 4th Gear


Crew Chiefs are the backbone of your community, the most active readers and reliable contributors over months, even years. Because they’re always around, they can be further trusted to help tidy up and organize the community.

Crew Chiefs can…

  • Recategorize and rename topics
  • Crew Chiefs spam flags cast on Spectator or Newbie user posts immediately hide the post
  • Crew Chiefs flags cast on Spectators or Newbies user posts in sufficient diversity will auto-silence the user and hide all their posts
  • Make their own posts wiki (that is, editable by any Pit Crew+ users)
  • Daily like, edit, and flag limits increased by 2×

Furthermore, unlike other levels, you can lose Crew Chief status . If you dip below the requirements in the last 100 days, you will be demoted back to Driver. You can re-earn Crew Chief status by being more active.

Been on here for a couple of decades , how was my trust level determined ?

The vast majority of members were migrated over as a Pit Crew member. This level provided the same level of features and functionality as the old system.

For members with very limited posts, they were brought over as Spectators. Our old system had limited safeguards for spam and bots.

All members received historical credit for activity in the old system. If you view your user profile summary, you can see the activity transferred over from the old system in topics and post created and read.

The profile summary Stats are very important. Each of the Stats are factors used to determine your future ranking. As you increase each of the stats, your futur ranking improves.