Not for me, just another unnecessary add on and so what?
How about getting rid of all the trust levels and badges and then everyone is equal. And then have a verification badge to say you are a genuine Lovehoney member who buys toys and gives reviews on them. It would still make you anonymous.
@teacake I don’t think getting rid of trust levels is a good idea, honestly. It prevents a lot of spam and rule breaking (e.g. Users can only upload images at a Level 2, you can read the full privileges and perks of trust levels here), as well as allows us to see whose new (which can help in identifying sock puppet accounts).
Granting users these privileges right away, before they’re used to the forum and familiar with the rules would be a nightmare for those of us who mod (Also removing trust levels would affect moderation too)
Badges are just a fun little customisation for your account, so I don’t think removing them makes much sense either, it shows a record of what you’ve done/achieved on the forum.
In addition, not everyone uses the same email between forum and shopping site (others have mentioned this above), so they would have an extra hurdle of proving their identity between those accounts, which may take away the feeling of being anonymous. You’re also assuming that everyone on the forum writes reviews, which may not actually be the case.
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I agree that removing trust levels would invite more sock puppets than less. And badges are great for getting to the next level and unlocking more privileges but as users don’t have to display a badge and can hide their profile, its not a good way to determine if someone is new or not. New people shouldn’t automatically be deemed as untrustworthy mind.
While we’re discussing preventing deceit. I think that the photo rules should be clearer that photos uploaded need to be of that user unless specifically stated that its not. Theres obvious intent to deceive if I put up a photo of someone and pretend its me. This is the only rule stipulation that relates.
I still prefer removing trust levels and then name the ones moderaters who have the same ability to act on sock puppets inappropriate pictures etc… Then you have us low class people lol as verifyed LH users.
@teacake I’m afraid all Discourse Forums (of which this is one) are set up on a Trust Level basis. What permissions are given to users are based on what Trust Level they are. If brand new members were immediately granted permission to post photos, for example, mods (who mod permissions are also granted based on their Trust Level) would be spending the whole time removing photos from random non photo threads. I think the 10 day settling in and getting used to how the forum works thing before getting all the member privileges is a very good thing.
I think the verified customer addition is just to try and weed out sock puppet accounts. As @JoCat says, there will obviously be legitimate new users who aren’t yet verified customers, and hopefully they will still feel welcome, but it makes it easier to recognise likely problem accounts.
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I think you missunderstood what I was trying to get at,totally understand about pictures being uploaded, most forums have trust levels where you can’t post pictures untill you have posted a certain amount and been a user for a certain amount of time. Being a mod isn’t that hard as long as you have enough of them.
You’re right, I’m not understanding you. If you remove Trust Levels then you don’t get an initial restriction on photo privileges and you don’t have out of Brenna hours, restricted mods.
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Starting from fresh everyone who joins can’t post pictures until trust level 1 is earned say 100 posts and been using the forum for 1 month. That’s all the trust level you need. Trust Level 1. Simple Then LH can assign Mods. On this Forum there is 4 trust levels you don’t really need that.
When i was a mod for a forum that was all that was needed, we kept ontop of everything but we didn’t actually say it was a trust level. Just you needs X amount of post to post pictures and access to the classifieds. Then we also had mods for each forum.
Personally, I think the Trust Levels are great. 
Every new signup starts at TL0, which is where a lot of the spam protection lives. You’ll likely have not seen much of it on the boards themselves as it catches most of it ‘behind the scenes’ before it even gets to be public. It’s mainly to weed out bots and spammers, and most human users will quickly progress to TL1 after a short amount of regular browsing.
At TL1 you get access to most features, and also have time to settle in and learn what the community is about and how things work. It’s roughly 15 visits along with some regular engagement to get to TL2. It’s a nice amount of time to dissuade time-wasters from barrelling straight in and posting all the dick pics. 
TL2 is pretty much what you’re talking about in your post. You’ve settled in, engaged with the community, and have a fair idea of what the place is all about. On this forum, this is the marker to say ‘yes, you can now post photos’. It’s not particularly difficult to get to TL2, but it does involve turning up and taking part.
TL3 is more of a perk for those people who are highly engaged. They visit often, they read a lot stuff, they’ve been around regularly and recently enough to know how everything fits together. The main draw, I think, is the kudos of earning the badge and title - though there are a couple of extra features in being able to edit topic titles and recategorise things to help keep things tidy, as well as create wiki posts.
TL4 is a manual promotion thing, and can’t be achieved automatically. This is really handy to let certain community members help moderate without granting them the full power and scope of a moderator (good for here, as we still want to limit what people can see so everyone can remain anonymous ). TL4s get a selection of extra features that mainly help to curate content rather than deal directly with users (split/merge topics, global edit powers, etc). The Serious Tools™ are still mostly Brenna’s. I think this works well, as it’s historically been a pain when someone posts something dodgy at the weekend or over the holidays and it has had to wait for someone to deal with it.
All in all, I think that’s a good spread and I wouldn’t want to get rid of any of them.
However… Sockpuppets are still an issue. 
I think (FWIW) that we may not need a public symbol of a ‘verified user’ and that this may actually be better as a ‘behind the scenes’ thing that is only visible to Brenna so she can judge who’s a possible ‘fake’ and sort them out without any of us needing to think about it.
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Behind the scenes would be good, that way no one is coming in being scrutinised.
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Hello!! I think that’s a wonderful idea!!!
I’m not a fan of the idea. But if you absolutely had to introduce a ‘verified’ status you could make it so the rather than a ‘purchace necessary’ verification, have the community decide. A user is verified once they have been a member for x amount of time and has recieved x amount of heart/thumbs-up reactions to their comments? Or some other metric? Then again, that seems something like what trust levels are, why not just display users trust level, or a ‘verified’ badge/tick once someone is trust level 2 for example?
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This is pretty much the trust lvl maybe it could be made a little more difficult to gain the trust levels or badges and once x amount of badges have been earned you could be “verified” if you actually wanted to be 
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You’re awesome for finding it. I have voted now. I think it’s a great idea. When I have more time I’ll read the replies. I think it’s a great idea.
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