Grant users privileges based on user activity and voting affinity with the admin

[8ullyMaguire]

Requirements

• [X] Is this a feature request? For questions or discussions use https://lemmy.ml/c/lemmy_support
• [X] Did you check to see if this issue already exists?
• [X] Is this only a feature request? Do not put multiple feature requests in one issue.
• [X] Is this a backend issue? Use the lemmy-ui repo for UI / frontend issues.

Is your proposal related to a problem?

Admins are experiencing burnout due to the increasing number of users. The same goes for moderators, leading to a rise in unmoderated communities. The current solution of creating posts to request community moderation adds more workload for admins, and potential moderators may be discouraged by the full-time commitment required for the role.

Describe the solution you'd like.

Implementing a hierarchical trust level system, similar to Discourse's trust levels[^1^], could distribute the responsibility among users and reduce the burden on admins. Trust levels would be assigned for each community based on user activity and voting affinity with the admin[^2^]. This way, admins would only need to adjust the trust levels of top-tier users to shape their instance according to their preferences, without having to micromanage every aspect of the community. Admins should be able to choose which privileges users can achieve, and if they want to micromanage everything in their instance, then users get no privileges at all.

Describe alternatives you've considered.

None.

[^1^]: Discourse Blog - Understanding Discourse Trust Levels [^2^]: GitHub - Lemmy Issue: Voting Affinity and Engagement Analysis

[lionirdeadman]

I would suggest renaming issue to "Grant users powers based on activity level"

I think it would be nice to have as an option. For example, I think editing titles or marking as NSFW could work for powers though it could be closing like https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2619

[erlend-sh]

There’s a clear interest in this among fedizens: https://writing.exchange/@erlend/110391232157395456

Also worth noting that once a Trust Levels system is in place, it’d be possible to explore ways to federate it.

[erlend-sh]

The MVP version of this could already mitigate a lot of the recent uploading of illegal images as an attack vector.

Disallow image uploads for users:

• with less than 5 posts or comments
• less than 10 total upvotes received
• account newer than 1 week.

[dessalines]

I'm very against adding special abilities and priveledges for users (in the same way that stackoverflow does), outside of admins and mods. These systems get endlessly complicated and quickly become too difficult to maintain.