Understanding Trust Scores: A Deep Dive

How BotWave calculates trust scores, what factors matter most, and how to use them to identify and protect your community.

Trust scores are one of the most powerful and least understood features in BotWave. A trust score is a number that represents a member's reputation in your group, based on their behavior over time. This guide explains how the score is calculated, what it means, and how to use it without turning your community into a surveillance state.

What a Trust Score Is

A trust score is a number from 0 to 100 that reflects how much the community trusts a member. A new member starts at a neutral score. The score goes up with positive participation and down with negative behavior. It is not a judgment of the person, it is a record of their actions in the group.

The score is visible to admins and to the member themselves. You can make it public to the group or keep it private, depending on your community culture.

How the Score Is Calculated

The score is based on several factors, weighted by recency and severity. No single action determines the score. It is a composite that reflects patterns over time.

Factors that increase the score: receiving upvotes from other members, helping new members, consistent participation over time, and being a member in good standing for a long period.

Factors that decrease the score: receiving downvotes, getting warned or muted by admins, failing captcha, triggering anti-flood, and being flagged by content filters.

The weighting favors recent behavior. A member who was problematic six months ago but has been positive since will have a recovering score. A member who was positive for years but starts causing problems will see their score drop quickly.

How to Check a Trust Score

Use /trust followed by a username or reply to a member's message with /trust. BotWave returns the score, a breakdown of the factors, and the member's join date.

Admins can see the full breakdown. Members can see their own score. If you make scores public, anyone can check anyone, which creates social proof but also requires a culture that handles scores maturely.

Using Trust Scores for Decisions

Trust scores are a decision aid, not a decision maker. Use them to inform your judgment, not to replace it. Here are the four most common uses.

Promotions: before making someone an admin or a moderator, check their score. A high score over a long period is a good signal. A low score or a recent drop is a red flag.

Transactions: in groups where members trade, trust scores help members decide who to deal with. A new account with a low score is a higher risk than a long-standing member with a high score.

Investigations: when something goes wrong, trust scores help you spot patterns. If a member's score dropped sharply before an incident, that is a signal.

Onboarding: new members with low scores may need more attention. A welcome message and a prompt to introduce themselves can help them build trust quickly.

Making Scores Public vs Private

Public scores create social proof. Members can see who the trusted contributors are, and new members can see who to learn from. The downside is that a low score can feel like a scarlet letter, and some members may game the system.

Private scores give admins information without exposing members. This is safer for sensitive communities and for groups where scores might be misused. The trade-off is that you lose the social proof benefit.

Start private. If your community is mature and the culture supports it, make scores public later. You can switch with /trust public or /trust private at any time.

What Trust Scores Do Not Do

Trust scores do not automatically ban or mute members. They do not replace human judgment. They do not track members across groups. They are local to your community and based only on behavior within it.

A low score is not a verdict. It is a signal to pay attention. What you do with that signal is up to you and your admin team.

Building a Culture Around Trust

The score works best when the community understands it. Explain in your rules how scores work, what raises and lowers them, and that they are a reflection of behavior, not a label. When members understand the system, they participate in it honestly.

Used well, trust scores make your community self-regulating. Members hold each other accountable because the score makes reputation visible. That is the goal: not surveillance, but shared standards.

Frequently Asked Questions