See Understanding Discourse Trust Levels
TLDR version: Spend 10 minutes or more reading at least 30 posts in five topics to raise your Trust Level to Basic, which allows starting new topics and posting pictures.
Clicking on your avatar, I see you’ve read for 24 minutes, so check out a few more topics. Try doing a search for answers to your questions.
I agree. The new user experience is horrible. I was already a confirmed user (by email), I had a registered printer, I had a Bambu Lab profile, and I was able to link my Bambu Profile to the Bambu Lab community forum. That should have been enough to allow me to create new topics in the forum. I have been a member of 100’s of different forums over the last 30 years, and I have never had to go through this level of hoops and hurdles to create a new topic.
I actually found the new user process on a Reddit post. The Discobot email is not sufficient.
Exactly! There needs to be feedback in the UI to make it clear why you cannot perform an action and then what needs to be done to perform that action.
Well, I feel your pain but that was 30 years ago. I go back to punch cards and remember the days when I didn’t even need a password, just a userid.
Sadly, the world if filled with @ssholes that make this necessary. Having moderated forums over the last 20 years myself, you should see what the logs look like from an admin perspective. It is a constant onslaught of bots in the the thousands per day that are trying to create fake accounts. Sadly, these security measures as much as they suck, are a reality of today’s Internet, lest we have tons of spammers promoting everything from filament to viagra on these forums.
I get it. The amount of security required these days is crazy. However, you can design a proper user experience and still have a high level of security.
A solution for my grievance would be to have the “New Topic” button visible but greyed out and have a mouseover popup that explains what you need to do to be able to create a new post. All the existing security can still remain in place.
Well, as is always the case, the software is programmable but then Bambu Labs would have to enter the Forum Software business.
I have been down this rabbit hole myself when running a forum. Not to make little of your request but it is a big “ask” to make changes to an out of the box solution. One you change something, you own the support. If it were me, I would simply say, use as-is. It’s like the old Ford Model T, you can have it in any color you like so long as it’s black. 
Remember, if we don’t like this forum software, we can always ask for a refund of our membership fees. 
I am not suggesting that Bambu modify 3rd party software; I do understand those consequences. This is something that Discource should address. I should probably go complain on their forums 
In any case, I got it all figured out. The printer is awesome, I can post in the forums, life is good 
Definitely agree with OP’s sentiment here. What a frustratingly hostile place this seems to be. So many new users bewildered by the inability to get help and so many established users belittling and ranting at them about why they’re wrong.
Even the supposed solution seems wrong. I eventually figured out how to jump through the hoops and attain level 1, but I still can’t create a new topic. Although it seems that I can now reply (assuming this works), there is absolutely no “New topic” button anywhere on the site. I even saw a screenshot of where I’m supposed to be able to find it but it’s not there.
I’d love for someone with some experience to find it in their heart to reply with some compassion, but I’m bracing myself for a flaming.
Yup. That’s basically the same as the screenshot I saw. It’s not there.
OK, I just logged out and back in again. It’s finally appeared. 
There is/was a discordbot that can prompt and guide you through particular forum stages .
The tutorial can be started by sending a direct message to @discobot.
Adding the following to the content.
@discobot start tutorial
@discobot start advanced tutorial
I am new to the world of 3D printing and recently purchased the X1C and related supplies and spent around 2K U.S. I came here to post a question due to an error message I received, did some research first, but was unable to find an answer, so came here to post the question. I then took me a while to figure out why I couldn’t post the question, and spent some time finding out that I have to ‘earn’ trust before I’m able to do that. I have never seen anything like this before, and think it is the most ridiculous and un-friendly ‘welcome to the community’ thing I’ve ever seen in a forum! Why would they do this? I’m really starting to question my purchase if this is the way Bambu will treat it’s users, particularly new ones that are trying to learn the product.
Welcome to the forum/community.
Actually it is not Bambu doing the trust level. It is something that the discord server does. The good thing is that now that you have gotten the trust level, it will carry through to any other forum that uses the discord server.
Welcome to the community.
Point of clarity. This forum software is run on “Discourse” not the online Software “Discord”. These are very different platforms. Also, Discourse that is the core of this forum does not share cross-forum credentials as discord does.
DIscourse is the software used by this forum.
Discord is a whole different way to be unable to find answers.
The trust level requirement is a very effective way to keep the spam out of the forum. It might be frustrating to a one-time user, but it is much nicer for the community that is here frequently.
The problem is not so much the fact that trust must be established , but that new users don’t read or understand the welcome message which explains the rules.
I still think that instead of hiding the New Topic button from new users, the button should be visible to all, but send new users to an explanation of why they cannot (yet) initiate a topic.
It may be an effective way to keep the spam out of the forum, but it is infuriating when you are trying to get something done and run into this. But I do agree, that the button should still be on the page with either a hover popup that describes the issue, or a dialog that appears when clicked. Half of the time trying to figure out what was going on was figuring out where the damn new post button was hiding!
good idea, I’m a new member and reading some of my “required” reading…It’s nice to see folks come up with ideas without being just whiney!