tl;dr: The “likes” thing isn’t something you’ll need to farm or beg for. You only need to attain 20 likes to attain level 3, which in itself requires you to visit for 50 days anyway, I can’t see any regular posters failing to get 20 
's in 50 days . You are only required to post a few replies to attain any trust levels. You do not need to create topics or ‘grind’ thousands of likes to get the top level.
I’m seeing a fair amount of confusion and lots of questions regarding the new “trust level” system these new forums use. Figured I’d just dump it here for easy reference (Taken from an MvP post):
Trust Levels
Trust Levels
Trust levels are a participation system on the forums. The more you post, like, reply, read, and visit the forums, the more you work your way to a higher trust level. Increased Trust levels grant additional privileges. Everyone who is new starts off at Trust Level 0 but will quickly climb by reading and visiting the forums within their first few days.
TRUST LEVEL 0
Trust level 0 users cannot:
Flag posts
Post more than 3 topics
Post more than 10 replies
TRUST LEVEL 1
Get to trust level 1 by…
Entering at least 5 topics
Reading at least 30 posts
Spend a total of 10 minutes reading posts
Users at trust level 1 can…
Post unlimited topics and replies
Edit wiki posts (more on Wiki Posts Below)
Flag posts
Create links and video embeds to trusted websites like Blizzard websites, YouTube, or Twitch
TRUST LEVEL 2
Get to trust level 2 by…
Visiting at least 15 days, not sequentially
Casting at least 1 like
Receiving at least 1 like
Replying to at least 3 different topics
Entering at least 20 topics
Reading at least 100 posts
Spend a total of 60 minutes reading posts
Users at trust level 2 can…
Have an increased “like” count.
TRUST LEVEL 3
Get to trust level 3 by…
Must have visited at least 50% of last 100 days
Must have replied to at least 10 different topics
Of topics created in the last 100 days, must have viewed 500 topics
Of posts created in the last 100 days, must have read 20,000 posts (both starting posts and replies)
Must have received 20 likes, and given 30 likes.
Must not have received more than 5 spam or offensive flags (with unique posts and unique users for each, confirmed by a moderator)
Must not have been suspended (including forum suspensions or in-game account actions of any Blizzard game)
Trust Level 3 users can
Create Wiki Posts (more on that below)
Post animated gifs, images, compatible video embeds, and links to any website
Observations:
Trust level right now seems to be per character. Likely because these new forums are a copy of the system OW forums have used, where you only had one “account”. Changing characters seems to equate to changing accounts. This might well be changed in future.
Likes are not THAT important. You only need to give and receive 1 for level 2, and level 3 requires months of forum browsing. By which time if you’re an active poster you’ll no doubt get 20 and give 30 by the time you’re eligible.
How to check your trust level:
Grimmj has created a tool for checking your trust level more easily!
This works for most of my characters but not all, if it doesn’t work for your main character refer to the original method below.
Visit this URL (Replace charactername with your… well, character name):
https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/u/charactername-argent-dawn.json
Then ctrl+f ‘trust’. Further down you’ll see all the ‘groups’ you’ve been assigned. If you only see trust_level_0 or something like that, you’re level 0. If you see a group for 0, and a group for 1, you are trust level 1. Etc.
What’s a wiki post?
In case this gets asked: At lv3 you can turn any topic you make into a ‘wiki post’ which ANYONE can then edit. Likely for guides and so on.
