# /about listing of Admins vs Moderators is confusing
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434
**Category:** UX
**Tags:** about-page
**Created:** [June 21, 2018, 11:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434 "2018-06-21T23:38:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@wolftune](https://meta.discourse.org/u/wolftune)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2018, 11:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434/1 "2018-06-21T23:38:46Z")
Some people are admin + mod. Others are only admin or only mod.
When a user visits /about, they see all the admins under Our Admins, regardless of mod status.
Some admins may not want to be moderators. They help with technical things and have admin power, but they don’t want the responsibility to do moderation (and we may not want them involved there).
[How to hide admins from /about page - #7 by cpradio](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-hide-admins-from-about-page/43678/7) is relevant but I’m not specifically talking about hiding anyone. I’m talking about identifying which admins are also mods.
Maybe all of the listed people could be put under “Staff” and then a little mark or badge identify admin and/or mod (show both for those who are both)?
The real point is to make it easy for users to identify which individuals they might go to if they need a moderator (especially for the unlikely case that they have a concern about violations from a moderator themselves and want to contact a _different_ moderator). I don’t want that user to end up contacting admins who aren’t wanting to deal with such issues…
---
### Author:  [@tophee](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tophee)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2018, 12:32am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434/2 "2018-06-22T00:32:43Z")
I think you are making a fair point, but the problem is that the terms “moderator” and “admin” have a different (more technical) meaning in discourse. They simply refer to two levels of privileges: admins have all privileges and mods have limited privileges (only what they need to to their moderation job).
The discourse team will correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t think of any easy way to achieve what you want by modifying the /about page.
However, what you could do is create new groups that correspond to your definition of admin and mod (or only mod) and direct people to that group’s membership list.
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### Author:  [@wolftune](https://meta.discourse.org/u/wolftune)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2018, 1:09am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434/3 "2018-06-22T01:09:54Z")
Actually, it doesn’t matter that admins have 100% of the power that mods have, they _are_ separate groups. I can see as an admin by looking at the other admins — some _are_ in the mod group and some aren’t.
So, there’s no need to change anything besides the display of the About page. Certainly there’s no need for new groups.
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### Author:  [@tophee](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tophee)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2018, 1:16am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434/4 "2018-06-22T01:16:44Z")
> [@wolftune](#):
>
> Actually, it doesn’t matter that admins have 100% of the power
You’re right, I was making some wrong assumption and wrote nonsense.
> [@wolftune](#):
>
> some _are_ in the mod group and some aren’t.
In that case I don’t understand your problem. The about page already distinguishes between mods and admins…
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### Author:  [@wolftune](https://meta.discourse.org/u/wolftune)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2018, 1:37am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434/5 "2018-06-22T01:37:20Z")
> [@tophee](#):
>
> The about page already distinguishes between mods and admins…
If a person is a mod _and_ and admin, they are _only_ shown in admins. If someone is _not_ a mod but _is_ an admin, they are shown there too.
In short: **there’s nothing on /about that allows people to see which of the admins are mods**
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### Author:  [@cpradio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cpradio)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2018, 1:41am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434/6 "2018-06-22T01:41:08Z")
I feel like Discourse team has a plugin that hides users from being listed on that page… maybe one of them can speak to it.
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2018, 1:57am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434/7 "2018-06-22T01:57:36Z")
I totally agree. I am an admin on dozens of sites but am not a moderator on any (maybe one?).
Several times I have been contacted by a user about something that I could not help with or had the site owner express concern that I was listed on the about page.
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2018, 2:22am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434/8 "2018-06-22T02:22:29Z")
> [@cpradio](#):
>
> I feel like Discourse team has a plugin that hides users from being listed on that page… maybe one of them can speak to it.
We do. We’re admins on lots of hosted sites for support reasons but we don’t show up on the About page.
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### Author:  [@wolftune](https://meta.discourse.org/u/wolftune)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2018, 3:05am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434/9 "2018-06-22T03:05:08Z")
Hiding people entirely would only sorta solve my concern (it would help avoid contacts to people who don’t want it, but they’d lose being honored as part of the staff). I want clarity about the admins who are mods so that it’s obvious that they are options when _mods_ specifically are needed. I think I don’t want to hide the non-mod admins though. I’d still like them to be honored as being staff in our case.
I think the About page just could use a rethinking in how staff are presented overall. I could see several different ways to do it. One thought: flip the current approach, just maybe show all mod+admin folks under mod, but give them a special badge noting that they are admins. Another thought: Show it like a Venn diagram somehow so that everyone is in a big list but a section are highlighted mods and a section admins and show an overlapping section. I’m sure good UX folks could have other ideas.
The goal is just to have more clarity for the multiple purposes that we show who the staff are (knowing who to contact for things, honoring people for their work and positions…)
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### Author:  [@cpradio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cpradio)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2018, 11:28am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434/10 "2018-06-22T11:28:57Z")
Just found this
> [@How to hide admins from /about page](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-hide-admins-from-about-page/43678/2):
>
> Since we often have to be admin to diagnose issues or change settings on our customer’s Discourse, we decided to hide all our @discourse.org accounts from the admins lists. That way, we’re not polluting our customer’s admins lists. We do this using a plugin that is automatically installed to all the Discourse we host and does something like after\_initialize do add\_to\_serializer(:about, :admins) do object.admins.reject { |u| u.email =~ /@discourse\.org/i } end end
It should help give you an idea on how it could be implemented in a plugin.
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### Author:  [@jtbayly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jtbayly)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2018, 3:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434/11 "2018-11-24T15:29:29Z")
> [@HAWK](#):
>
> > I feel like Discourse team has a plugin that hides users from being listed on that page… maybe one of them can speak to it.
>
> We do.
Is this something that can be released?
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### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2018, 4:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434/12 "2018-11-24T16:48:22Z")
We will never release that plugin since it’s our secret sauce, but that feature is easy to do 😉
```ruby
add_to_serializer(:about, :admins) do
object.admins.reject do |user|
# your criteria for removing users from the admins list
end
end
```
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [November 30, 2018, 9:08pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434/13 "2018-11-30T21:08:02Z")
From the I-don’t-really-understand-serializers department. . .
```ruby
# remove pfaffman from admins
puts "now Adding to serializer"
add_to_serializer(:about, :admins) do
object.admins.reject do |user|
puts "USER::: #{user}"
end
end
puts "end Adding to serializer"
```
I get no output between “now…” and “end…”.
I thought that `# your criteria for removing users from the admins list ` would seem like I’d put something like `user.username=='pfaffman'` in there, but it doesn’t seem like anything is happening. Except that now no admins are displayed.
edit: This also removes moderators (I tried `false` too).
```plaintext
add_to_serializer(:about, :moderators) do
true
end
```
---
### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [November 30, 2018, 9:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434/14 "2018-11-30T21:20:36Z")
add\_to\_serializer is a function which takes three arguments.
1. Name of the serializer (`:about`)
2. Name of the variable you want to serialize (`:admins`)
3. A [block](http://ruby-for-beginners.rubymonstas.org/blocks.html). Think of this as a section of code that will be executed at some point in the future
> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> I get no output between “now…” and “end…”.
So that is expected. The `block` you gave to `add to serializer` has not been executed yet. In fact, it will only be executed when the serializer is used. If you go and request `about.json`, you should then see `"USER::: #{user}"` appear in your console. And it will appear every single time you make the request.
> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> user.username==‘pfaffman’
Yes, that sounds like it should work. Remember it is case sensitive.
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2023, 12:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434/15 "2023-01-16T12:40:21Z")
A post was split to a new topic: [Can the /about page distinguish between moderators and category moderators?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-the-about-page-distinguish-between-moderators-and-category-moderators/251914)
---
### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2025, 6:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-listing-of-admins-vs-moderators-is-confusing/90434/16 "2025-12-29T18:04:19Z")
I think this is clearer now because admins who are also moderators are shown in both lists
