Can the about page distinguish between Moderator and Category Moderator? There are important differences between their permissions, I’ve never seen a discourse forum map About to Discourse permissions.
I wonder if it could be worthwhile linking this post as well so users can understand forum permissions. Or maybe that should be handled elsewhere on a given forum.
Hello and welcome @gown 
The /about page already separates out category moderators from full moderators, and displays the category badge and name next to their section:
I think linking the full Trust Level table may be too much to add to that page as so many of the features and abilities can be tweaked per site, but category moderators do have quite a lot of the same abilities as full-mods, but limited to their specific categories (though with a necessary focus on content rather than user moderation).
Hi! Thank you.
I’m confused as to why @Test_Two isn’t labeled Category Moderator; wouldn’t that be logical? This /about page has the same issue (assuming the section moderators have the Category Mod permission, they may not, who knows!).
I also don’t see consistency in terminology with you having the title of ‘Community Moderator’. Your title isn’t linked to a group either; https://meta.discourse.org/g/CommunityModerator. If it was I could at least refer to the group’s bio for guidance and to map members of the group to Discourse permissions. I think the life of a TL0 user should be made easier. 
Forums probably won’t always set themselves up as in the model image you provided, perhaps one’s permissions should be exposed in some way?
As Category Moderators are in Groups you could use group flare or in the About page also use css to target the Category Mods with additional info.
ie @JammyDodger The General Moderator (General is a Category) Not to be confuded that the Test user is a “General moderator”)
So say if you used a default category of " Lounge" it would say the Test user is a Moderator of Lounge.
Lounge Moderator
Test_Two
Only Test_one and Test_three are site wide full moderators.
The ‘section moderators’ are category moderators, that’s what those sections are. 
They also get a moderator shield next to their names on their posts, but only within the categories they’re moderators of.
Community Moderator is my job title rather than linked to a group that grants permission. 
You can find my avatar in the admins list (though we have a large number of admins on Meta, so it may make it harder to pick me out from the crowd )
Ah yes, I perhaps could have been more careful with my example screenshot. 
I’ll add a better one when I’m back on the computer.
Hey no. worries. Things are always clear to a team of designers and those with direct xp.
Feel free to pm me as I am designing a new forum for a very polished discourse xp. In short part of the ides has to do with documenting in my case forum functions for novice lay users.
This idea could be applied in a similar fashion here for themes, theme components plugins etc… Please do not confuse this with negative criticism as Dicourse is awesome! It takes me back to the days of Telegard and the hacks like Renegade Bbs. Pcboard was harder to setup but unlike earlier 2 mentioned feature it’s own powerful script language for high level customization.
How about this one? Does this make it clearer?
And they get the shield icon next to their username:
I think this is a reasonable way of highlighting their extra status/abilities without being overly ‘shouty’ about it. Most of the time they’ll just want to interact with the site as regular users rather than wear a high-vis uniform. Though Discourse is eminently customisable, so the option is there for admins of individual sites to add extra emphasis to them through a custom theme component if they want to.
As far as you’re concerned, a Category Moderator is a category moderator. After all, the clue is in the name! duh! They moderate categories! However, the concept of a category moderator happens to be alien to me and the distinguishing characteristic of a category moderator is the permissions, not the category quality. This is why me saying:
appears to you to be me missing the obvious but it isn’t.
Is there a reason a category moderator can’t have Moderator permissions? Referring back to your original image; I infer that Test_Two has Moderator permissions, it’s irrelevant to me that “General” happens to be written adjacent. As far as I’m concerned, that is an informal “You look after this category Test_Two.” How does one know otherwise?
Category Moderator is a proper noun in Discourse, as is Moderator. In my opinion, labeling a Category Moderator a Moderator is to mix up two concepts. What is the point of giving something a name if you aren’t going to stick to your own parlance? Or to put this another way; leave /about as is and instead put TL0, TL1, TL2, TL3, TL4, Moderator, Moderator here. Doesn’t make much sense does it! And I don’t understand why /about is different.
Pretty nuanced difference that takes some effort to understand in my opinion. Although it is It isn’t mentioned in the permissions page mentioned in my first post!
The second image doesn’t improve on the issues I feel are there, however, if the feeling is the way things are is the right way, that’s fair, perhaps the conceptual difference between Moderator and Category Moderator could be communicated?
Well with discourse you can label things however you choose.
Admin has more or less complete site access. Nothing hidden. And has full site permissions. This level user has power enough to kill the forum.
Full Moderator Also has a lot of power and can as such destroy the forum. They can like admin review logs and see users sign uo email address and other personal info that a user might might choose to enter
Category Mod or Sub Mod Has same priviledges as TL4 save likevRedit mods can manage flags in there.
To be honest if your planning on setting up a forum you will want to take time to familar yourself; to which I presume this is why your asking questions.
To a designer or even a devite tester it is eas.
This topic is drifting toward what type of moderators should or shall use. So. Because I want to give only that access level what is needed, and because I’m using few really limited categories (type company/customers) I can’t use full moderators. TL4 would do the job, but I like to give the shield icon. My solution was to create moderators-group and using that as category moderator at every public categories. Those moderators are TL3, not TL4.
They loose some minor abilities like merging, deletion, timer and few spam-related thing if I’m remembering right, but on my forum any of those are no issue whatsoever.
That means if /about starts showing moderators per category it would look… funny. But I know — my style is not the most typical one. And in my circles… it just doesn’t matter because nobody opens /about ever; it is actually hided a bit too well.
Thank you very much, as it happens I’m not looking to run a forum of my own. The scope of the topic is limited to the first post, the reason for coming to this forum is that Discourse has a couple of issues. There being one of privacy.
One solution would be to give the Category Moderators a different colored shield. When you hover over it, it says “This user is a Category Moderator”. Currently when hovering over a shield it only ever says “This user is a moderator”.
Ordinary forum users can’t understand, or care, that difference. That would be helpful only to other moderators and admin who doesn’t remember who is who. Plus it de facto works only with desktops.
Your very welcome! The privacy issue in the linked topic is not directly a Discourse issue. This is more an issue with the company team that is using Discourse or rather any competing forum software.
Category Mods & Tl4(Leader) positions allow for these “Trusted” lower tier Forum staff to perform a variety of moderator functions without potential privacy concerns.
Company team should only Have team members at the admin level that have high levels of integrity, even more than the Full moderator position. It is a misconception that these 2 top level positions have no one to answer to.
Minimally Admins answer to the head Admin &/or company that is paying for the social application. Because of how much private information these 2 positions have. They can also face considerable legal repercussions if there found breaking legal protections not only locally to where these individuals reside but also in other regions as well. There actions can also put the parent company at legal risk as well.
Discourse Meta like any other social application responsibility of use is on those whom use it to provide an environment to the public or even used privately.
Discourse is provided as a blank canvas with the ability to very nearly completely customize it.
As you mention they could at the base level install have category mods identified more clearly and that can also be said for Tl4. And maybe due to your feedback and others they might implement for example your suggestion in core with color config option and sheild hover info.
In the meantime if you have programming xp you could yourself create a theme-component that adds your suggested improvements. Or a theme dev maybe inspired to created it.
I myself have very basic abilities to that end no almost no xp. I am more an idea person.
For example a community I volunteer for I have wanted to have something that could compare current user that has the ability to manage flagged posts to remove/hide management buttons if the reviewer is the flagger or the target of the flag. Imho a flag reviewer should not validate there own flags or be able to resolve/disagree with flagged posts against them.
My fairly simple want would help remove temptation to abuse flag reviewing.
To which it is also true you should know and trust those whom a company promotes to have any leader positions.
While true in part. However I have seen theme authors implement a kind of hover for mobile. That being said it could simply be made as a pop up dismissable window giving the optional configurable info to add clarity.
Meaning two touches. Not nice 
And because most of users never do that first click it is quite unnecessary info and only adds noise.
And stll — why random user would need to know when a moderator acts on category level and when forum-wide?
Very true. Though I didn’t say it was perfect; just doable of sorts. At least now I know why I have often had trouble getting that work mobile hover to work for me. lol. Always thiught might have been an issue with my device. Thank you for providing illuminating clarity on this.
Elsewhere, I’ve seen the headings Global Mods and Category Mods. By adding a qualifier to both, it might be clearer.
