I would be really interested in having a conversation about how we refer to admins, moderators and category moderators on the about page and in other places in Discourse.
To sum up my current understanding:
On the current about page, we have sections listing all the admins, then all the moderators, then all the category moderators
Members who are both admins or mods and category moderators are listed again as category moderators
If a member is both admin and moderator, they are only listed as admin and not as moderator
Category moderators are not indicated anywhere else but on the about page (not on their user card, user profile or on categories in any way)
On meta, we have lots of admins which is unusual. Most sites only have one or a handful of admins, and also a limited number of moderators.
My feeling is that on the about page, we could just combine all of these and display a tally of all them under the âModeratorsâ label, on the stats line:
The âOur adminsâ section below that could remain as it is, listing the six most recently active admins and âView moreâ link to see more if there are more.
The âOur moderatorsâ section could remain as is as well, except we could include both moderators and category moderators. Category moderators could be given decoration to indicate the category (or categories) where they are moderators.
Beyond the about page, I think we want to think about more prominently recognizing admins/moderators/category moderators:
We also have the concept of âstaffâ in Discourse but I am interested in deemphasizing that term in the UI because it often is confused with the employees of a company or organization involved in running the site. I prefer to refer to âadmins and moderatorsâ or âadmins and modsâ instead. And I think most members or visitors to a site donât care and would be fine just seeing âmoderatorsâ referenced because those are the people they can turn to for help with discussions or any issue with participating in a community.
I think it depends a little. Before I sign up, the information about who owns the forum and will get my data can be relevant. This is obvious at forums related to a company, but not at a quite small community about a hobby. So something like a site owner is interesting, not necessarily all admins, but someone responsible. This is maybe also the person you would contact if you disagreed with the decision of a moderator.
In general, I think highlighting the moderators as the ones to contact first is very helpful. The default guidelines say:
This site is operated by your [friendly moderator team](%{base_path}/about) and you, the community. If you have any further questions about how things should work here, open a new topic in %{feedback_category} and letâs discuss! If thereâs a critical or urgent issue that canât be handled by a meta topic or flag, [contact the moderators](%{base_path}/about).
When all moderators are also admins, this can be confusing because no moderators are shown at /about. Thatâs why itâs definitely problematic the way it was, and highlighting moderators fixes that.
I think category moderators have a shield next to their username at posts in their category, but itâs not that eye-catching.
(The German translation uses âteamâ instead of âstaffâ, so that isnât a problem, while âAdministratoren und Moderatorenâ is quite long and creates the impression they are all male, so I like when âstaffâ is used)
We looked into this when we were first prototyping the new about page, and I was specifically thinking about the German concept of âImpressumâ. An idea I had proposed was that the âContact usâ section would contain seeded copy, but could be customized directly on the âAbout this siteâ admin page. So sites that need, it could provide for example, full contact details for the person or company responsible, including full name, mailing address, etc.
This is very interesting. Thanks for sharing this tidbit of knowledge.
Ah if so then a no-go. So back to original idea. Make it so the admin/mod/cat mod shields can be customized like group flair with uploads and/or allow emoji.
