What I mean by this is that it would be nice to be able to distinguish whether an admin or mod is participating in a conversation as a regular user or in their official capacity. It looks like this sort of functionality is half-way there; I imagine this looking graphically something like the way “Topic Lock” messages or “This topic is now pinned” messages are displayed with a colored background when the mod or admin to denote that this is “Word From On High” as opposed to the opinion of a site user who happens to be a mod.
I imagine the UI for this might be some kind of megaphone button that would also tint the background of the post editor. (Or, using font-awesome, fa-bullhorn. Maybe fa-bell or fa-gavel.)
There was always the intention to allow mods to insert a random message in a topic as a staff member, with the yellow background.
We never quite got there, and very few people ask for it.
It would be nice though since on bbs.boingboing.net the mods do periodically post in topics to warn everyone that things are going off track – having that in the yellow “hey this is an official message not just me talking to everyone” staff color would definitely be useful since