The discussion revolves around the purpose of ‘staff color’ on Discourse, which users can apply to posts to indicate official staff communication, even if the poster isn’t staff. MikeNolan initially questioned its utility since it can be used by non-staff, suggesting the site needs a glossary for non-standard terms. Lilly clarified that ‘staff color’ is meant to highlight formal staff posts—such as moderating heated discussions, making admin announcements, or celebrating community members (e.g., posting a birthday message). She also mentioned the ‘staff notice’ feature, which adds a header to emphasize official statements. Lilly shared links to helpful Discourse guides, including the Discourse moderator guide, new user guide, and interface nomenclature. MikeNolan agreed with the explanation, noting that while the term may not have originally intended such broad usage, established nomenclature rarely evolves to reflect expanded use cases.
I haven’t figured out what the point of ‘staff color’ is, since it can be applied to non-staff posts.
What this site needs is some kind of glossary and conventions page, to define terms that might not be industry standard ones and conventions that Discourse or its user base have found helpful over the years.
i rewrote the Discourse moderator guide for our site and it has a section on staff color. it is to indicate a formal staff post at any time in a topic. say a topic discussion is getting heated and a mod wants to step in with a post that is an official staff post to cool it off, they can use the staff color to indicate this. i use it more than my mods for when i want to highlight a tech or admin related post. today i used it to post an official happy birthday topic to a very longtime well-liked user who is very old. another similar tool is the staff notice, which ads an official staff notice statement header above any post.
also, here are some Discourse guides:
It’s just a way for site staff to make a post stand out from the crowd with some background colour.
I suspected that was the case, though it may not have started out that way, and once nomenclature is established it seldom changes to reflect a wider usage.