# What is the best practice for displaying user's Authority, "flair" or "role" in the forum?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-the-best-practice-for-displaying-users-authority-flair-or-role-in-the-forum/38624>\
**Category:** UX\
**Created:** [2016年一月28日 10:41 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-the-best-practice-for-displaying-users-authority-flair-or-role-in-the-forum/38624 "2016-01-28T10:41:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 11\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Romanr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/romanr/32/121979_2.png) [@Romanr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Romanr)\
**Post date:** [2016年一月28日 10:41 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-the-best-practice-for-displaying-users-authority-flair-or-role-in-the-forum/38624/1 "2016-01-28T10:41:19Z")

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How to add some kind of Badge next to the person’s name to visitors can see that person has authority in the forum?  
I have a forum for a product where we have product Developers, Testers, product Founder.  
Just want to have “Developer” or “creator” “Tester” written next to the person’s name in their posts or replies. So visitors can easily see that the parson has authority and their answer can be trusted.

- Badges do not seem not appear next to the name. Also badges seem to be geared towards being issued automatically.
- Groups problem #1: Group name next to person’s name is written in light-gray text color. Which makes it look very unimportant. Definitely does not make visitor see that the person posting has authority.
- Groups problem #2: Let’s say we have product founder. So there should be “Founder” group just for that one person? Shouldn’t it be like a role or badge for this?

Even looking at meta.discourse forum it’s not easy to understand when the person has authority or some random visitor posting. And when there’s grey text next to the person’s name sometime it looks like a group, sometimes it’s like group but you can’t see that group, it’s something else?

What is the best practice for this?

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**Author:** ![che2on](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/che2on/32/122012_2.png) [@che2on](https://meta.discourse.org/u/che2on)\
**Post date:** [2016年一月28日 11:08 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-the-best-practice-for-displaying-users-authority-flair-or-role-in-the-forum/38624/2 "2016-01-28T11:08:45Z")

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I maintain a group called “Crew Member”. I assign access to this group to our crew members. Also this group is public.

You are asking something like quora bio right? I get it.

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**Author:** ![ccdw](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/ccdw/32/51564_2.png) [@ccdw](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ccdw)\
**Post date:** [2016年一月28日 11:36 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-the-best-practice-for-displaying-users-authority-flair-or-role-in-the-forum/38624/3 "2016-01-28T11:36:20Z")

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> [@Romanr](#):
>
> Even looking at meta.discourse forum it’s not easy to understand when the person has authority or some random visitor posting.

I raised this with the Discourse team recently. Clarification of role, and therefore the ability to weight responses, would be very helpful.

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**Author:** ![Tom\_Newsom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/tom_newsom/32/115981_2.png) [@Tom\_Newsom](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Tom_Newsom)\
**Post date:** [2016年一月28日 11:56 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-the-best-practice-for-displaying-users-authority-flair-or-role-in-the-forum/38624/4 "2016-01-28T11:56:46Z")

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> [@Romanr](#):
>
> o

You can make the user title stand out more by styling this CSS:

`.topic-meta-data .user-title { }`

In the Customize section of the admin panel.  
However, this styling applies to _all_ user titles. There no way (AFAIK) to style each group differently.

This has overlap with [https://meta.discourse.org/t/egocentric-features/18521](https://meta.discourse.org/t/egocentric-features/18521)

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**Author:** ![fefrei](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/fefrei/32/119538_2.png) [@fefrei](https://meta.discourse.org/u/fefrei)\
**Post date:** [2016年一月28日 13:46 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-the-best-practice-for-displaying-users-authority-flair-or-role-in-the-forum/38624/5 "2016-01-28T13:46:55Z")

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If you use groups, you can also use a bit of CSS to add a label to the post metadata:

 ![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/2/f/2f75736f53ab75449d3fe6fd009fa83751f263ee.png)

Here is the CSS I used:

```plaintext
.topic-meta-data .username.staff::after {
    content: "Team";
    margin-left: 0.6em;
    background-color: #5bc0de;
    border-radius: 0.40em;
    padding: .2em .6em .3em;
    color: white;
}

```

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**Author:** ![Tom\_Newsom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/tom_newsom/32/115981_2.png) [@Tom\_Newsom](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Tom_Newsom)\
**Post date:** [2016年一月28日 14:02 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-the-best-practice-for-displaying-users-authority-flair-or-role-in-the-forum/38624/6 "2016-01-28T14:02:42Z")

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Ah yes, you can add specific styling for the system user groups “admin” and “moderators” but not any of your own.

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**Author:** ![fefrei](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/fefrei/32/119538_2.png) [@fefrei](https://meta.discourse.org/u/fefrei)\
**Post date:** [2016年一月28日 14:04 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-the-best-practice-for-displaying-users-authority-flair-or-role-in-the-forum/38624/7 "2016-01-28T14:04:41Z")

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Custom groups are addressable as well:

![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/optimized/3X/b/5/b5029352bee829d37297a38f779e8530a7429911_2_690x50.png)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tom\_Newsom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/tom_newsom/32/115981_2.png) [@Tom\_Newsom](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Tom_Newsom)\
**Post date:** [2016年一月28日 14:05 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-the-best-practice-for-displaying-users-authority-flair-or-role-in-the-forum/38624/8 "2016-01-28T14:05:53Z")

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Oh my. I could have sworn that wasn’t there last time I checked 😊

EDIT: Ah yes it’s only for the Primary usergroup. Ideally, it’d list all the groups that user belongs to.

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**Author:** ![cpradio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/cpradio/32/4970_2.png) [@cpradio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cpradio)\
**Post date:** [2016年一月28日 14:15 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-the-best-practice-for-displaying-users-authority-flair-or-role-in-the-forum/38624/9 "2016-01-28T14:15:41Z")

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> [@Tom\_Newsom](#):
>
> EDIT: Ah yes it’s only for the Primary usergroup. Ideally, it’d list all the groups that user belongs to.

That could be a very long list in some communities…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tom\_Newsom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/tom_newsom/32/115981_2.png) [@Tom\_Newsom](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Tom_Newsom)\
**Post date:** [2016年一月28日 14:18 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-the-best-practice-for-displaying-users-authority-flair-or-role-in-the-forum/38624/10 "2016-01-28T14:18:13Z")

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No doubt. Still, it’s something I’d like to be able to do, somehow…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Romanr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/romanr/32/121979_2.png) [@Romanr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Romanr)\
**Post date:** [2016年一月29日 05:15 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-the-best-practice-for-displaying-users-authority-flair-or-role-in-the-forum/38624/11 "2016-01-29T05:15:06Z")

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> [@fefrei](#):
>
> If you use groups, you can also use a bit of CSS to add a label to the post metadata:

Thank you, that is nice and simple way to do it!