I was reading a topic earlier, and noticed that one of the contributors was a former employee. Obviously that gives an extra weight to what they are saying, because at the time they had insights a normal member would not. However, a new visitor to Meta would not know this about the person. Instead it could be a bit confusing to see someone who is not marked as staff, appear to act as staff, and be as informed as staff. At the very least, the lack of staff flair had me second guessing whether this person was who I remembered them being.
I wonder then, if former staff could have the option of an “alumni” flair, with a greyscale/silver version of the discourse logo. This would illustrate their unique expertise authority on the topics at hand, but also indicate that they are no longer staff.
I’ve thought about that, too. My problem with it is that the badge doesn’t really say much. Without knowing when the person worked for Discourse, there is no way of knowing whether something was written before they worked for Discourse, while they worked for Discourse, or after they worked for Discourse. Without this information, the assumption that someone has more expertise on this topic than other community members may be a fallacy.
There is a similar problem with the team flair on older posts. There are team members that were active on Meta for years before they joined the team. Assuming they had more insight when they wrote their post based on the flair can lead to false assumptions.
I think the flair only helps for current discussions.