As most of you probably know, members of staff are chosen out of our regular membership. This means that staff are part of the membership, have posts with their own opinions, and continue to post in a non-official capacity. For a while now, certain members of staff took it upon themselves to try and distinguish their regular posts from their official posts. Though in most cases the tone of a post can be used to determine whether a staff member is speaking officially, to help users out, some staff members would color their post text either green (for moderators) or red (for administrators).
Today we're making it an official thing, and introducing Administrator and Moderator Notices, which look like this:
If you cannot see the above properly, you may need to clear your browser cache.
If you see one of these notices in a thread, please read it, as they will be used by staff to make official statements in the thread which may apply to you. For example, if an argument in a thread is getting heated, a member of staff may use a notice to ask that the participants back off and be more civil.
It is important to note that anyone caught trying to impersonate staff by using these notices will be warned and banned if they continue to do it. This does not apply if you are quoting the notice and responding to it (e.g. to ask for a clarification).
We hope that by introducing these notices, people will be more informed when a member of staff is speaking in an official capacity, and when they are just being a regular forum member.
We are also in the process of updating the rules to make them less ambiguous. This is a lengthy process as we want to be thorough, but we felt it was fair that everyone had some advance notice.
- Tiberius
Today we're making it an official thing, and introducing Administrator and Moderator Notices, which look like this:
Administrator Notice
This is an administrator notice.
This is an administrator notice.
Moderator Notice
This is a moderator notice.
This is a moderator notice.
If you cannot see the above properly, you may need to clear your browser cache.
If you see one of these notices in a thread, please read it, as they will be used by staff to make official statements in the thread which may apply to you. For example, if an argument in a thread is getting heated, a member of staff may use a notice to ask that the participants back off and be more civil.
It is important to note that anyone caught trying to impersonate staff by using these notices will be warned and banned if they continue to do it. This does not apply if you are quoting the notice and responding to it (e.g. to ask for a clarification).
We hope that by introducing these notices, people will be more informed when a member of staff is speaking in an official capacity, and when they are just being a regular forum member.
We are also in the process of updating the rules to make them less ambiguous. This is a lengthy process as we want to be thorough, but we felt it was fair that everyone had some advance notice.
- Tiberius