Allow mods to hide moderator badge

[dd32]

Recently it was pointed out that super admins on WordPress.org (ie. some of the most active meta developers currently) are classified as Moderators on the support forums - that's in general a good thing, but it's also resulted in any of our support replies being flagged as moderators, even if we're not part of the moderation team.

It was also pointed out, that threads started by moderators (For example, reviews) are also flagged as moderator posts, when it has nothing to do with their moderation capabilities.

I'm putting this out there for discussion:

1. Should an option for moderators be added to exclude their badge from a given reply/thread?

AND/ OR

2. Should the moderator badge be updated to check for specific roles being applied, rather than moderation capabilities, so that those of us who are super admins (but not part of the moderation team) aren't flagged as such?

[Clorith]

Yes.

For those unfamiliar, when a moderator replies, a blue bar is attached to the reply saying "moderator", this also adds weight to your post or reply by association.

I guess I should write more than just "yes", but this would indeed be nice. You've already mentioned the use case of writing a review as an individual, and not in an official capacity, the same could be said for a support topic for a plugin or theme that you use as well.

The simplest solution would be to introduce a postmeta option, and a checkbox that's only available when making a topic/review/reply with the moderator capabilities. This could be ticked to indicate "I am not posting in an official capacity" or similar, to make this single entry not have the badge with it.

For those super admins, perhaps it would make sense for this to be a user field that changes the default of said checkbox.

Thinking even further, should it maybe be reversed "I am posting in an official capacity", this might need more discussing, but my reasoning is simple: The less "moderator heavy" replies are, the more likely it is that others would be willing to participate, as it would look more like a community effort, and less like a team one, to provide support for users?

[dd32]

Yes.

I concur.

The simplest solution would be to introduce a postmeta option, and a checkbox that's only available when making a topic/review/reply with the moderator capabilities.

That's what I was thinking, perhaps with it retaining it's checked status (ie. if you check it, your next reply it'll be checked, if you unchecked it, it'll be unchecked on next reply).. But with this next part, maybe that's not needed..

Thinking even further, should it maybe be reversed "I am posting in an official capacity", this might need more discussing, but my reasoning is simple: The less "moderator heavy" replies are, the more likely it is that others would be willing to participate, as it would look more like a community effort, and less like a team one, to provide support for users?

That's a good topic to bring up, and it turns out I was thinking the same thing, I just hadn't realised it.
Working in the forums over the past week, it feels like when a moderator is posting in a thread, it's just the Mod and the OP.. Maybe that's because the Mod covers everything, but perhaps it's because others feel like they're already being helped there..

Moderators could still have Mod mentioned in their user title, but they just wouldn't get the big blue highlight unless they're posting in an "official" manner..

[fierevere]

Seem to be reasonable.
It can be a forum profile (usermeta) setting, which turns the checkbox for posts on/off by default.

[mrfoxtalbot]

This is relevant to this other conversation https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6839

[mrfoxtalbot]

It would be nice if this was a profile option ("moderator" or "regular user" by default) as different moderatos will have different preferences. For instance plugin reviewers will likely NOT want to have it active by default, see 6996.