Staff tags expanded to the Blue and the Green

January 6, 2018 12:23 PM

To make mod notes a tiny bit easier to see and find, we've added Staff badges, like the ones currently used in MetaTalk, to MetaFilter and Ask MetaFilter.

These badges will only appear on those two subsites if a mod is posting using [mod voice], meaning that someone's ramblings about Menger sponges and how they relate to Lemarchand's box will not be marked as a staff note, as that's a personal thing and not a site/policy/moderation thing. They are also retroactive: older posts with mod comments gain the staff badges on those comments as well.

If you want to find mod notes in a thread, you can. Just search for (staff) … false positives aren't impossible, but the staff badge is that text and searchable. This was already true for MetaTalk, and worth not losing.

The badges in MetaTalk are completely unchanged in behaviour and implementation.

posted by frimble (staff) to MetaFilter-Related at 12:23 PM (18 comments total)

Thank you! I’m always a little confused to see mod comments in Ask without the (staff) designation and continuity across sites makes my brain happy.
posted by coppermoss at 12:36 PM on January 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

Thanks frimble, this is great!
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:13 PM on January 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

This is a good thing, thanks frimble.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:28 PM on January 6, 2018

I've wanted this since we got staff tags here on the grey, as I think it makes just as much sense. Thank you for this!
posted by deezil at 1:38 PM on January 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

This is really great -- thank you, frimble!
posted by mochapickle at 2:02 PM on January 6, 2018

meaning that someone's ramblings about Menger sponges and how they relate to Lemarchand's box will not be marked as a staff note

I'm not sure I understand this reference since it in no way applies to any mods, and it especially doesn't apply to the guy who owns the place.
posted by bondcliff at 2:23 PM on January 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

someone's ramblings about Menger sponges

The Cabal would like a word in your shell-like.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:05 PM on January 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

Is that the shell-like, in the shell-like, in the shell-like, in the shell-like, in the shell-like, in the…, Johnny Wallflower?
posted by ambrosen at 6:52 PM on January 6, 2018

Yay! Thanks. That seems like it’ll help make the site clearer for new users, especially, which feels nice.
posted by lazuli at 7:17 AM on January 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

Like.
posted by RolandOfEld at 9:18 AM on January 8, 2018

Nicely done.
posted by stet at 9:44 AM on January 8, 2018

Hooray! Thank you.
posted by PearlRose at 9:56 AM on January 8, 2018

Dunno if this matters, but the badges don't seem to show up when you use the AJAX comment loader, but do on a subsequent page reload.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 7:30 AM on January 9, 2018

Thanks, NSAID. I should have caught that myself, seeing as I remembered the last time I was mucking around with badges by peoples' names. It's fixed now.
posted by frimble (staff) at 11:27 AM on January 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

Yeee ha! Thank you frimble for building a stall for my pony!
posted by Jesse the K at 3:45 PM on January 10, 2018

I thought we agreed that if mod qua mod comments were over marked in the blue and the green the tag would say "ex cathedra." It seems less likely to get false positives on ctrl-f.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:08 PM on January 12, 2018

"These badges will only appear on those two subsites if a mod is posting using [mod voice], meaning that someone's ramblings about Menger sponges and how they relate to Lemarchand's box will not be marked as a staff note, as that's a personal thing and not a site/policy/moderation thing. They are also retroactive: older posts with mod comments gain the staff badges on those comments as well."

I assume the retroactive notes don't take into account if the mod was posting using a [mod voice]? Otherwise you'd have to have gone through everything manually, right?
posted by el io at 8:59 PM on January 19, 2018

Retroactive staff tags capture most of the mod-speaking-as-mod comments, since just-participating mods don't use small and brackets for those comments, which is the combination (along with user names of staff) used to assign the staff tags.

So for past comments, this misses any official comments that were not styled that way, but should result in very few, if any, false positives for mod-speaking-as-mod. It could happen in a situation where a mod might have coincidentally used small and brackets a long time ago (probably before becoming a mod and/or before that was used as mod-signalling). But if anyone runs across anything that seems like an error with the staff tag, just let us know and we can adjust.
posted by taz (staff) at 1:36 AM on January 20, 2018