Employee profiles are now marked with a “Staff” indicator

Question

As of 31 July 2019, all staff member accounts have "Staff" next to their name on their user profile.

It looks like this:

^{(This is an updated image from the original one included in this post as the UI has changed)}

For reference, it used to look like this:

We took our cue from the existing design of the "top n% overall" label which we've actually inverted for everyone (not just staff) to stand out from the others. Additionally, we've updated the moderator label from "(moderator)" to an actual label, so it's easier to see and stands out. Staff with diamonds will have both of the indicators.

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Clearing up confusion to improve interactions

We've noticed a shared point of friction for users and staff alike - staff often need to post answers on meta sites to explain how a tool or feature works or to respond to bugs. This is a great opportunity for them to interact with the people asking the questions but, sometimes, not having an indicator for every employee makes these interactions more challenging than they already are.

You might say "But what about diamonds, that's used for staff"... and you'd be right, in some cases. The primary purpose of the diamond is to indicate the moderators on a site. These are non-staff users who have extra tools at their disposal and special access to information. While we gave these to staff in the past, we now only grant them to specific types of staff members who need access to these tools - generally community managers and developers.

As such, for the rest of our cohort, we have relied on them mentioning their status in their "about me" sections. This simply isn't a sustainable option both because it's easy to forget but also because it's not actually proof. Anyone can edit their profile to state they're staff.

Adding an indicator like this isn't an original idea. Y'all have been asking for a way to recognize us for years and we're so excited to be able to deliver this change:

• Keep "Employee" on the profile of SE employees on meta
• Can we have a square or triangle or heart or *something* after employees' names?
• Split visualization of employee and moderator

Fortunately, we already indicate staff status at the account level, so we can use that information to add a marker to staff profile pages that anyone can see. So this update makes most of these requests status-completed!

We'll still encourage our staff to be more specific about their job title in their "about me" but this marker will let y'all quickly and easily know if the person supporting a feature or answering a bug report is staff.

I'm really excited about this change and I hope it helps smooth out interactions across the network a bit. Questions? Ask them in the answers.

Answer 1

feature-request status-completed

This is a vast improvement from the previous situation. But I'd like to request one addition:

Add another shape/marker representing that the user is a staff member, to user cards and wherever the moderator diamond is shown, on meta sites

In other words, also show a special marker not only on the user profile, but wherever a moderator diamond would be shown (if the user is a moderator), on meta sites.

It would be very useful on posts, as the user card would make it clear to users that a given post is from a staff member, without having to tap on the profile description or mouse over the avatar (which is not possible on touch and mobile devices), especially if the staff member has little or no rep on the site. (I often get confused to see a low-rep user introduce them as an employee, only to find that they're actually an employee after clicking on their username.)

Second, it would be nice to know on the home page when a staff member answers a post, so that I know to read their response and know in advance before my eyes reach their user card that they're an employee.

Finally, it would be significantly less confusing if an action taken by a staff member that isn't otherwise possible by a user with that much rep is clearly marked as being done by a staff member (e.g. editing moderator-only tags without being a moderator, migrating a question more than 60 days old, etc.)

I've read Jeff's original arguments against this, and I disagree. We already distinguish between moderators and normal users, and for many years, it hasn't really given off the feeling that they're "above" us and that we don't have power. Also, the quote "there should be very little difference between my [Jeff's] actions and another community moderator's actions" relates to differences between staff moderators and community moderators - given that we no longer hand out moderator diamonds to all staff members, this quote is now irrelevant.

I've also read Catija's comment that staff should be free to participate in sites as community members and not be treated differently on main sites just because they're staff, so that's why this request only applies to meta sites.

Answer 2

feature-request status-completed

Could you please make this show on the mobile website? Currently, employee profiles have no special indicator on the mobile site other than their description maybe mentioning they’re employees.

Answer 3

status-completed

Alternative feature-request:

If the feature proposed in my other answer is not possible, or is not currently on the radar for implementation in 6-8 weeks, I'd like to propose another alternative/additional feature request:

Indicate in the expanded usercard if a user is a staff member

While this isn't an issue if the staff member has filled in their bio, this will bridge the gap for staff who haven't, choose not to given that their profile page already lists them as a staff member, or have filled in too little text that they're not eligible for the usercard. This should be significantly easier to implement.

Answer 4

feature-request

Is it possible to make both labels clickable? So we can easily search for all the moderators/staff members on a given site?

"Moderators" should naturally link to users?tab=moderators. You should probably create a similar page for staff members.

Answer 5

feature-request

Can we add the Staff label to the users Network Profiles as well. As example I redacted Catija's network profile:

Answer 6

Awesome, nicely done. :)

feature-request Please add those labels to the chat profile as well.

Answer 7

status-declined

The colors chosen are intentional. The company colors follow the Stack Overflow orange, so staff is orange. Moderators are traditionally indicated in blue (for example, they have blue usernames in chat) and our moderator swag uses a blue diamond. This also echoes the blue of Stack Exchange, the primary color of the entire network. ~Catija

feature-request Can the color of moderator and staff indicator be changed according to the color of the site?

Examples:

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Meta Stack Exchange:

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Stack Overflow:

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Bicycles Stack Exchange:

Answer 8

Thank you.

I like how you managed to preserve the essence of Jeff's original answer by restricting the "Staff" mark only on the profile page and not everywhere.

I had a question about whether the staff without diamonds will have privileges to update the red colored tags (including featured), which were originally marked as "Moderator only". (I have seen a few cases where staff have done this, but they are only on MSE and not on other child metas).

Answer 9

While we gave [moderator diamonds] to staff in the past, we now only grant them to specific types of staff members who need access to these tools

Does this mean that staff members who don't need access to these tools and who were hired after the recent change to internal policy, won't be able to moderate sites they're interested in, in their spare time? We had at least one staff member who didn't directly need access to the tools as part of their specific job duties, but served one site as a moderator purely using the diamond they were given as a staff member. Is this no longer possible?

(In my opinion, it's a good thing this was possible, since staff members who were actively participating in a site can provide better input to the team in various ways, such as the specific needs of the community, or whether other Area 51 proposals are duplicates of the given site. See also this MSO post: Require Participation in a Community Before Making Decisions that Affect That Community's Future)

Answer 10

I feel like this is counter productive to have across all sites and creates a distinction between user groups that the site doesn't need. The Q/A sites have always kept equality over members. Everyone is a valuable contributor and should feel as important as anyone else.

The staff badges say things that may not have been intended.

1. The staff are more important than everyone else.
2. The staff have an authority over everyone else.
3. Being a staff member is a goal each member should attain.

Everyone should feel equally important. This would be a beating around the bush method to deal with presenting a new authority anyway. The badges feel like a race for members to try and get on top to become staff.

The moderator diamond was subtle and small barely made any noise, and should have been extended to other symbols to signify other staff if necessary.

On the other hand the badges add two new achievements that regular members won't be able to attain and in essence belittles / discourages them.

Stack Overflow's co-founder's opinion on making staff more flashy over the entire platform (and therefore intentions the site was built upon): https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/82682/354123