The Moderator Diamond that appears next to a moderators name when they comment. Do those stay after moderators have ended their term? or are those only shown for presently active moderators?
for example:
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To answer the unasked question: there is no list of "past moderators" - you can't really know if a specific user was once a moderator. I asked for such a thing but it was pretty much declined. – Shadow Wizard Jul 4 '12 at 7:04
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They only show for active moderators: if a moderator stops being a moderator, all of their past posts retroactively lose the diamond. Conversely, if a regular user becomes a moderator, all of their past posts retroactively gain the diamond.
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2You may want to include he example of SLaks stackoverflow.com/election stackoverflow.com/users/34397/slaks – Manishearth Jul 4 '12 at 6:45
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The diamond next to a moderator's name represents that user's current status as an active moderator. When a user becomes a moderator, all previous posts, comments, close, and delete messages, even answers, questions, and comments from day one will be represented by that diamond. This is why so much emphasis is put on scrutinizing a user's past behavior during moderator elections.
With that said, once the diamond is removed, the diamond is removed across the board. In fact, if you look carefully enough, you can see some closed questions that only have one close voter, yet this person has no diamond. This is generally either a former pro tem moderator whose term expired when the site launched, a former Stack Exchange employee, or a moderator who stepped down for other reasons.
In short, if you see a diamond by a user's name, that user is currently an active moderator.
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Are there examples of a moderator that "stepped down for other reasons" ? What reasons might that be? Are there any mechanisms that have the power to degrade another moderator (other than direct action from SE employees)? – awe Sep 7 '12 at 13:16
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@Awe - You might want to consider searching on MSO, then asking yourself as a new question if you don't find anything. Good luck! – jmort253 Sep 7 '12 at 18:42
