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It has been brought to my attention that some of the user-base correctly question whether I, and other developers are really staff. The obvious solution to this would be to create a new badge for developers.

A simple recolour of the admin badge would do the trick, but we may need a way to support it in the back end. I have previously verbally proposed to the team a badge system that stores the names of all of the badges held in an array similar to how 'nsfw' is handled - I feel this would be a cleaner approach than adding another variable into the entity but it may but over-complicating things.

Image provided by @FretzCapo as a mockup that I've put down to a vote in our developer chat.

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@benhayward.ben,
Considering that currently all developers are employees / contractors of Minds Inc. (and there are still issues surrounding the active encouragement and promoting of 3rd party contributions), as well as trying to limit any obfuscation or confusion in relation to staff status, I agree that staff members should have a different coloured badge ie. the green badge) that distinguishes them from verified users. However, I believe that having many multiple coloured badges could aid in further confusion for the average user and consider that it would be more sensible to have only a single colour (ie. green) for all staff members.

I have just noticed that not all staff developers are treated equally within this situation. As an example, whilst yourself possess a blue badge, other staff developers (ie. @edgebal) have a green badge and this situation provides even further confusion.

Also, please remember that the staff are not well known for producing straightforward documentation about procedural changes and I believe that a multiple colour scheme will just add to the confusion (please remember the KISS principles when approaching issues such as this).

@medworthy I think actual different icons would be a better solution personally as I agree to many colors makes any badge less valuable and less likely to be viewed.

However I do agree that developers and admins need to be disguised in some way and separately if they do not have the same permissions.

@MindsGaming & @benhayward.ben
Whichever method is finally decided on and implemented, the changes need to be reflected within the FAQ (Helpdesk) section of the platform.

I see both of your points here. I wonder which icon we should use. I'll have to have a think on it, any suggestions feel free to leave them here. We could even change the text on the existing admin badge to show 'Minds Developer' / 'Minds Admin / Developer'.

@benhayward.ben,
I agree that the image (W3C standardised html) alt text tags should be more representative of the individuals status (ie. your 'Minds Developer' / 'Minds Admin / Developer' idea) and this was actually part of a conversation that I was having with @MindsGaming just prior to you adding the above comment.

Why don't you just integrate the free fontawesome library? Web standardized icons that pretty much everyone uses.

BTW - Developer: https://fontawesome.com/icons?d=gallery&q=developer&m=free

I just sent an email to @benhayward.ben on this. FontAwesome Icons are hosted libraries, combined and colorized using inline css. A shield background for every designation, each a different color, with a more specific white icon overlay (developer, staff, plus sign).

If you keep the color coding far enough apart in the spectrum, the colors could circle the avatar everywhere the user posts, messages, and interacts.

Yes, it could be a little confusing if there are more than 3 or 4 rings. And no, at first people wouldn't catch on, but they'd make the connection after seeing it a couple different times.

We're actually using Material already, so have full access to all resources at https://material.io/tools/icons/?search=v&style=baseline

As well as the community libraries and some others. By the way though I never received your email @thedanetidwell , do you have the correct one?

mentioned in issue minds#532