How did you manage the staff forum?

[Old Nick]

I'm just curious...

 

[Anatoliy]

hidden from non mods at the top

 

[webbouk]

My moderators are also members so I don't think they'd appreciate it if the 'Mods Lounge' was at the top of the forum list, it's tucked down at the bottom only visible to moderators and they receive notifications for anything related.

 

[Old Nick]

I specify that by private I meant hidden from the public.

 

[Mendalla]

We have 4, actually, all in their own section at the bottom. Yeah, seems like overkill and largely a legacy of when we were larger. One private to admins, one private to mods, one for the whole staff (we call it the Council), and a report forum since we send reports to a forum. Most activity is in Council or Reports, though I post some technical stuff in the admin forum (instructions for doing backups and restores, how to refresh the dev, that sort of thing). To be honest, I don't think the mods use their private forum unless there's an issue involving an admin so could probably be eliminated and they could use conversations the rare time they need to talk without admins being privy to it.

 

[alternadiv]

Private at the bottom. It’s not something I want to see often because I prefer to see the forum the way a regular guest would. For that reason, I like to move the staff bar to the bottom too.

Sometimes I’ll make the staff forum a private sub forum of the news/announcements forum because that one is also at the bottom.

By making it a sub forum, it doesn’t add vertical space to the forum list and that helps me know how regular guests see the length of the sidebar compared to the length of the forums. I have seen sites that have sidebars that are much longer than the forum list which is not aesthetically pleasing to me.

 

[ge66]

I have a widget that only can be seen by moderators, with a link to the forum and the latest unread threads if there are any.
It is situated just above the top breadcrumb.
Takes up little space and moderators can easily see if there is anything happening in the moderator forum.

 

[Rhody]

Private at bottom of forum list, only visible to those who belong in it.

 

[Wildcat Media]

Since we're allowed a testing and development installation of XF, I use that for a separate staff board. Only, staff in recent years has been negligent in visiting, largely because the Report system works well enough that a lot of the discussion happens there. I need a populated forum with current posts for testing new styles and addons, so it works for me. The staff has several forums available, including a couple I use as bug/issue trackers for the server and software. I'll likely be moving most of these over to the main forum one of these days, except we'll leave the off-topic stuff on the separate board just to keep it active.

 

[Mendalla]

Since we're allowed a testing and development installation of XF, I use that for a separate staff board. Only, staff in recent years has been negligent in visiting

Interesting idea. My mods hardly go into dev even when I am bugging them to test stuff so I couldn't see that working, though. Easier for all concerned to just have forums available on main site.

 

[Paul B]

Since we're allowed a testing and development installation of XF, I use that for a separate staff board.

Interesting idea.

To clarify, that's not the purpose of test and development installations.

 

[Wildcat Media]

To clarify, that's not the purpose of test and development installations.

True, although I do need activity without having to make my own posts under numerous accounts. And I need staff using it to help work the bugs out. But as I mentioned, it's not used much anymore since everyone is using the Reports in the main forum, so it's basically a dribble of off-topic posts anymore, only by two or three on the staff who bother to check in...