Staff permissions

Once your team grows past "me and my co-founder", the question changes from whether someone is staff to exactly which levers each staff role may pull. Staff permissions answer it with fine control: moderator abilities granted per group, permission by permission.

Three answers per permission

Every staff ability, editing posts, deleting topics, banning members, approving content and the rest, can be set per group to one of three values:

• Allow grants it.

• No doesn't grant it, but another of the member's groups still can.

• Never denies it outright, and wins over any Allow from other groups. The hard veto.

The difference between No and Never matters exactly when members hold several groups: No is neutral, Never is final.

Building roles that fit

This is how you make the roles between member and admin: junior moderators who can hide posts but not delete them, an events team that can pin topics in event forums but touches nothing else, a trusted veteran who can approve new members and nothing more. Grant the minimum that lets each role do its job; you can widen it the day the job grows.