Personally, I think moderators should make their postings in all bolded lettering when acting in mod mode. An all bolded post from a moderator conveys they mean business. And they post in regular lettering when coming down to the level of us peons. But what do I know?
You would think that would work, wouldn't you. I tried ALL CAPS, I tried bold (which then meant I couldn't use bold ever within my normal peon posts).
ALL CAPS and people got upset that I was "yelling" at them. Bold I wanted to keep for me. So I finally settled on red. nice bright colour. You can't say you didn't see it. And I don't use red in my "normal" posts. And people got upset that I was making them feel bad. It was like being in grade school and the teacher put a big red X on their paper. I think that was the beginning of the end for me as a mod.
Another thing that could work, but I think is wrong to expect is, having two log-ins. We did that for a while, but logging in and out constantly is a major pain and waste of time. We also would occasionally forget which account we were signed in with. And, of course, some people accused us of "hiding" behind a different name as a mod.
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Basically what I'm saying is....it's a thankless job and there will always be some people unhappy with how a board is run and what a mod does.