As most people know the staff list was visible for many years. During this time, it was always a source of keen interest about which members were on that list, with some users being more obsessed with it than others. It many times reached the point where every addition and removal from the list was analyzed to an unhealthy degree, with a number of regulars who would line-up to comment on the choices of the admin team and it would sometimes dominate forum discussion.
Eventually I felt that this is not what I want this site to be about, and we therefore decided a cultural shift was needed and the only way to achieve this was to make staff less prominent on the site. I think this choice has been largely effective - staff are still discussed occasionally, but there isn't the same intense focus on our staffing decisions or on staff themselves. Our staff are still subject to the same responsible judgement of myself and our other admin, and members are still just as able to complain about any action they see as wrong. It isn't such a big secret who are staff either - if you wanted you could send a support request every day and see who responds to gradually build up a picture of the team who are serving your needs here.
