It’s also worth noting that this exchange between Dave and the moderators shouldn’t have been public in the first place. Dave’s comment was first “unapproved” (which rendered it visible only to him and the moderators) and the annotation was added. An inadvertent grammar mistake was spotted later – the mods aren’t immune to typos! – so the entry was edited. Unfortunately, one of the quirks we have noticed with the bbPress discussion forum software is that when an ‘unapproved’ (and therefore private) forum reply is subsequently edited in the admin screen, saving the change automatically and silently publishes it. By contrast, when private blog comments are edited and saved they retain their unapproved status and so aren’t visible to all readers.
This quirk had been highlighted in correspondence between moderators the previous day, so we should have been alert to it … which underlines the fact that moderators are equally prone to human error.