What is the specific difference between "Staff" and "Moderator"?
I am fairly certain I understand the tasks carried out by moderators (and global moderators) but I do not know what staff do and what their functions with the forum actually are. If you know, let us all know.
Besides staff and global moderators, there are terms called
Cryptios and
Mod-privileged. You can see the whole list on this thread
Forum's admins/ global moderators/ staffs. There is another term mentioned there which is Ex-staffs. I hope you already know the meaning of Ex means, there are no longer staff now but before they were.
Here is what I think.
Staff: These are people hired by the admin, and the admin might be paying them also. Once I read a post on this forum that was very old, and on that thread, the admin was sharing the expenditure list of the forum, and staff's salary was also mentioned there but in total.
Moderator: or World moderator, is a person who can perform actions assigned to them, I don't know if they are being payed or not, but there duty is to manage the forum post and spam wise, like if a person spreading spamy post then we have to report it to mods, and they will deal with it, while the staff might be responsible for various purposes, like some might be managing the UI, backend, or whatever.
Cryptios: These people are the ones who will help you to recover your account. In the list I gave above, there are two person and they can help you to recover your account if lost.