inner circle

From Interdex, the community-edited guide to the local internet.

An inner circle is a group of people who covertly control the management of a website, forum, IRC network or channel. Sinner suspected there was an inner circle running the ABS Forums in late 2004, but this turned out to be false. Currently, #albinoblacksheep is run by an inner circle consisting of people from the 7sinz network who will ban anyone for no reason and hand out ops like candy.