Update our admins and moderator shields

So currently on any given forum an admin has the ability to demote any other admin out of the admin position so I was thinking what if we change it to be that The account who is the owner their shield isn’t the normal gray one its a green halved shield and they cant be demoted by admins and moderators are gray and regular admins are blue to differentiate different account types but if the owner wants they can change someone else on the forum to have the green shield giving themselves the blue shield and now the new green shield holder cant be demoted.

Welcome to Discourse Meta @Encounter :waving_hand: :tada:

An admin who owns/created the forum cannot be ‘demoted’ as their email is in DISCOURSE_DEVELOPER_EMAILS inside app.yml.

If you are self hosted and don’t want other admins getting demoted just add them to the developer emails and do a rebuild.

You could also explain to other admins not to demote others if you don’t want to make changes to developer emails. As a side note… As you’d expect being an admin is a powerful position, and ideally you don’t want many people with those privileges.


If you wanted to change the shield colour of admins and moderators to help differentiate them, you can have a look at this guide:

You can also use titles. For example the admin who owns the community could be given an ‘owner’ title so that everyone knows who not to demote if that is what you are worried about?

Hope this helps :wink:

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Setting aside shield colors for the moment – is there a specific situation you’re trying to handle with this request?

I’m imagining edge cases like:

  1. letting the site owner transfer site ownership to somebody else
  2. making an additional admin un-demoteable

But either thing seems like a rare occasion, and needing to edit the app.yml file as ondrej explains seems pretty reasonable.

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Hello ondrej thanks for Mentioning that they cant be removed from the admin role but I beg to differ this.
on a free trial discourse forum I made I had granted admin to 2 other people and mistake on my part but they removed my admin and moderator roles and ended up banning me from the forum which is why I asked and also take a look at this

im not the owner of that forum but merely the user here on the picture is and I can revoke their admin

Ondrej was talking about self-hosted forums, where someone creates the forum and also has access to the server. So even if it was possible for another admin to remove their admin status, they could create a new admin account.

You didn’t mention you were talking about a forum hosted by Discourse. I don’t think Discourse ensures that the first admin isn’t removed on their hosting. I can imagine it’s not that rare for someone to create a forum, leave a company later, and then the first admin needs to be replaced, so it makes sense to me to allow that.
I guess, in the worst case, if you accidentally grant admin permissions and confirm it via email, you could contact their support, and they could check who created the forum.

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Hello and welcome @Encounter :slight_smile:

Just to say firstly, if you’re having any issues with your free trial for any reason then you can contact customer support directly at team@discourse.org and they can help you out. :+1:

But secondly, the hosted versions are a little different to the self-hosted ones, and if you’re on a hosted plan then the first admin doesn’t get to be extra special like the type Ondrej and Toddz are referring to.

(Though saying that, I’ve just managed to demote my main admin account with a test user admin on my self-hosted test site, so I may need to investigate what’s going on with that if I’m meant to be un-demotable :slight_smile:)

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understandable so after that incedent I quote the reply to my issue email to them saying this
“were sorry there is nothing were able to do to help you”
then they said they shut down the forum for that.

but then why on the above picture

I can demote this user and he is the owner of the forum but the forum is self hosted

I think because it was a free trial then that may have been the smoothest solution to a rather awkward problem. But if you do start a new trial then be very careful about who you grant admin to. :folded_hands:

Yes, I’m seeing similar in my self-hosted site. Though mine has been round the block a bit as a test site so I may have done something weird at some point. :slight_smile:

Though as I have server access I can create and grant admin from there, so hopefully I’m covered if my test users turn mutinous. :slight_smile:

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Great thanks for the help jammy :slight_smile:

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Yes - this is the ultimate solution for self-hosters. He who controls the server (and the domain / DNS records) has the true power!!

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What do you mean by that?

Because with access to the server and the command line, you could do many (hacky) things (like rebaking posts, accessing the database, etc). So if you’re self-hosted and other sdmins demote you, but you have access to the server the forum runs on, then you could Create an admin account from the console.

1 Like

right that is ture