In an attempt to curveball a solution using standard Discourse features, I wondered if “merge” users accs might work, say create an new admin users account and then merge it into the old admin user account (for staff needs to be done via the console).
The other idea was to revoke and then re-grant admin status, but I dunno if a revoke might break things.
This is akin to jumpstart thinking on my part, and I have not attempted any of the above but I did play with posting a topic and then changing owernship to the admin user acc locked out by the error, and then this discourse post-notice new-user popped up the following:
This is the first time [user name] has posted — let’s welcome them to the site!
Oh dear, it’s as if the admin user didn’t exist up to this point of (change ownership) post.
Might this be indicative of anything? 