Is there something like a "forum owner" role?

Support
1

I thought I read somewhere about a role of “forum owner” that sits above administrator. Did I dream that? Searching just turns up category owner info.

The context was that the owner would be able to take over if the administrator died or went rogue. I’m not in that situation at all, but I was just thinking about disaster planning.

So if this doesn’t exist, I’m guessing that the person with the passwords to the hosting would need to go in and manually create a new admin user?

3

If you have server access you should be able to cd into /var/discourse, enter the app (./launcher enter app), start a Rails console (rails c), and take back control.

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4

Just make sure you have multiple admins?

You can set DISCOURSE_DEVELOPER_EMAILS in your app.yml and see that your email address is there. Then you can’t have your admin rights removed and gain a few things that a regular admin can’t (I don’t recall just what they are).

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5

An issue was raised that having two admins is undesirable as one could make (well intentioned) changes without the other one knowing thereby causing confusion.

I’m not sure if having a personal agreement between the two that the second one was not to actually do any admin things would be enough to mitigate the issue.

It sounds like the advice to go into the server to regain control would be the best option.

Thank you both!

6

There are logs of everything admins change so you can keep track. It’s still important that they not step on each other’s toes however.

But if you can’t trust your admins, you’re in trouble.

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7

No, it’s not a matter of trust. Just coordination and disaster planning.

Thanks so much.

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8

the admin role is a defacto forum owner.

just have more than one admin.

This has nothing to do with needing another role. it is simply about properly documented change management procedures, communication and trust.

Establish some guidelines about tracking changes - for example, if you are worried about disaster planning and recovery type scenarios, then you should also be concerned with change management and migration, and those controls procedures would cover this perceived gap.

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