On Thu, 5 Jun 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
I thought developers could block logged in users, just not ordinary sysops. I'd like to change that, though. I think there shouldn't be a distinction between sysop and developer. Or maybe people become developers after one month of sysophood.
"Developer" in this sense means you have *complete read/write access to the database*. This is very dangerous if you're not intimately familiar with the software and damned careful what you do. Developer commands *are not reversible* and can *irreversibly corrupt or delete the entire database in one action*.
This level of access exists for technical maintenance of the site, *and for no other purpose*. Frankly I'd rather see it removed altogether and restrict these actions to secure shell logins straight to the server.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)