Mailing List Archive: Sysop stuff on Wikipedia

Hi all...I've done some more playing with the Wikipedia software for
my "Disinfopedia" project, and I noticed an apparent error in the
documentation. Specifically, the "user.doc" file contains the
following statement:

> user_rights
> Comma-separated list of rights. Right now, only "is_editor"
> and "is_sysop".

I believe this should be changed to say,

> user_rights
> Comma-separated list of rights. Right now, only "developer"
> and "sysop".

I was able to change my user rights to "sysop" using a direct SQL
command. Is there a better way to do this? Assuming the Disinfopedia
grows as hoped, I imagine I'll want to give sysop rights to other
users.

I'm assuming that I won't have any occasion to give anyone
"developer" rights. Is this a fair assumption?
--
--------------------------------
| Sheldon Rampton
| Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
| Author of books including:
| Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
| Mad Cow USA
| Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------

On lun, 2002-12-30 at 09:30, Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> > Comma-separated list of rights. Right now, only "is_editor"
> > and "is_sysop".
>
> I believe this should be changed to say,
>
> > Comma-separated list of rights. Right now, only "developer"
> > and "sysop".

That's right. Beware separate documentation files -- the up-to-date
documentation is the code itself. ;)

> I was able to change my user rights to "sysop" using a direct SQL
> command. Is there a better way to do this? Assuming the Disinfopedia
> grows as hoped, I imagine I'll want to give sysop rights to other
> users.

At present there is not a better way to sysopify users, but if anyone's
interested it would be easy enough to add a special page to grant/revoke
sysophood. (There used to be one, briefly, in phase II, it perhaps could
be dug up and adapted.)

> I'm assuming that I won't have any occasion to give anyone
> "developer" rights. Is this a fair assumption?

Unless you really trust them -- a 'developer' user has SQL write access
to the database, which means they can do anything from silently alter
the contents of an article to erasing the entire database. There's
nothing a developer could do that couldn't be done from a login shell on
the server with access to the physical installation, so you may not want
to use it at all.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)