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powers can be granted and revoked through the online interface, in the `users` section. they can also be controlled using the command line tool, with the commands `parsav user <handle> grant <power>…` and `revoke <power>…` (`all` can be used instead of a list of powers to grant or strip all powers simultaneously)
### recommendations
on smaller servers, it is highly recommended that the `config`, `rebrand`, `purge`, `elevate`, and `demote` powers all rest with a single user. other administrators and moderators should be given `censor`, `discipline`, `vacate`, and possibly `invite` and `herald` depending on your intentions for the site. you should be the only rank-1 user, and other staff should be given rank 2. rank 3 might be useful to limit the damage new staff can do during a "probation period." `herald` and `crier` are useful powers to combine, as they create a "moderator" with powers related mostly to promotion of users and their work.
on larger servers, it may be necessary to have more levels of administrative abstraction, or even to increase the maximum number of ranks from its default of 10. in this case, certain exceptional powers such as `rebrand` and `purge` should still remain exclusively with the founder, but it may be necessary to (carefully!) apportion out access to powers like `elevate` and `demote`. it may also be desirable to have a broader class of less-trusted moderators who can take minimally destructive measures on their own (say, `censor` and `herald`) to filter through the bulk of reports, with a smaller corps of highly trusted commissars who have powers like `discipline` and `vacate` to handle the small number of reports that censors believe deserve their attention.
in both cases, it's very, very important to keep in mind that 99% of community management is social. parsav tries to provide you with effective tools for when use of force becomes unavoidable, but most of the time a good community leader can accomplish his goals with words alone (remember, IRC has none of this fancy shit, and they manage just fine most of the time!). apart from those relatively rare cases where you are faced with true bad-faith actors (in which cases immediate brutality is the only solution), a community can be handled effectively with just with judicious use of symbolic measures like rank, badges, and epithets. a gentle indication that a high-status user disapproves of her conduct is often all it takes to convince a lower-status user who truly cares about her community to shape up. all the power in the world won't give you a drop of authority, and if you're new to running communities, you may be surprised how much authority you can endow other members with without giving them anything besides maybe a fancy title (though even that is just a convenience) so long as the people in your community like, trust, and respect you.
and if your users don't respect you, you might as well pack up right now.
## emergencies
shit happens. sometimes this shit results in getting locked out of your own instance. if so, don't panic quite yet. as long as you can get shell access to the host to run the `parsav` utility, you can resolve the situation. (note that `parsavd` does not need to be running to use commands that control the database, and for some backends such as sqlite `parsavd` may need to be shut down first.)
### locked out
if you are locked out of your administrator account, the fix is simple, as long as you can modify the underlying database: the `parsav` utility does not use instance credentials, but rather directly modifies the DB and sends IPC signals through the kernel. if you're locked out because you've forgotten your password or all your credentials have been deleted somehow, just issue yourself a new temporary password like you would for any other user, with the `parsav user <handle> auth pw reset` command.
### missing privileges
if you've been stripped of the `login` privilege by a bug or a rogue admin, you can restore it with `parsav user <handle> grant login`, and it may be worthwhile to issue a `revoke demote` to keep that rogue admin from immediately locking you out again. keep in mind that this won't affect sanctions that have been issued against your account; see below for these.
### sanctions
users with the `discipline` privilege cannot change user powers outright, but can issue sanctions that temporarily limit these powers in various ways, for instance preventing a user from posting for a few hours until they've cooled down. users with `discipline` can only affect users of lower rank unless they're rank 1, in which case they can affect all users. if you've fallen afoul of one of these users and need to get your instance back, you'll need to vacate all the sanctions against your account. this can be done with the `parsav actor <xid> sanction all vacate` command. alternately, you can list individual sanctions with `sanction`, and then delete them individually with `sanction <sid> vacate`.
### lost account
if your account has been completely deleted, rather than just suspended, things are decidedly more serious. everything associated with your account — posts, media, circles, relationships, all of it — is gone, irreversibly, unless you have a database backup around somewhere. (the `purge` power is so named because it is *serious business,* to be treated as the equivalent of a concealed carry permit — you should give it out to other users only out of specific justified need in exceptional circumstances, and revoke it proactively when it is no longer absolutely necessary, rather than as punishment for misuse. hopefully you have now learned this lesson.)
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powers can be granted and revoked through the online interface, in the `users` section. they can also be controlled using the command line tool, with the commands `parsav user <handle> grant <power>…` and `revoke <power>…` (`all` can be used instead of a list of powers to grant or strip all powers simultaneously)
### recommendations
on smaller servers, it is highly recommended that the `config`, `rebrand`, `purge`, `elevate`, and `demote` powers all rest with a single user. other administrators and moderators should be given `censor`, `discipline`, `vacate`, and possibly `invite` and `herald` depending on your intentions for the site. you should be the only rank-1 user, and other staff should be given rank 2. rank 3 might be useful to limit the damage new staff can do during a "probation period." `herald` and `crier` are useful powers to combine, as they create a "moderator" with powers related mostly to promotion of users and their work.
on larger servers, it may be necessary to have more levels of administrative abstraction, or even to increase the maximum number of ranks from its default of 10. in this case, certain exceptional powers such as `rebrand` and `purge` should still remain exclusively with the founder, but it may be necessary to (carefully!) apportion out access to powers like `elevate` and `demote`. it may also be desirable to have a broader class of less-trusted moderators who can take minimally destructive measures on their own (say, `censor` and `herald`) to filter through the bulk of reports, with a smaller corps of highly trusted commissars who have powers like `discipline` and `vacate` to handle the small number of reports that censors believe deserve their attention.
in both cases, it's very, very important to keep in mind that 99% of community management is social. parsav tries to provide you with effective tools for when use of force becomes unavoidable, but most of the time a good community leader can accomplish his goals with words alone (remember, IRC has none of this fancy shit, and they manage just fine most of the time!). apart from those relatively rare cases where you are faced with true bad-faith actors (in which cases immediate and uncompromising brutality is the only solution), a community can be handled effectively with just with judicious use of symbolic measures like rank, badges, and epithets. a gentle indication that a high-status user disapproves of her conduct is often all it takes to convince a lower-status user who truly cares about her community to shape up. all the power in the world won't give you a drop of authority, and if you're new to running communities, you may be surprised how much authority you can endow other members with without giving them anything besides maybe a fancy title (though even that is just a convenience) so long as the people in your community like, trust, and respect you.
and if your users don't respect you, you might as well pack up right now.
## emergencies
shit happens. sometimes this shit results in getting locked out of your own instance. if so, don't panic quite yet. as long as you can get shell access to the host to run the `parsav` utility, you can resolve the situation. (note that `parsavd` does not need to be running to use commands that control the database, and for some backends `parsavd` may need to be shut down first.)
### locked out
if you are locked out of your administrator account, the fix is simple, as long as you can modify the underlying database: the `parsav` utility does not use instance credentials, but rather directly modifies the DB and sends IPC signals through the kernel. if you're locked out because you've forgotten your password or all your credentials have been deleted somehow, just issue yourself a new temporary password like you would for any other user, with the `parsav user <handle> auth pw reset` command.
### missing privileges
if you've been stripped of the `login` privilege by a bug or a rogue admin, you can restore it with `parsav user <handle> grant login`, and it may be worthwhile to issue a `revoke demote` to keep that rogue admin from immediately locking you out again. keep in mind that this won't affect sanctions that have been issued against your account; see below for these.
### sanctions
users with the `discipline` privilege cannot change user powers outright, but can issue sanctions that temporarily limit these powers in various ways, for instance preventing a user from posting for a few hours until they've cooled down. users with `discipline` can only affect users of lower rank unless they're rank 1, in which case they can affect all users. if you've fallen afoul of one of these users and need to get your instance back, you'll need to vacate all the sanctions against your account. this can be done with the `parsav actor <xid> sanction all vacate` command. alternately, you can list individual sanctions with `sanction`, and then delete them individually with `sanction <sid> vacate`.
### lost account
if your account has been completely deleted, rather than just suspended, things are decidedly more serious. everything associated with your account — posts, media, circles, relationships, all of it — is gone, irreversibly, unless you have a database backup around somewhere. (the `purge` power is so named because it is *serious business,* to be treated as the equivalent of a concealed carry permit — you should give it out to other users only out of specific justified need in exceptional circumstances, and revoke it proactively when it is no longer absolutely necessary, rather than as punishment for misuse. hopefully you have now learned this lesson.)
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