[development] "Sudo" Module

James Benstead james.benstead at gmail.com
Mon Aug 9 17:55:09 UTC 2010


On 9 August 2010 18:49, Domenic Santangelo <domenics at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Aug 9, 2010, at 10:39 AM, James Benstead wrote:
>
> > The act of entering a password will give them the sense that what they
> are doing implies a risk. Also, the root account will have a slightly
> different theme. Possibly plastered with skull and crossbone motifs ;)
>
> Wouldn't the changed theme be enough? I sympathize that you want to make it
> really, really clear that they're about to get the keys to the kingdom (cue
> the sudo banner!), but the sad reality is that you can't engineer stupidity
> or apathy out of users.
>

The changed theme would be something, and may have to do for this project -
but my general philosophy is that if I hit a limit with Drupal for a
particular project, I o my best to write a generalised solution to that
limit (or to pass the idea on to someone else), either for the project
itself or afterwards.

As for engineering stupidity or apathy out of users, I quite agree: however,
it is possible, I believe, to engineer systems that *account* for that
stupidity/apathy - or, my preferred term, humanity ;)


>
> I don't mean to disparage users. Put another way: the users who have access
> that ARE qualified don't need the extra warning; the ones who AREN'T
> qualified won't pay any attention. Both groups will enter the password once
> and choose "Remember this password," rendering all your hard work moot
> anyway.
>

Now *that* is a very good point. But at least then it's the user that's
caused the problem and not me, and when they come back to me six months down
the line saying "hey, I broke the site, fix it", I can point them to the
line of the documentation I've provided saying "if you do this, the site
will break, and I'll charge you to fix it".

J.


>
> Think it through...
>
> -D
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