Of SysOps and Bureaucrats
A support forum for Wikipedia platform Mediawiki unearths a deep truth about the world:
“The creator of the wiki is given both bureaucrat and sysop rights by default. They could, potentially, remove themselves from the sysop group to then have less rights than other normal sysops, but they could easily add the group back to themselves.
Consider this analogy: Groups in MediaWiki are like clubs. Say that the “sysop” club gives you free pizza and soda, and the “bureaucrat” club gives you free paper plates. When you belong to both clubs, you get the plates, pizza, and soda. However, if you quit the sysop club and are only in the bureaucrat club, all you get are the plates with no pizza and soda to go along with it. Yes, that isn’t the best analogy, but it does help to illustrate the point that groups are kept separate from one another and as such it is pointless to be a bureaucrat without also being a sysop
—Skizzerz”
