For contributors
Access tiers, and why search is open
Three tiers, unchanged from the previous system, plus the one thing that deliberately needs no account at all.
Three tiers
user, weaver, admin. The same three the previous system used, with the
same memberships. This is not a fresh role model bolted alongside the old one —
an existing weaver is still a weaver, and a token can only ever carry
scopes its holder already has.
user— a registered account. Mints API tokens, has a persistent identity on deposits.weaver— the contributor tier. Deposits building blocks, structures, fragments and force-field parameters; runs assembly jobs.admin— curation. Edits reference data, reviews deposits, merges duplicates.
admin does not imply weaver. Someone who curates and deposits holds both
memberships explicitly, so that "what can this credential reach" is answered by
reading one field rather than by reasoning about a hierarchy.
Why the promotion is a conversation
Nothing on the previous site explained how a user became a weaver. It was
an undocumented group membership: if you knew someone, you got it. That is a
barrier disguised as an absence, and it is the kind of thing that quietly
decides who contributes.
It is written down now — Contribute — and it is still not self-service. A deposit becomes part of what everyone else downloads and cites. The conversation is about what you plan to add and under what licence. That is a low bar, and a deliberate one.
Why search needs no account
The previous site gated connectivity search and advanced search behind user.
A postgraduate meeting MOFs for the first time hit a login wall at the exact
moment they were deciding whether this resource was worth learning.
Search, record pages, downloads and the machine-readable representations are open here. No account, no token, no rate-limit-by-registration. The reasoning is simple: the cost of open reads is bandwidth, and the cost of gated reads is the people who never come back.
Writes need a credential. That is where the account earns its place.
Tokens
Tokens are the primary credential, and they are scoped — an upload token that
carries only weaver cannot reach curation endpoints even if it leaks.
Passwords still work, over both legacy paths, and will keep working. Every such authentication is logged — that it happened, not what was in it — so that switching the legacy path off can be a decision based on a measured number rather than on a guess about who might still be out there.