To answer the serious concern, I'll try to get to it this weekend but obviously my worries are elsewhere forum wise. I never 'purposefully changed the version number', but it was saying the wrong version multiple times due to some smf shitiness and my own error.
Honesly, you don't want JD to do a download of the database and migrate it. Last time he lost at least 2 weeks of posts because he downloaded the database and then sat on it for some time.
I'm not sure of the history here, since I've slept a few times since then.
I now have a system developed to migrate the database seamlessly to as many environments as we want within a short period of time. It is not in production yet but I'm hoping to continue to make great strides this weekend. This proved difficult on earlier hosts due to the size of our database as well as the date of the data causing differences in encodings and what not across our long history as we migrated from platform to platform and version to version over many years and many different schemas, encodings, bbcode versions...; Also the time it would take the team and mostly myself in the past to perform such changes played a large part; my automation efforts are stoping this from ever being an issue again. On related notes, Boydster is working on a migration for a test environment that will help with our goals of anybody contributing whenever they want without breaking everything while they do it.
I don't want to be the person that has the final say here - its all of our homes, and we all should be able to take care of it if we should care to. I'm working with other members on a discrete plan to make this happen. I don't think some silly council of elders is the right path.
Nice to see you Duck Dodgers.