I do have access to the database and I do know my way around psql. I've also been spending a good part of time at the day job setting up and using Redash for dataviz, but I don't know how that relates to the problem.
Are people really expected to manage users in the instance, checked who logged in, track the status of federation, etc, etc, etc... via SQL queries?
You’re right, admin interfaces are necessary. Thanks for the tip for Redash I think I’ll be using that for a project now ;)