How do you handle user permissions in Confluence?

[Gerben Heinen]

JIRA has a nice permission system, with the scheme, roles, etc.

However Confluence doesn't have this, and a lot of manual stuff has to be done per space. 

The confluence API isn't working very well or intuitive either, so scripting your way out of this permission problem isn't really easy either.

How do you guys handle this? 

[Chris Buzon]

Space by space, with groups+user management controlling each space specific set of permissions.

I also have a test account I log into to confirm I haven't missed something because having admin permissions makes it harder to spot problems with your own account.

[Steven Haworth]

I'm using Groups in the user admin area.  So - a member of team X wants to join, I will add their account and assign them to user group 'team-x-members' (for example).

Then, in both Jira and Confluence, I give general permissions to the group 'team-x-members'.

For some users - admins, scrum masters, etc, I still have to go and add manually to spaces or projects with other permissions, but the groups provides basic access in a management way.  For us at least.