diff --git a/examples/service-whoami-flask/README.md b/examples/service-whoami-flask/README.md
index e236c5cd31..754dcad481 100644
--- a/examples/service-whoami-flask/README.md
+++ b/examples/service-whoami-flask/README.md
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ After logging in with your local-system credentials, you should see a JSON dump
 }
 ```
 
-This relies on the Hub starting the whoami service, via config (see [jupyterhub_config.py](./jupyterhub_config.py)).  For ordinary users to access this service, they need to be given the appropriate scope (again, see [jupyterhub_config.py](./jupyterhub_config.py)).
+This relies on the Hub starting the whoami service, via config (see [jupyterhub_config.py](./jupyterhub_config.py)). For ordinary users to access this service, they need to be given the appropriate scope (again, see [jupyterhub_config.py](./jupyterhub_config.py)).
 
 A similar service could be run externally, by setting the JupyterHub service environment variables:
 
diff --git a/examples/service-whoami-flask/jupyterhub_config.py b/examples/service-whoami-flask/jupyterhub_config.py
index 91d15c3710..8ed30f4886 100644
--- a/examples/service-whoami-flask/jupyterhub_config.py
+++ b/examples/service-whoami-flask/jupyterhub_config.py
@@ -7,7 +7,13 @@
     },
 ]
 c.JupyterHub.load_roles = [
-    {'name': 'user', 'scopes': ['access:services!service=whoami', 'self']}
+    {
+        'name': 'user',
+        'scopes': [
+            'access:services!service=whoami',  # access this service
+            'self',  # and all of the standard things for a user
+        ],
+    }
 ]
 
 # dummy auth and simple spawner for testing