After reading the same answer from several sources, I found a detailed enough step-by-step fix for this that is worth sharing back here. The paths are specific to webfaction.com, but you can obvious adjust ports and paths to suit yourself.
1) Start MongoDB 3.0 without --auth enabled, so you can change how it authenticates.
2) Run mongodb within SSH on the admin database:
>
> var schema = db.system.version.findOne({"_id" : "authSchema"})
> schema.currentVersion = 3
> db.system.version.save(schema)
> exit
currentVersion = 3 will make the default MONGODB-CR, the default for MongoDB version 2x. Version 3.0 uses SCRAM-SHA-1 by default instead.
3) restart MongoDB with --auth enabled.
from /webapps/mongo/bin
I would run
./mongod --dbpath $HOME/webapps/mongo/data --setParameter authenticationMechanisms=MONGODB-CR --auth --port 1400
... and if I want this service to remain active it would be:
@reboot nohub nice <FULL PATH>/mongod --dbpath $HOME/webapps/mongo/data --setParameter authenticationMechanisms=MONGODB-CR --auth --port 1400
The setParameter authenticationMechanisms=MONGODB-CR
may be redundant, or meaningless, but I'll leave it in there for now.
Now I can remotely connect so long as my user account is associated with that database, using db.grantRolesToUser( "marc", [ {role: "readWrite", db:"fbc"}, {role: "dbOwner", db:"fbc"}] )
... and so forth in the admin database.