Can we please get a Cemetech Discord? It'd be a nice way to still talk to my friends here even if I've moved on from calc programming and it could help bring the community closer by having a little easier seen and supported conversations. I'm a little to lazy too think of any more reasons XD but if anyone has any other reasons, please drop them in the comments

That would be a nice idea actually if it's synced with SAX and IRC. CodeWalrus mostly transitioned into a Discord group (although the forums still gets new posts regularly) to adapt to changing internet and it was kinda successful.

I don't think I'd ever use the discord on my laptop, which I'm on 90% of the time. I'd really only use it when I'm on mobile (since IRC hates me).

We're more than just calculator programing! We have forums for "Computer & Mobile" as well as "Website Programming/Development". You're also more than welcome to post about any projects, whether related to programming or not, in the "Your Projects" forum.

Speaking personally, I am not a fan of Discord but that's because I don't require any of the features such as voice chat and chat history. However, I see the perks & benefits and I'll bring it up with other admins and see how many of them are onboard with it.

The advantage I see to discord is being able to talk to IRL friends in a private server as well as in a public IRC chat at the same time from on the same platform.

I would need it to be linked to IRC and SAX. I do have a discord, but I am not able to access it when on mobile (long story). This may be a good idea though.

I dislike Discord for two three (maybe more) reasons.

First, I'm already on IRC, why complicate things more then I have to?
Second, Discord limits me to their client (afaik), but with IRC their are numerous platforms to use it with. Heck, you can even write your own without too much effort.
Third:

To all the people who say that they want Discord and IRC to be linked, I haven't looked into it, but maybe a mod who's on board can. I found this https://github.com/reactiflux/discord-irc (And this would link to SAX since the IRC-SAX link would carry this through)

While some of the admin team are not fond of Discord, I went ahead and made a server anyways.

I recognize that we need to need cater to a changing dynamic and Discord is one of the easier things on the list. While IRC is incredibly lightweight and simple, it's not the de facto communication used by a majority of people these days. I understand that joining an IRC server is not straight forward despite an old but handy guide. I see a few random connections on our Freenode channel from users attempting to get to Efnet.

While Discord will not be our official place to communicate, I will at least support the idea. I will be adding a few rooms to the server today and tomorrow. I'll be working with the admin team to figure out a way to introduce our Discord so that we don't fragment our discussions too much.

Thanks for the wonderful suggestion, mets11rap!

What a rebel

I believe the Discord server should not be rolled out until an IRC-Discord link bot can be developed and implemented. Things should be linked between all three chat platforms before it is introduced.

Edit: Here is what I have for an idea. There should be a room called 'General' and that one should be linked to #cemetech. The ez80/assembly topic should be linked to #ez80-dev. I also believe that you should create 5 or so voice channels. You could also have a POTM and Staff room that is locked for everyone but those with admin roles. This should be linked to the respective IRC channels.

That's very likely the route we'll take but we haven't had that discussion; I'm currently going through and creating roles at the moment.

One of my ideas is to create a room for each general topic: ASM Programming, BASIC Programming, Web Development, Computer Programming, etc, etc. I'm definitely a fan of being able to spread out into a few different channels with Discord but the hard part is going to be connecting the linker to which one of those rooms.

I write Discord bots if you need my help with anything.

With multiple rooms, you could either set it up so that only one channel links to SAX, and the rest are just discussion channels, or you could send messages from all Discord channels to IRC/SAX and optionally allow IRC/SAX users to use a command to switch which room their replies are sent to. That would probably be less convenient to use than only linking a single channel.

That's not a bad idea. "General" is the default room anyways. I have a general programming channel and will add a few programming specific channels, such as ASM and BASIC.



I'm not 100% convinced we need many voice channels. I'm not going to get rid of them - that's part of the draw to discord - but I'd rather add voice channels as we need them than try and predict what voice channels we need.



Staff is already set up, I think the permissions are good but I'll test those with a fellow admin at some point. I'm trying to figure out if I can assign permissions to users in specific channels, so that if they moderate a forum on Cemetech and we have a channel for it on Discord, I think it's fair that they should moderate that area on Discord too. I've created a Mods role but that would give all mods permission to moderate any channel (that @mods has permissions in). It looks like I can assign permissions to individual members, so that's good.



There's a limit to how many bots we can connect to Efnet per IP. And I think it's per Efnet server too, so I could theoretically run 10 Discord bots from the same IP but I'd like to keep it to a maximum of 1 or 2.



I'll keep that in mind. There are some features we want to add to SAX that would end up benefiting a Discord linker but it's been really low on the to-do list since SAX was rewritten a few years back (and it wasn't originally with Discord in mind).

Couldn't one EFnet bot send and receive messages in multiple channels? That way you don't have to connect several bots to the same server.

I can help out if you'd like. I'm experienced with Discord server management and I, as well, develop bots. I can make a custom one for the server if you'd like. I'd be able to add features on demand as well.

Same here. I'm a mod on a couple of servers and have some experience with roles and stuff. I'm not that experienced with making bots though. If you guys need any help, just let me know

Having the server split into multiple categories can be definitively a challenge when it comes to syncing discussion with SAX and IRC, since the only SAX-linked channel is #cemetech . Every single attempt at splitting big main IRC channels into smaller ones in the TI community in the last decade ended up into ghost rooms (#tibasic, #cw-craft, #omnimaga-fr, etc). So you're may be better off only syncing the main.

Basically, it might not be worth the effort to link every single Discord room with an IRC channel, but linking the main rooms together (#cemetech with whatever the main Discord room is called) and SAX is a must, IMHO.

Other advices:
-Make sure that a permalink to the server exists. (preferably somewhere easily visible on the entire Cemetech website, at least to members)
-Don't add way too many rooms to the server. We can get lost kinda easily xd

There is not enough userbase to split channels. imho, just use connect the channels with something like this: https://github.com/reactiflux/discord-irc

~~I totally didn't just link that~~