Discord 'Conwaylife Lounge'

[M. I. Wright]

Invite link: https://discord.gg/BCuYCEn

I and some other folks have put together this little community server for the purposes of CA-related chitchat. It's not intended to be a replacement to these forums, but rather a supplementary platform on which to discuss ideas that might not be deserving of a whole post here. There are seven channels, besides "rules" and "announcements":

• general-discussion: for any CA- or conwaylife.com-related discussion
• questions-help: Q/A and assistance with search programs and the like
• cgol: Life-specific conversation; there's been some cool construction talk going on here
• other-ca: Non-CGoL CA discussion
• other-math: Non-CA-related maths discussion
• off-topic: Catch-all for non-CA discussion
• sandbox: Spam channel

(The CGoL channel in particular could use the presence of a few more experienced Lifenthusiasts!)
...and that's about it. I hope it can find its niche – please do join!

Original title: Would there be interest in a sort of community 'IM' chat?
Original body: I think it'd be pretty nice to have, alongside these forums, a quick and/or 'casual' way of discussing CA and sharing small patterns & trivial speculation and the like. As far as I'm aware, Discord is currently the de facto solution for this sort of thing; would anyone be interested in putting together a server?
(I know Gustavo tried to set up a conwaylife IRC like two years ago, but AFAIK that never picked up steam, perhaps in part due to IRC's relative obscurity nowadays?)

[SuperSupermario24]

I'd probably join that if it were a thing.

[Saka]

Sure, this sounds like a nice idea. A live chat. But I never get any conversations in live chat because of timezones . This could be in the sandbox section of the forums (but not the sandbox forums). We need a catchy name.

[gmc_nxtman]

I think it'd be pretty nice to have, alongside these forums, a quick and/or 'casual' way of discussing CA and sharing small patterns & trivial speculation and the like. As far as I'm aware, Discord is currently the de facto solution for this sort of thing; would anyone be interested in putting together a server?
(I know Gustavo tried to set up a conwaylife IRC like two years ago, but AFAIK that never picked up steam, perhaps in part due to IRC's relative obscurity nowadays?)

+1, feel like Discord is the best option here. I feel that there should be the standard General/Rules/Announcement channels, but there could also be more specific channels akin to subforums here (especially things like Bugs and Errors/Website Discussion).

[M. I. Wright]

Ooh, alright, may as well give it a shot then. How's this channel order look?

• Rules
• Announcements
• Sandbox/General
• CGoL
• Other CA
• Questions/help

Website discussion and whatnot could probably go into the general channel, but I'm not entirely set on it either way. I'll wait to make the server public until these are finalized.

[drc]

I would probably consider joining. This is definitely something that will appeal more to the younger members, I'd imagine. (Including me)
Sandbox and General definitely shouldn't be mixed, as Sandbox is a nice testing/playing-around area and general is for community stuff and just discussing Life in general.
Questions/Help is a great idea, I think!

[M. I. Wright]

Well, before I go to sleep: https://discord.gg/bVP3EQM
Channels and roles set up, although "Conwaylife Lounge" is a tentative name. Anyone who wants to test the waters as a "pioneer" to the server is totally welcome.

This is definitely something that will appeal more to the younger members, I'd imagine.

For sure, although I do hope it'll nab at least a couple oldies if it doesn't die out in a week

Sandbox and General definitely shouldn't be mixed, as Sandbox is a nice testing/playing-around area and general is for community stuff and just discussing Life in general.

Good point! I hadn't considered that non-cgol talk and experimentation would have to be sanctioned off. They're separate at the moment.

[muzik]

I've had this idea for a while as well. (Had a dream AB set one up, actually.)

[Rhombic]

Let's see if we can get it going - I feel like it will limit the amount of underdeveloped ideas from flooding the forums. In certain cases.

[M. I. Wright]

Well, this seems to have gained a small foothold - there are about 7 or 8 active members currently with some good discussion going on, and I certainly hope it can serve the purpose Rhombic mentioned for some. I've edited some more info into the main post, which I hope will entice a few more members into joining Any suggestions/questions?

[dvgrn]

Any suggestions/questions?

Here's one, I guess: can there be a cheat sheet for chatroom markdown somewhere, maybe in the first post here? I figured out the triple-backtick quotes for code blocks, but there are probably other formatting tricks I haven't found yet.

On Stack Exchange there's a vertical-ellipsis icon that shows up to the right of each message, that lets you link back specifically to a previous message. There isn't anything like that on Discord (yet), is there?

[M. I. Wright]

On Stack Exchange there's a vertical-ellipsis icon that shows up to the right of each message, that lets you link back specifically to a previous message. There isn't anything like that on Discord (yet), is there?

I suppose not, or at least not within clicking distance of a server chat! Here's a short rundown from Discord's help center, although it neglects to mention that _single underscores_ can also italicize text. Thanks for reminding me of this -- I've posted the article in the Announcements channel.

[dvgrn]

On Stack Exchange there's a vertical-ellipsis icon that shows up to the right of each message, that lets you link back specifically to a previous message. There isn't anything like that on Discord (yet), is there?

I suppose not, or at least not within clicking distance of a server chat!

It's a little odd -- you can do a search, let's say for something like "boat toggle", and you get a link that looks like this:

https://discordapp.com/channels/3579222 ... 5148343297

It gets you to the specific message from the search list, but then I don't immediately see how to use the URL to get directly back to that same posting without re-doing the search. (?)

[muzik]

There is a quoting feature but I think it only comes with nitro.

[M. I. Wright]

On Stack Exchange there's a vertical-ellipsis icon that shows up to the right of each message, that lets you link back specifically to a previous message. There isn't anything like that on Discord (yet), is there?

I suppose not, or at least not within clicking distance of a server chat!

It's a little odd -- you can do a search, let's say for something like "boat toggle", and you get a link that looks like this:

https://discordapp.com/channels/3579222 ... 5148343297

It gets you to the specific message from the search list, but then I don't immediately see how to use the URL to get directly back to that same posting without re-doing the search. (?)

Yikes, I actually entirely misread the bit of your post that I quoted... thought it was a continuation of the Markdown question, I guess
You're right, though, there unfortunately isn't (yet?) a way to quote or link to a previously-sent message, and I don't actually even recall it being available as a paid-membership 'Nitro' feature. Bot accounts can get a specific message's ID through the API (which actually should be the same as the number in the search URL's '?jump=' parameter), but that info is unfortunately not usable to end-users...

[SuperSupermario24]

There is a quoting feature but I think it only comes with nitro.

There's no official quoting feature as far as I'm aware. I've seen some people post messages that seem to be preformatted quote messages in code blocks, but I think that's a thing with BetterDiscord (an unofficial plugin) or something.

[M. I. Wright]

...yikes. Major major major set of oversights on my part, absolute dumbest of which being that I had the server bot's token on GitHub — and I suppose I don't really need to finish this sentence but just in case anyone needs it spelled out — free for all to use and therefore to come in and delete everything, as they did ~30mins ago using the permissions I'd conveniently given the bot in anticipation of implementing some basic moderation QoL features.
Stupid.
Even worse, too, since the server really would have done 100% fine without the bot and I was, in developing it, the only person actually consistently using it

I suppose the most valuable thing to have been lost was the month-or-so's worth of discussion and especially the speculation regarding large-scale GoL constructions; the most important patterns to come out of the lounge so far have fortunately also been documented on these forums. That excludes some of Kazyan's search results I think — but those would have ofc been saved locally first — as well as some less-in-depth OCA stuff by me/drc/dvgrn/saka/muzik/gmc_nxtman/etc which I'm currently kicking myself for not saving elsewhere.

Gah, I'll look tomorrow into reinstating the place(and should the bot come back I'll either host it on Dropbox/somewhere private that can be linked to Heroku for hosting, or I'll continue to push to GitHub and separately/manually upload a file with client secret to Heroku server). Apologies.

[Saka]

Noooooooooooo the lounge is gone
Well I guess it's direct messages for me. But I only have gmc and drc as friends

[drc]

dang, i thought i had gotten kicked o.o

looking forward to cgol lounge v2

[M. I. Wright]

Noooooooooooo the lounge is gone
Well I guess it's direct messages for me. But I only have gmc and drc as friends

The server itself wasn't actually deleted (just all of its channels and users ), which means that the invite link from the first post still works along with any others posted across the forums.
I've unbanned everyone and reinstated the channel list, suppose this counts as a v1.5 of sorts?

[dvgrn]

...the invite link from the first post still works along with any others posted across the forums.
I've unbanned everyone and reinstated the channel list, suppose this counts as a v1.5 of sorts?

Don't know about anyone else, but I get a "The instant invite is invalid or expired." message when I try that link.

[M. I. Wright]

Don't know about anyone else, but I get a "The instant invite is invalid or expired." message when I try that link.

Ach, I'd forgotten invite links were tied to specific channels. New link here (and edited into the first post)

[_zM]

This is just to confirm that, because I, uhh, accidentally deleted my account, _zM#0282 is my new account.