[crossfire] Improving IRC availability with a chat bridge

[Nathaniel Kipps]

On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 5:24 PM Rick Tanner <leaf at real-time.com> wrote:
> What are the options or choices for the bridge services that you mention?

I think the two mentioned were Discord and Slack. I think that both of
them are great choices, due to their familiarity among large groups of
people. There are also options, Telegram is one that comes to mind.

I would certainly lean toward Discord, for several reasons. First and
foremost, it's already the primary communication system for the
majority of people who play videogames on PC platforms. Since CF is a
videogame, it would make sense to cater to this crowd of people.
Secondly, I'm quite familiar with Discord, and I've already managed to
cobble together the bot, so in the absence of anyone else stepping up
to maintain it, I am certainly capable.

If Discord is catered toward gamers, then Slack is catered toward
enterprise users. It is intended for collaboration inside an
enterprise, where users are provisioned and managed by an
administrator, and possibly having chats and users organized by groups
and departments.

> As for retention time - does the EU Data Retention Directive apply here?
> "According to the directive, member states had to store citizens'
> telecommunications data for a minimum of 6 months and at most 24
> months."  What about other guidelines or recommendations?

I am not in the EU, nor am I a good resource to ask about GDPR. About
all I can do is point you to Discord's FAQ regarding their compliance
with the GDPR: https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003858092-Privacy-Policy-Update-and-GDPR-FAQ

> Not sure how to query and notify IRC channel members about the change,
> other than to state in the channel Topic, "By logging in and using this
> channel you consent to......"

That is about the best thing I can think of as well.

> Yes, past history and experience has shown - the discord channel will
> need some sort of moderator with the power to ban, mute, kick, etc.
> problematic users or bots.

As I mentioned above, I am willing to maintain and moderate the
Discord as necessary, at least for the foreseeable future. Of course,
if the CF project leaders would like to have different or additional
moderators, or have control of the Discord server itself turned over
to them, that is certainly their prerogative.

--DraugTheWhopper