The Website

[Phauss]

Added video BB code support. Tested and working for .webm and .mp4 formats. The video will inherit the size from the source, so no need to enter in those details. They will also autoplay.

Code: Select all

[vid]http://i.imgur.com/5QGjLwO.mp4[/vid]

WARNING: The video will not resize to the post area if it's too large.

EDIT: Videos are forced to the width of the post area, or more specifically, 1253 pixels wide. Browsing on a phone/tablet might be problematic in this case.

[Phauss]

The server will restart every morning at 4AM. This is to avoid a situation where I can't do a hard restart. In case of a server failure, post on the facebook page or text me as usual. You know the drill.

[Phauss]

Ok, so. This is a little bit of a delicate subject, but I've been thinking.

Is it time to ditch Ventrilo?

I've been using a couple of my friends' Discord servers and I have to say, I'm impressed by the platform.

Pros:

• Chat persists even when you log out.
• Ability to have multiple chat channels.
• Chat from others while you were offline can be viewed by scrolling up when you log back in.
• There's a phone app.
• Server hosted by Discord, so it would not be at the whim of frequent restarts or downtime.
• People you want to invite don't have to download our unique client to connect.
• Can connect to the server from a web browser.
• Can be logged into multiple servers at once.
• Channel administration/structure can be made similar to current vent server.
• Private messaging.
• Bots can do jobs like play music from youtube links, among other things.

Cons:

• Our server-specific Ventrilo software means we have sole discretion on who can connect. Discord only needs a server invitation link for new users.
• I don't think you can have sub-channels like in Ventrilo (Domains>Phauss's Tavern>Drinking Heavily). This remains to be seen.
• We haven't been using it for 10 years.

My reasoning is that Ventrilo is antique. It's still a great program and does its job well, but our version is gimped. Private messaging (or DM's as the kids call it nowadays) is something I miss from using full-fledged vent servers, the ones that cost money to rent. Also, closing the chat window has the very real consequence of losing the entire chat log. With Discord, chat is inherently part of the window, whether you're in a voice channel or not. I know how important chat is to us, and honestly, it's the chat features that make me want to make the switch.

Let me know what you guys think. It wouldn't take much for me to get a server up and running, so don't worry about the behind-the-scenes stuff.

[Forb]

I linked it a while ago but I created one, just gonna use a temp link
https://discord.gg/dq23P

I like Discord a lot and I agree with most of your points. I find myself wishing more of my friends used Discord so I'd like to agree with you.

I don't really see any downside besides the nostalgia.

How much do the ventrilo resources really account for anyway? You could just leave it up as a backup and we'll flock to a Discord server.

edit: my favorite part about Discord is that it's on the phone/computer *and* web browser.

[Phauss]

Ventrilo is extremely lightweight, so I don't see a problem with leaving it running.

[Clow]

Ventrilo's simplicity is very nice, and as you've said, we're very used to it. The ability to directly block specific users is nice, too.

However...

With that simplicity comes less utility and functionality than DIscord or Mumble. That's one of the biggest things for me. As far as not being able to block specific users, I don't see the issue. The only people outside of our immediate circle that we tend to let in are close friends, like Hunter's friends from school or home (how's Olson doing?) or my friends from school or home (Adam, Cody, Matt). TL;DR it's not like people will know who we are or be looking for us and the people we invite in tend to not be potatoes.

As far as channels go, to my knowledge you can only create chat channels and voice channels. MOONMOON's discord doesn't have any sub channels, and he puts more work into it than his actual stream. So I'm confident that that's the case. I think the appeal is that its more simplified like IRC. The good ol' days. But we could each have a chat and voice channel to ourselves.

And as far as leaving Vent running goes, I know that it's lightweight, but I think it might be awkward to have two of these programs running when the point is for us to use them to come together. For instance, if Hunter and I like Discord and start primarily using that but Brian sticks to Vent it'll either end up kind of excluding Brian in some way or we'd have to ditch Discord, making everything pointless.

[Phauss]

I didn't see it before, but I get where you're going with leaving both Vent and Discord running at once. I think it might be wiser to force the change just so we're all on the same platform, as much as we ourselves don't like it when services we use do that to us (eg. every time facebook changes something.) We can bring the vent up if and when we need it.

I've played around with a Discord server, setting up the roles and permissions, and configuring voice and chat channels. It's remarkably intuitive, and I was able to set up permissions very easily. I set up voice channels for individuals, but I don't know about individual chat channels since that seems a little too exclusive. There's the general chat and a mod/admin chat so far. Maybe a channel for link spam would be good (read: nyaa.se link dump.) I'm just really sold on the utility of the platform. Multiple chat channels, multiple servers at once, persisting chat history, private messaging, among other things.

I guess the only thing that our vent has going for it is the user control. You'd have to jump through so many hoops just to connect without permission, and there isn't even a password to deal with. Then again, Discord handles that with the ability to ban and invitation links that only last 30 minutes, so I guess it's not a huge thing. The drawback of the invite link is that it would have to be used within that 30 minutes, instead of sending an IP and port number to someone and letting them connect when they can. (It's possible to make an invite link last forever, but I dunno how much I like that idea.)

Hmm, any other thoughts?

[Forb]

I was thinking just leave vent the way it is with a clear link to the Discord. If the Discord server ever goes down or anything like that (unlikely), the vent would be ready for us in that event. If everyone switches to Discord for daily use then vent is just there in case of "emergency."

Private text channels seem unnecessary at this point, mostly because we have the forums.
The link dump channel is maybe something to consider adding if we feel like the link situation is getting out of hand. Maybe just add it right away and see how we feel about its usage. I could see us using the link channel as a meme dump and anime linking space.

The only real downside I see to Discord in user control is that we can't get the IPs of users to my knowledge. I think you can get that info with the vent server. Not the most important thing, but it has uses.

My opinion on the link is to have a permanent one set and share it privately and then just change it if some bad people get a hold of it.

[Phauss]

The only way I've been able to see the IP in vent is by looking at the console, which isn't something people can normally do if they're renting the server. Even then, usernames only show up in the console when someone disconnects, so the only way for me to associate an IP with a user strictly through the console is to look up the IP location and make an estimated guess about who it belongs to. This is easy to do when there are only one or two people in vent and I can connect to the server with the client to see who it is (or use the status box on the website), but otherwise it can be difficult. There may be other ways to see it, but I'm not sure. The Minecraft console is surprisingly handy for figuring out who is who.

In Discord, I don't think you can get the user's IP, but banning a user bans both the name and IP. (They explicitly state that using a proxy or VPN would circumvent this, which is true in almost any program.)

And about the invite link, the one I distributed to you guys is permanent. More than one link can be made for a server and I'd rather that the permanent one stay within the forum regulars. I have no problem with temp invite links going out to your friends, though.

[Forb]

Real talk. Can we get emoji responses for forum posts?