====== #general ======

**#general** (January 15, 2020) is an announcements channel with the send-permission enabled for @everyone. It is currently the de facto group chat for [[Andref]].

===== Early History (January 2020 – June 2020) =====

==== January 2020 ====

#general began as a test channel by [[:Yuto]] for developing bots on Discord. However, due to his lack of experience interacting with developer APIs, the test bot only succeeded at a basic ping-pong test example. This bot user is the same bot that later became [[:YutoBot]].

==== May 2020 ====

Yuto experimented with the MatterBridge protocol for bridging Discord with other platforms, but this experiment also failed due to lack of developer experience.

==== June 2020 ====

Development with YutoBot continued. Simultaneously, [[:west-1#First Play|the first instance of west-1]] afforded the use of DiscordSRV, a popular Minecraft server plugin for bridging the chat in Minecraft with Discord. This instance of DiscordSRV used the YutoBot bot user for status updates and system information.

===== Remote Semesters (June 2020 – August 2021) =====

During the remote semesters, #general became the default group chat for communication in Andref.

==== Conversion to an Announcements Channel ====

In early 2021, once Andref gained the announcements channel feature, #general was quickly converted into an announcements channel while keeping the send-permission enabled for @everyone. To see announced messages, an announcements channel subscription was added to [[Channel:luigi]].

===== Modern Use (August 2021 –) =====

#general now is an effective public chat room for posting interesting content and messages.