MESBot

An NTA technology project for discord

MES Discord Admins

I’m excited to introduce MESBot, an advanced verification bot designed to streamline and secure user verification from our membership portal. This bot will help with member verification and cut down on administration tasks on your Discord server. Add MESBot to your discord server. 

Suggested setup steps:

1. Add the bot to the server
2. In Server Settings -> Roles, move the MESBot role to be above the “Verified” or “Member” role so that it can assign that role
3. Add MESBot role to your welcome channel so that people can interact with it there.
4. Set the server role that you want it to assign with !role <role name>
5. (Optional) Set the logging channel with !setlog <channel name>

MES Members

What you need to know:

MESBot sends a special link with a token to you via direct message when you join an MES discord server where it is installed. For security purposes the link expires after 5 minutes and because this link contains a token, it should not be shared with anyone else, and also should not be posted publicly. This means that you will have to allow MESBot to send you direct messages in order to verify your account. If you are currently a member on a server and not yet verified, it will send reminder for you to login. After 7 days, your role as a MES member will be removed if you do not authenticate.

MESBot Features:

What does it do?

User Verification: MESBot authenticates discord users via the membership portal oauth sign-on, giving you 100% reliability that users who pass validation have a valid membership.

Role Assignment: Server admins can configure a server role that MESBot will control. It will verify that the role exists and store this setting in our database. When a user joins the server, they will receive a link to authenticate via the portal, if they already have a token, they will automatically be given the role you configured. If the discord user does not have a current membership they will not get the role. Any users who have the server role but not a token will get a daily reminder to login, and after 7 days will lose the role.

Membership expiration: If a membership expires, the bot checks daily for expired memberships and removes the assigned role from those users. After the membership is renewed, they can once again get a token to restore their access.

Membership renewal reminders: Users with a token will receive a discord notification 4 weeks, 2 weeks, and 1 week before your membership expires. You will also be notified the day that your membership expires.

Authentication: You can request a new token at any time with the !auth command, for example if a previous link expired. You can also clear your token with !expire. For officer accounts: you should always remove the token associating a discord account with your membership before turning it over to a new officer.

Global banlist: Globally banned discord users as identified by the Board of Directors will be added to a global banlist, and the bot will automatically add ban those users on servers where the bot is installed (if the bot has permission to do so)

Member lookup: !id <user id> will return the membership number and first and last name of the member if they have a valid token. For security purposes, only users with a token have access to this command. 

Commands:

Commands can be sent in a DM to the bot or in a channel where MESBot can view messages. [] indicates an optional parameter and <> indicates a required parameter.

Permissions:

MESBot needs permission to view channels, send messages, and (optionally) control the server ban list. Users will also need to allow MESBot to send DMs, as sign-in URLs cannot be posted publicly for security.

How does it work:

On the backend MESBot has read-only access to our membership database to provide membership expiration reminders to users, and full access it’s own private database to track server settings and user tokens. Authentication is implemented via oauth v2 which is part of our membership portal. Oauth v2 is a single sign-on standard used by many major providers like Microsoft and Google.

Getting Help

Known issues: No current known issues.

You can contact the NTA for assistance with MESBot via email or DM on discord.

New features:

• I will implement the most requested user features. If you come up with a useful feature that is not available in any other bot. Submit your feature via this link, and I will (time permitting) work on adding new features.
• Planned improvement include: accessing and sharing character sheets from the new database. Currently pending completion of the database.

Become an Officer

Coordinators

Each chapter in the Modern Enigma Society is administered by a chapter coordinator (CC). The chapter coordinator–or domain coordinator (DC), if you aren’t in a chapter–is the face most people associate with the administrative branch. In general, the coordinator handles the chapter’s finances, conflict resolution, non-story-related questions from members, and securing event sites.

There are are also coordinator positions at the regional and national levels.

If that strikes your fancy, check out the the Membership Handbook for more in-depth information on the duties and benefits of such a position.

Storytellers

Storytellers use their creative talents to build a common world setting, structure, and narrative. Because our chronicle is large and complex, storytellers must regularly communicate, collaborate, and compromise with each other. Each venue in a chapter (“Vampire: The Masquerade”, “Changeling: The Dreaming”, etc.) has a storyteller, as does each chapter, domain, and region.  As you might expect, there’s also a head honcho national and global-level storyteller to weave everything together.

Within their jurisdictions, storytellers design and carry out plotlines, run games and downtime scenes, interpret rules, and award experience.  They always have to keep in mind the continuity in the chronicle, keeping the venue viable, and the mood and paradigm of the venue.

The Membership Handbook has more details about the specifics of storytellers’ duties.

Assistants

To help carry out their plethora of responsibilities, officers often appoint assistants for certain tasks. Becoming an assistant in either the coordinator or storytelling chain is an excellent way to learn how the Modern Enigma Soceity operates while helping out. When primary officers such as chapter coordinator or venue storytellers are elected, they’ll send out an all-call on the mailing list for their jurisdiction (chapter, domain, region, and so on) asking for assistants. That’s where you jump in.

Any paid Modern Enigma Society member in good standing can apply for an officer position at any level of the organization, although it’s typical to begin at the chapter or domain level. The Membership Handbook contains a complete explanation of the qualifications required for each level of office.

In short, once there’s a vacant officer position, the process for filling the spot works like so:

• The officer administering the election announces a call for applications to the relevant mailing lists.
• Once the application acceptance period is over, the candidates are presented to the eligible voters for a question and answer period.
• Then the voting begins.  They can be done on paper or electronically, depending on the scope of the election.
• Once the votes are tallied, the administering officer announces the winner and the winner’s tenure begins.

The Membership Handbook contains more nitty-gritty details on the process.