Using Carl-Bot to Assign People to Teams for Discord Tournaments

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meebles127
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Using Carl-Bot to Assign People to Teams for Discord Tournaments

Post by meebles127 »

After using Carl-Bot for the 2020 Internet Charity Tournament, I started looking into different applications of the bot. This post is a step-by-step guide on how to use Carl-Bot to set up reaction roles to assign people to teams for Discord tournaments. This should give tournament directors the opportunity to have the play-off rooms set up before the tournament even begins. The way this guide instructs you to set up the reaction roles makes it such that a player can only have one role in that message EVER. If a player messes up and selects the wrong role, then they will need to have their team role manually adjusted by staff.

Prerequisites to using Carl-Bot

In order to be able to set messages up using Carl-Bot you have to enable Developer mode under "Appearance" in your account settings, as shown below.

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Inviting Carl-Bot to your tournament server

After enabling developer mode, visit carl.gg to link your Discord account to Carl-Bot and invite him into your server. Once you link your Discord account to carl.gg a list of all servers in which you have administrator permissions (or bot permissions, I can't remember, if you're the owner of a server it will most definitely show up) will show up like this. In order to invite Carl into your server, you need to select the server from the list.

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Once you invite Carl into your server, you will be greeted with a setting page. I suggest turning off everything except reaction roles so no one can mess around with anything inadvertenly.

Creating the Reaction Roles

At this point, you will want to navigate to the Reaction Roles tab of the menu and select "create new reaction role." You will want to set up two separate messages, one for the prelims, and one for the playoffs. You should create a set of roles starting with "Prelim Team 1" all the way through to the last numbered prelim team. Create a similar set of roles for the playoff teams.

After creating the team roles, type up a message like the one shown below, with an emoji and the team role pinged for each team. I suggest putting this in a dedicated channel titled something to the effect of #team-roles.

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Once you create the message, right click on it and select "Copy ID," you will need this for when you create the reaction roles.

At this point, go back to your web browser where you have the "create new reaction role" menu opened. In the first field select "Use ID" and then paste the message ID that you copied earlier, into that field. Next, you need to select "Add emoji" and select the emoji you used in the message you typed up and then select the corresponding team role. Do this until you have added all emojis and their corresponding teams for the prelims. DO NOT put the prelim and playoff team roles into the same message. Make a separate message with emojis for those roles. This next part is extremely important, in the field titled "message type" you need to select "binding" this makes it such that a player can only have one role ever. Your screen should look something like the menu in the screenshot below. You will then repeat these same steps for the playoffs reaction roles message.

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Final Thoughts

I set this bot up for use in the Scattergories 4 server and it seemed to go over quite well. I believe this bot has the potential to be used to reduce tournament delays and busy work like assigning players to their team roles. If anyone has any questions about implementing, this feel free to email me or DM me on Facebook or Discord.
Em Gunter
Club President, University of Virginia
Tournament Director, 2023 Chicago Open
Assistant Tournament Director, 2022 and 2023 ACF Nationals

Author of: My Guide to High School Outreach and So You Want to Buy a Buzzer System

"That's got to be one of the most useful skills anyone has ever gotten from quizbowl." -John Lawrence
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meebles127
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Re: Using Carl-Bot to Assign People to Teams for Discord Tournaments

Post by meebles127 »

Carl-Bot can also be used to create pronoun roles for your tournament server. Instead of setting up roles with team names, you would create roles for pronoun sets (she/her, they/them, he/him, etc). If you do choose to use pronoun roles in your server you need to set the message "type" to "normal", instead of "binding".

Having pronoun roles helps to encourage inclusivity, in addition to helping ensure that everyone's pronouns are respected throughout the course of the competition. I strongly urge against making pronoun roles mandatory.

Like always, if anyone needs help setting up Carl-Bot for their Discord server, feel free to either email me at egunter127 AT gmail DOT com, or DM me on Facebook or Discord.
Last edited by meebles127 on Mon May 03, 2021 8:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Em Gunter
Club President, University of Virginia
Tournament Director, 2023 Chicago Open
Assistant Tournament Director, 2022 and 2023 ACF Nationals

Author of: My Guide to High School Outreach and So You Want to Buy a Buzzer System

"That's got to be one of the most useful skills anyone has ever gotten from quizbowl." -John Lawrence
alexdz
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Re: Using Carl-Bot to Assign People to Teams for Discord Tournaments

Post by alexdz »

meebles127 wrote: Mon May 03, 2021 8:29 pm I strongly urge against making pronoun roles mandatory.
Emphasis in the quote added by me. I just want to echo this, as I actually read it wrong the first time and worry others may do the same. Please definitely do not make pronoun labels a mandatory part of however you choose to use them publicly. Doing so forces closeted and/or questioning people to either label themselves with a label they feel doesn't fit or to out themselves when they may not feel comfortable doing so. Making it optional but easily accessible is the best course of action in pretty much any situation where you publicly ask people to state their pronouns for a group of (quasi-)strangers. If someone chooses not to include their pronouns, don't ask them why or force them to choose.
Alex Dzurick
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meebles127
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Re: Using Carl-Bot to Assign People to Teams for Discord Tournaments

Post by meebles127 »

alexdz wrote: Mon May 03, 2021 8:45 pm
meebles127 wrote: Mon May 03, 2021 8:29 pm I strongly urge against making pronoun roles mandatory.
Emphasis in the quote added by me. I just want to echo this, as I actually read it wrong the first time and worry others may do the same. Please definitely do not make pronoun labels a mandatory part of however you choose to use them publicly. Doing so forces closeted and/or questioning people to either label themselves with a label they feel doesn't fit or to out themselves when they may not feel comfortable doing so. Making it optional but easily accessible is the best course of action in pretty much any situation where you publicly ask people to state their pronouns for a group of (quasi-)strangers. If someone chooses not to include their pronouns, don't ask them why or force them to choose.
Thank you for this Alex, I've edited the original post to reflect your emphasis.

The points that Alex makes are extremely important, and you should heed his advice.
Em Gunter
Club President, University of Virginia
Tournament Director, 2023 Chicago Open
Assistant Tournament Director, 2022 and 2023 ACF Nationals

Author of: My Guide to High School Outreach and So You Want to Buy a Buzzer System

"That's got to be one of the most useful skills anyone has ever gotten from quizbowl." -John Lawrence
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