The Microsoft EMS Community's own Discord bot.
Run by the server's moderators, built in the open by its members.
When someone gets help and then goes quiet, a helper reacts 🔴 on their
question. Skippy replies right there to let them know, reminds them after 48
hours, and nudges them if they post elsewhere first. Once it's sorted, a
helper closes it. /score and /stats show how everyone is doing.
New posts from members' blogs land in #community-feed, each with its own discussion thread. Microsoft's blogs, service status and CVEs go to #ms-blogs, #ms-status and #cve.
- Vote for your favourite posts with the :msems: reaction. Every Monday at 09:00 the roundup in #general recaps the week and crowns the top 3.
- Write a blog, or know a member who does?
/blog suggestit, and a moderator will add it. Your posts can link to your LinkedIn, X, YouTube and GitHub too (/blog links). - Looking for something?
/blog searchsearches everything Skippy has posted.
- Strips tracking junk from links people post and shows the clean link.
- Checks where short links lead, and blocks ones that point somewhere they shouldn't.
- Asks brand-new accounts to confirm they're human.
There are a few fun commands too (/ghostcheck, /verdict, /trial, ...).
Type /help in the server for everything you can use. Moderators get the
full guide there.
- It only has the access it needs. Skippy has no admin rights and can't see private channels, apart from the two mod channels it reports in. It reads messages in the public channels, to clean links and spot follow-ups, but it doesn't keep them.
- It keeps little, and not for long:
- Follow-ups: who was flagged, a link to the question and its first 200
characters. Closed follow-ups are deleted after 180 days; only the counts
behind
/scorestay. - Bloggers on the feed and members on the watchlist: when and where they posted (a link, never the text), so moderators can see who's active. Cleared out every month.
- Profile links bloggers add to their posts, until they remove them or their blog leaves the feed.
- Anonymous polls: your vote is stored under a scrambled code, never your name or ID. Nobody can see who voted for what, and the codes are deleted when the poll closes; only the totals stay.
- Its log of actions is kept for 90 days, and its technical log for 7.
- Follow-ups: who was flagged, a link to the question and its first 200
characters. Closed follow-ups are deleted after 180 days; only the counts
behind
- Every change is checked. All of Skippy's code is public, right here. Each change is reviewed by a moderator and has to pass the automated tests before it goes live. If Skippy doesn't come back up properly, the change is rolled back on its own.
- It runs walled off. On the server, Skippy runs under its own locked-down account, kept apart from everything else.
Skippy is built by the community, not by one person.
- Got an idea or found a bug? Tell a moderator, or open an issue.
- Want to change it yourself? Open a pull request. A moderator reviews it, and once it's merged it's live within about 5 minutes, with a thank-you ping in Discord if you want one. CONTRIBUTING.md has the details.
MIT licensed, see LICENSE.