Dynamically add a channel to available pool when others are being typed in

[jb3]

Following on from python-discord/meta#92.

We want to provide a third help channel in the available category so that more people can type their question at once without the channel being claimed halfway through. Please see the original issue for the justification.

The help channels cog must be altered to provide for this and place 3 help channels into the available pool (as opposed to the current two).

[Den4200]

It should be as simple as updating the config value.

bot/config-default.yml

Line 473 in 27e60e9

max_available: 2

[jb3]

Indeed! Alright, let's make that change.

We'll then need to update the documentation for the feature though, so we'll leave this open. I think @SebastiaanZ has previously done work on the how to get help channel.

[jb3]

Partially resolves!

[OpenPiece]

I'm just curious as to why a static change (a simple bump to 3 channels) was chosen, as opposed to dynamic change, as described in the original issue:

the bot could detect typing in these channels and if both are being typed into at the same time, send a new channel in

Dynamic change like this could be quite beneficial and wouldn't require further issues with increasing the count, it would also mean that during the more active hours, there would perhaps be more help channels, to satisfy the need. But of course, there should be some minimum/maximum amount of channels, but it should be within discord.py capabilities to do something like this.

Is it because of the amount of API calls it would require or was there some other reason to go with a static bump like this?

[HassanAbouelela]

The static bump was only a temporary fix. There are certain problems with the typing solution due to the way discord handles typing events (more detail than is needed right now), so we decided to table that for now while we continue looking for better solutions.

[jb3]

Yep, as Scale mentions this is a temporary solution.

We do have some internal issues that were opened after we merged this to talk about this including suggestions such as using reactions. We'll update onto this repo once we've held a discussion.