discord.py and the future of the bot

[rubellyte]

As announced in August 2021 here, discord.py has been discontinued due to impending changes by Discord to their API. In its place, several alternatives have cropped up.

We need to:

• Determine which fork or alternative best suits our needs, in terms of flexibility, ease of use, activity, etc.
• Determine what changes, if any, will be needed to accommodate the fork switch, and the new Discord APIs
• Decide whether pursuing the v3.0 milestone as it currently stands should still be a goal

Alternatives to consider:

• pycord
• nextcord
• disnake
• enhanced-discord-py
• novus
• hikari

[rubellyte]

This is no longer urgent; discord.py has returned, obviating the need to pick an alternative library. We will, however, still need to update our code to the 2.0 API update of discord.py, and it is still worth re-evaluating the 3.0 milestone. Downgrading but leaving open.