PointsBot

Description
Installation
Usage
TODO
Ideas
Questions
License

Description

This is a bot for Reddit that monitors solutions to questions or problems in a subreddit and awards points to the user responsible for the solution.

This bot is based on the description in this request. While this could be used for other subreddits, this means that it is intended for r/MinecraftHelp.

The bot will award a point to a redditor when the OP of a submission includes "!Solved" somewhere in a reply to the redditor's comment on that submission. These points will allow the redditor to advance to different levels:

Helper (5 points)
Trusted Helper (15 points)
Super Helper (40 points)

At each level, the redditor's flair for the subreddit will be updated to reflect their current level. However, the bot should not change a mod's flair.

Each time a point is awarded, the bot will reply to the solution comment to notify the redditor of their total points, with a progress bar to show how many points they need to reach the next level and a reminder of the title of the next level.

The first time a point is awarded, the bot's reply comment will also include a brief message detailing the points system.

Only the submission OP's first "!Solved" comment should result in a point being awarded.

Installation

Requirements:

python3 (specifically, version 3.7 or greater)
- pip (should be installed alongside python)
pipenv

To install, navigate to the project root directory and run pipenv install. To uninstall (i.e. delete the project's virtual environment and the installed python packages), instead run pipenv --rm.

Usage

The simplest way to run the bot is to navigate to the project root directory and run:

pipenv run python -m pointsbot

TODO

Logging

Ideas

Config

Store all config and data in a .pointsbot directory or similar in the user's home or data directory (OS-dependent).
Could do something similar to packages like PRAW:
1. Look in current working directory first.
2. Look in OS-dependent location next.
3. (Maybe) Finally, could look in the directory containing the source files (using __file__).
Could also allow use of environment variables, but this seems unnecessary and could be a little too technical (though any more technically-minded users might appreciate the option).

Database

Should it keep track of the solved posts for future reference and calculate points on the fly, rather than just keeping track of points? If so, should have a column denoting whether the post has been deleted, if that information is decided to be useful when determining a user's points.

Determining when to award points

Methods for awarding points, in ascending order of difficulty:

Could just observe and wait for !Solved in addition to automoderator doing the same, but this will create duplicate logic between automoderator and the bot.
Could instruct automoderator to send modmail and then have the bot use that as its trigger to action.
Assuming that only mods can change flairs, could find a way to check when a submission's flair is changed to solved, and then award the points.

To ensure that points are only awarded for the first comment marked as a solution:

Alter the database to allow for tracking of each submission and the first comment marked as the solution. Then, everytime a new solution comment is detected, simply check the database to see if the submission is already counted. This will avoid unnecessary calls to Reddit, which would include scanning all the submission comments each time.
This approach could also make it simpler to check whether a solution comment has been edited. Instead of having to do a daily search for edits, it could just check the original solution comment to ensure that it still contains the "!solved" string. If not, it can remove points from that author and award points to the new author.

To ensure that a point is awarded to the correct user:

We could expand the "!solved" bot summons to include an optional username argument. Without the argument, the bot will award the point to either the top-level comment or the parent comment of the "!solved" comment, whichever is decided upon. However, if the username argument is provided, the bot could simple check that one of the comments in the comment tree belongs to that user, and then award them the point.

Questions

Should it really display a progress bar without a bounds, since the user could get a large amount of points? Or should it end at 40 or whatever the max level is?
Should the bot reply directly to the solution comment, or the OP's "!Solved" comment and just tag the point earner?
Should the bot check whether comments containing "!solved" have been edited to remove it?
- If so, it could do that daily or something.
- This will be especially important if a "recovery mode" is implemented that crawls through the whole subreddit to rebuild the database, since the bot would only be able to see comments that haven't been removed, or the newest version of edited comments.
When a "!solved" comment is found, should the bot award the point to the author of the parent comment or the root comment? In other words, should only top-level comments be considered for points?
Should the bot assume that the parent comment belongs to the user who solved the issue, or should it find the first ancestor comment not made by the OP (in case the OP responds "!solved" to one of their own comments on the solution comment)?
Should the bot still keep track of points for mods, even though it doesn't update their flair?
Should the reply comment always tag them, even if it's not their first point?
When a user levels up, should the reply comment also mention that they have been awarded a new flair?

6.2 KiB Raw Blame History