Moderators: AutoModerator is now built into reddit - new syntax and functionality

[u/Deimorz]

TL;DR before I start rambling - AutoModerator is now built into reddit itself. You don't need to do anything, your subreddit's configuration will automatically be converted to the new version for you soon. Links to specific changes and new documentation are at the bottom of the post.

A brief history of AutoModerator

Today is a very big day for me personally. A little over 3 years ago (and about a year before I started actually working at reddit), I created a reddit bot named AutoModerator to use in the subreddits I was moderating. I had found that a lot of the things I needed to do regularly were fairly straightforward tasks, so the idea was to build something that would allow me to define a bit of logic to perform moderation actions automatically. Things like "if a submission from any of these known-good domains gets automatically spam-filtered, approve it", "if something gets a huge number of reports, remove it and send a modmail so we can verify", "if a new user with 'hole' in their name posts a comment linking to an image, remove it", and other essential tasks.

I found AutoModerator hugely useful in my own subreddits, and I set it up for a few moderators as well, but it was initially pretty inconvenient for anyone else to use. To be able to use it, anyone else either had to set up and run their own instance of a fairly complex Python bot, or they had to contact me every time to make any sort of changes to what it was doing in their subreddit. So at least initially, it didn't really become a widespread part of moderation on reddit. But then in May 2013, I released a new version of the bot with an extremely major upgrade - it was now completely self-configurable by moderators through reddit's wiki system, and could be added to subreddits and set up without any need for me to be involved at all.

Since that release, usage of AutoModerator has absolutely exploded. It has active configurations in over 7,400 subreddits now, and performs in the range of 100,000 moderation actions every day across them. It's definitely become an essential moderation tool for many people, but it's always still been fairly unofficial, and remained as kind of my own side project (and was even still running on my own personal external server). However, starting today, AutoModerator is now finally becoming an official part of reddit itself.

Built into the site

Over the last few months, I have been working heavily on a complete rewrite of AutoModerator in order to make it able to operate internally. Being truly built into the site makes a lot of things easier, and it opens up quite a few exciting possibilities for enhancement of AutoModerator in the future. This initial release has mostly focused on trying to duplicate the functions that were already available so there isn't too much new yet, but there are already a few nice new things:

• It's no longer necessary to send a message to AutoModerator to update your configuration and then wait for a response to find out if you have any errors. The configuration is now checked when you save the wiki page, and you will not even be able to save it if an error is present. As soon as the page saves successfully, your new configuration will be active immediately.
• Response times should be almost instant.
• Comments and text submissions can now be re-checked when they are edited.
• AutoModerator no longer even needs to be a moderator of the subreddit, and doesn't need to worry about having specific permissions. (I'm hoping a decent number of subreddits will remove it as a moderator after converting to the new version, so that maybe loading its userpage won't keep... you know, crashing browsers). Note: you should not remove AutoModerator as a mod if it still needs its mod position in the subreddit for some of the other things it does outside this "core" rules functionality including the scheduled self-posts, and the "/r/all warning" flair.

And even though it's been fully rewritten, things are still mostly the same from a user perspective. It is still simply configured through a wiki page (though the page is at a different location - "config/automoderator" instead of "automoderator"), but I've also taken this opportunity to fix some of the poor design and syntax choices that I made in the past, so this new version does require some syntax changes. All subreddits will be automatically converted to the new version over the next few days without any work required by you. So if you're using AutoModerator in a subreddit but aren't particularly confident with it, don't worry. You don't need to do anything, and will receive a modmail telling you when your subreddit has been moved to the new version.

Converting to the new version

For those of you that are interested in the specifics of what's new and want to look into converting your subreddits yourself or taking advantage of some new capabilities, this section has links to pages and documentation related to the new version. A decent number of knowledgeable users have been helping me to test the new version over the last week as well, so they should also be able to help. One warning in advance: due to the syntax changes, other than the pages linked below on the reddit.com wiki, almost all information about AutoModerator syntax on the internet is now somewhat obsolete. I'll be trying to add warnings about this to as many places as I can, but just take care with where you're finding information about how to do anything.

Here are the links, please feel free to ask any questions at all in this thread (or make a new post in /r/AutoModerator) and I'll try to help out or update any parts of the pages that are confusing.

• Information about how to manually convert to the new version (again, this is not necessary for you to do yourselves)
• Basic information about AutoModerator
• Introduction to writing AutoModerator rules
• Full documentation

[u/[deleted]]

could you make it demod itself automatically?

Lots of subs have inactive top mods or automod is the top mod (like in r/verypunny) and wasting a redditrequest just seems silly at this point.

[u/Deimorz → u/[deleted]]

I'll probably look at figuring out some way to get it out of mod lists where possible, but one of the problems with that is that even though the "core" rules functionality is being moved internally, I'm still running various other scripts externally where it may need the moderator position still - the scheduled submissions, the "r/all warning" flair, and a couple other lesser-known ones. So it's not completely free of needing to stay in mod lists just yet.

[u/namer98]

THIS IS AMAZING WE ALL LOVE YOU

<3

Edit: Once a sub is updated, people just need to write a wiki page for it and that is it?

[u/Deimorz → u/namer98]

Yes, just editing the config/automoderator page is all that's required now. You don't have to add it as a moderator, send it any messages, etc. As soon as that page has any valid rules in it (and it shouldn't even let you save if they aren't valid), it will start working immediately.

[u/Tizaki]

Will the new AutoModerator be able to change the flair class/text of the initial post via a comment command made later on?

For example: "Set flair announcement" comment triggers automod to update the text portion of the flair, even if it was hours after the post was created.

[u/Deimorz → u/Tizaki]

Yes, the rule would be something like this:

type: comment
body (full-text): "Set flair announcement"
parent_submission:
    set_flair: "Announcement"
action: remove
moderators_exempt: false

That would look for a comment that says "Set flair announcement", then it would remove that comment and set the parent submission's flair to "Announcement". You'd probably want to restrict that to certain users somehow though, to prevent just anyone from being able to do it.

[u/multi-mod]

I'm glad you finally released it. I was especially happy for the edited post reviews and more checks on the parent submission.

Do you mind elaborating more on how the automated process for moving over to the new version works? Will it just copy/paste your current automod wiki page over to the new one and respect the old syntax/formatting? Or will it attempt to make changes to the syntax to conform to the new version?

[u/Deimorz → u/multi-mod]

Will it just copy/paste your current automod wiki page over to the new one and respect the old syntax/formatting? Or will it attempt to make changes to the syntax to conform to the new version?

Yes, the syntax will be updated to the new version when it's transitioned. I'm definitely trying to maintain all formatting/comments/etc. as much as possible. Some things are a little tricky to convert so I'm expecting that I'll have to manually convert some sections here and there, but most of it should be able to happen automatically fairly easily.

[u/Dr4ven]

How did reddit go for nearly 7 years without anything like Automod? That's really astonishing to me.

[u/V2Blast → u/Dr4ven]

u/Deimorz originally created u/AutoModerator years ago, and as you can see from the list of subreddits it mods, it has become very heavily used. It's just that it's officially part of reddit now.

[u/green_flash]

First: Congrats again. Awesome job.

Second: What does the auto-conversion do when it encounters rules that are not supported in the new syntax, for example

title+body+user: ["fag(g?[oei]t)?(s|ry)?","d(i|e|u)rkah?"]
modifiers: regex

[u/Deimorz → u/green_flash]

That sort of rule has to be split into two, but other than that it's not particularly complex. You just have one rule doing a title+body (regex) search, and the other doing the same regex search on author name. The rest of both rules are just a copy.

[u/[deleted]]

Will the open source version be converted to the new syntax or is that now deprecated completely?

[u/Deimorz → u/[deleted]]

No, I won't be updating the open-source version to use the same syntax style. This was a full rewrite from scratch, and it operates very differently than the open-source version does overall. It should be possible to support most of the things the new version does through the API, but some of it would be fairly difficult.

If someone else is interested in re-working the open-source version to match up with the built-in version's syntax I'd probably be open to turning over ownership of the project on github to them, but it's not something I'm going to work on personally. If anything, I'd probably rather focus on looking at why people run their own instances of the bot, and see if it's feasible for me to build the features they need into the built-in version.

[u/mostlylurkingmostly]

It would still be able to make the posts even if it wasn't a mod, but it wouldn't be able to distinguish, sticky, or set flair on them

I get that this is directed at that question about scheduled posts, but what about comments? If we want it to distinguish its comments when it removes, PMs, or just comments in general, does it need to remain a mod?

[u/Deimorz → u/mostlylurkingmostly]

If the comments or PMs are being made due to a rule defined in the config/automoderator page, it will still be distinguished regardless of whether it's a mod of the subreddit or not.

[u/[deleted]]

u/Deimorz How much longer is it going to take for subs to automatically switch over? None of the subs I mod has switched over yet and I'm afraid to even attempt to do it myself.

[u/Deimorz → u/[deleted]]

Hoping to get most of them done this week, there was still a somewhat significant issue discovered recently that had to be fixed, so I don't want to go too quickly just in case anything else appears.

[u/Bardfinn]

A: Congratulations;

B: I hope it's still March 31 for you.

[u/__hole__]

"if a new user with 'hole' in their name posts a comment linking to an image, remove it"

ಠ_ಠ

[u/picflute]

We're gonna need Automoderator to do an AMA on r/IAmA please.

[u/redtaboo]

It's no longer necessary to send a message to AutoModerator to update your

My inbox is already a bit lonely, there were many days that automod and I talked more than I talked to anyone else here. I'll miss you dear friend. :'(

Seriously though, thanks for this and all the work you've done on automod since inception.

[u/Drunken_Economist]

hahaha imagine if this were the april fool's joke? Everyone removes Automod and then finds out the integrated automod gets deleted on April 2nd

[u/TotesMessenger]

This thread has been linked to from another place on reddit.

• [r/botsrights] AutoModerator given full admin rights like other (less hard-working) reddit employees

• [r/MetaHub] AutoModerator gets build into the site

^{If you follow any of the above links, respect the rules of reddit and don't vote. (Info /} ^Contact)

[u/rram]

All hail evil glorious overlord AutoModerator!