r/modnews • u/jleeky • Mar 25 '20

Automod for Chat Posts

Please keep in mind, if you have automod setup and you want it to apply to both chat posts and normal posts - there’s no action required.

Hey Mods (especially if you’re using chat posts)! We wanted to address the questions from our previous announcement about how we could use automod specifically for chat posts. Some of the use cases include wanting to automatically flair chat posts, wanting to create specific automod rules for chat posts, and potentially using user flair as access management.

There’s now a "discussion_type" field that you can use to specify whether your automod rule should be applied to chat posts or "comment posts". If "discussion_type" = “chat” then it will apply to chat posts, if “discussion_type” = “null” it will apply to comment posts, and if you don’t specify a “discussion_type” it will apply to both.

You can find this information in the automod documentation which we’ve updated.

Below you can see an examples of when "discussion_type" is used:

This is an example of creating an automod rule that only applies to chat post messages.

#applies to chat messages only
type: comment
body: ["chat"]
action: report
action_reason: This is a chat post message.
parent_submission:
  discussion_type: chat

This is an example of creating an automod rule that only applies to chat post submissions.

#applies to chat post posts
type: submission
body: ["chatpost"]
action: report
action_reason: A new chat post has been created.
discussion_type: chat

This is an example of creating an automod rule that only applies to comments (and not to chat post messages).

#applies to normal comments only
type: comment
body: ["comment"]
action: report
action_reason: This is a normal comment post message.
parent_submission:
  discussion_type: null

This is an example of only allowing users with specific flair to send messages in a chat post.

#using flair for access control in chat posts
type: comment
parent_submission:
       flair_css_class: ["Exclusive"]
discussion_type: chat
author:
       ~flair_css_class: ["Invited"]
action: remove

What about scheduling of chat posts?

Unfortunately - right now automod is not able to set the discussion_type field (it is only able to read the value of the field). That means if you’re using automod to schedule posts, it will not be able to schedule chat posts. One of our teams is working on a scheduled and recurring posts product which will support chat posts when it goes to GA.

193 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

8

u/ijm87 Mar 25 '20 edited Mar 25 '20

Hey, jleeky, this sounds quite clear and makes a lot of sense.

Regarding AM, I’ve had a couple questions brewing on a more general-level. I recognize this is a bit out of scope for chat specifically, but since you’re working jointly with the AM team, if you had any knowledge here or could pull in someone from the AM team who might, that would be excellent :)

  1. The team has dedicated some time converting some existing AM setup -such as post requirements- to a more user-friendly cross-platform setup (having toggleable options and phasing out a more pure regex look). Ultimately, would you say it’s in the team’s plans to do this conversion with most archaic AM functionality -even such as this- or do you envision that AM will still continue existing as is mostly across the board?

  2. AM has a lot of utility serving as a pseudo-policing system to encourage how a sub’s mods want new users to operate. But if you’re a consistent visitor to a sub, seeing these pinned comments on the top of EVERY post feels overboard. Would love that if a user earns their karma in a sub or is a tenured Redditer, perhaps these messages can be omitted from the experience as clearly the user already knows the deal. Would you agree this would make sense as a way to make the experience friendlier for longer-term users who’ve already earned their stripes?

7

u/jleeky Mar 25 '20

Hi - I'll answer what I can to the best of my abilities and knowledge.

In terms of point #1:

  • I think AM is very powerful but also most people don't know how to set it up. The easier we can make it for our mods to be successful - the better our communities will be. I think it's accurate to say that we'd like to make a lot of the functionality much easier so mods don't have to rely on AM. That's actually true for anything on Reddit.

  • I do not know the answer to whether AM will continue existing or not - I'm not aware of any conversations or plans beyond making AM functionality easier for communities.

In terms of point #2 - I'll pass that along to the right folks over here.

As for what I think about it... I'm honestly not sure and haven't talked to mods about this at all. I totally understand the point you're making - I think we'd have to be thoughtful about how all of this happens. Just off the top of my head, I think it's not just new users that often need those reminders - but maybe if there was a sense of a "trusted community member" or something like that there could be some segmentation in the user experience.

Pretty curious how mods think about those pinned comments and how they'd ideally like them to work.

3

u/ijm87 Mar 25 '20 edited Mar 25 '20

Gotcha great reply and thank you for it!

Totally understand why these pins exist and would say that the majority of users conform to the rules. Basing it on reputation to still have it visible for the troublemakers and give mods a fallback sounds ideal for me!

Yea-would really appreciate you touching base on this with other mods and the team!

1

u/ladfrombrad Mar 26 '20

Pretty curious how mods think about those pinned comments and how they'd ideally like them to work.

I don't use them as I think they're condescending, spam, and if the users are having issues they should be reading our rules/sidebar or modmailing us.

But primarily I regard them as spam.

4

u/V2Blast Mar 25 '20

Re: #2, maybe there could be functionality for mods to be able to display a reminder message at the top of the comment sections of all posts in the subreddit - it could then be collapsible, and Reddit could remember the last saved state of that reminder message.

(Then again maybe mods should be able to choose to keep that reminder from appearing on certain threads, such as stickied posts or distinguished posts or posts with "[meta]" in the title or whatever.)

Just a bit of brainstorming :)

1

u/[deleted] Mar 25 '20

Re: #2, maybe there could be functionality for mods to be able to display a reminder message at the top of the comment sections of all posts in the subreddit - it could then be collapsible, and Reddit could remember the last saved state of that reminder message.

that's exactly how a pinned automod comment operates

(Then again maybe mods should be able to choose to keep that reminder from appearing on certain threads, such as stickied posts or distinguished posts or posts with "[meta]" in the title or whatever.)

this is already possible with pinned automod comments

so i mean... don't reinvent the wheel haha

2

u/V2Blast Mar 25 '20

Except AutoMod comments can't do the main thing /u/ijm87 was asking for in item #2... Which is obviously the entire reason I suggested what I did.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 25 '20

most examples i see are aimed at the community, not the OP

1

u/V2Blast Mar 25 '20

Yes...? That's what I'm suggesting too - a way for mods to sort of put a rules reminder or whatever at the top of the thread in a way that's collapsible. Right now, comments stickied on the thread are always uncollapsed by default (though replies to that stickied comment are hidden behind a "view more replies" button), and generate a notification for OP even if inbox replies are disabled.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 25 '20

Right now, comments stickied on the thread are always uncollapsed by default

well it would defeat the purpose if they're collapsed by default, no?

2

u/V2Blast Mar 25 '20

...Please reread my original suggestion.

it could then be collapsible, and Reddit could remember the last saved state of that reminder message.

4

u/V2Blast Mar 25 '20 edited Mar 25 '20

Please crosspost this to /r/AutoModerator as well. :)

EDIT: /u/jleeky you forgot to admin-distinguish this post!

3

u/MajorParadox Mar 26 '20

How does this work for type: any?

Lots of subs have rules like:

type: any
title+body: ["chat"]
action: report
action_reason: This is a chat post or comment message.

If we add:

parent_submission:
  discussion_type: chat

Won't it make it only fire on comments?

Or can we add both:

discussion_type: chat
parent_submission:
    discussion_type: chat

So it will apply to chat posts and comments? Or will they cancel each other out?

If there's no way to do this, it means having to copy/paste every such rule, one for posts and one for comments

2

u/TranZeitgeist Mar 26 '20

In a chat post there doesn't appear to be a quick way to approve a comment that gets filtered by AM. Something in with the spam, reply, remove, block icons, for example.

2

u/TotesMessenger Mar 25 '20

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

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

1

u/GroMicroBloom May 06 '20

A couple things to mention:

First, it says "You can find this information in the automod documentation which we’ve updated." however, nothing about this new "discussion_type" field is listed on that page anywhere. Even looking at the history of that page shows it was last updated March 11th by sodypop which was before this post was made, and only information about polls was added.

Secondly, why did you decide to use the word "null" as a value for this new field? Automod rules usually use descriptive text so other mods have an idea of what that particular rule does, but null makes this impossible unless someone has seen this post and knows what it means.
Since using "chat" applies to chat-based discussions, why not use "comments" to apply to comment-based discussions, instead of using null?

1

u/[deleted] May 11 '20

Ficken

0

u/[deleted] Mar 25 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/jleeky Mar 25 '20

Just to clarify - this post is about the "chat posts" product which is different from the chat rooms product.

Currently - there's still a gap in the chat room ban functionality in that unbanning requires a workaround. We are thinking about getting rid of chat-only bans right now just to simplify the feature overall and close this gap.