Taskerbot

A reddit bot to make moderation easier, especially on mobile.

Its main goal is to allow mods to remove posts while leaving removal reasons via the bot.

Usage

Taskerbot can be invoked by any comment or moderator report containing one of the following commands (you can either use ! or @):

• !rule {reason} [note]: removes a thread, leaving an appropriate flair and comment. reason is one of the removal reasons' keys (see Removal reasons). If no corresponding removal reason is found, the Generic reason is used instead. If note is provided, it will be added to the message.

  Example: !rule 1, !rule spam, !rule repost this is a note.

• !spam: marks the submission as spam and removes it.

• !ban [duration] "{reason}" "{message}": bans the comment/thread's author. The last two arguments are required. duration, if provided, is the ban's duration in days, reason is the ban's reason (visible only to mods), and message is the message the banned user will receive. reason and message must be between quotations (""`) (escapes are not supported).

  Example: !ban 3600 "spammer" "repeatedly spamming somedomain.com"

Multiple actions can be specified at once. If Taskerbot was invoked by a comment (as opposed to a moderator report), it will automatically remove it.

• Refreshing the list of moderators/removal reasons:

  Taskerbot loads the subreddit's list of moderators and removal reasons at startup. To refresh these, send Taskerbot a message containing !refresh Subreddit (e.g. !refresh Android to reload /r/Android's configuration).

  Note that this is case sensitive, so make sure it's the same as what's in the configuration file (see Configuration file).

Only moderator reports and comments made by/mails sent by the subreddit's moderators are checked.

PS. Reddit silently ignores reports on removed posts, so Taskerbot won't see those.

Setup

Dependencies

Taskerbot requires Python 3. For a list of required Python 3 libraries, see requirements.txt.

The required Heroku files are provided with this project if you're interested in running it on a Heroku app. For example (after setup):

heroku ps:scale bot=1 --app app-name-here

Requirements

/u/Taskerbot doesn't accept new additions as we want to keep an acceptable load. That being said, you're free to run your own instance.

You'll first want to create a new account and make it a mod of your subreddit. Required permissions are: access, flair, posts, and wiki.

Configuration

Taskerbot uses YAML for its configuration files. You can find a good document covering the syntax here.

Configuration file

The config.yaml file must contain the bot's username, password and a list of subreddits to patrol. The syntax is as follows:

User Agent: 'user agent here'
Client ID: 'client id here'
Client Secret: 'client secret here'
Username: 'bot username here'
Password: 'bot password here'
Subreddits:
    - 'SomeSubreddit'
    - 'AnotherSubreddit'
    - 'YetAnotherSub'

To obtain the client ID and secret, please follow reddit's OAuth2 First Steps guide.

Use a YAML validator to make sure the configuration file is valid.

Removal reasons

This step must be performed for every new subreddit you want Taskerbot to patrol.

1. Create a new wiki page on the subreddit called taskerbot. For example, if you want Taskerbot to patrol /r/Android, you must create /r/Android/wiki/taskerbot.

2. Fill the page with the reasons you want -- Header, Footer and Generic are required reasons so make sure you include at least those:

   Header: "Sorry {author}, your submission has been removed:"
   
   Footer: "If you would like to appeal, please message the moderators. *I am a bot, but this message was generated at the instruction of a human moderator.*"
   
   'Generic':
   
       Flair: 'Removed'
   
       Message: |
           Please review our sidebar for the complete list of rules.
   
   '1':
   
       Flair: "Removed (Rule 1)"
   
       Message: |
           Sorry, your post was removed as it breaks rule 1!
           Check our wiki for more info.
   
   '2':
   
       Flair: "Removed (Rule 2)"
   
       Message: |
           Sorry, your post was removed as it breaks rule 2!
           Check our wiki for more info.
   
           Also consider checking some of our sister subreddits if you want to
           do XYZ:
   
           - /r/SomeSubreddit - for X.
           - /r/SomeOtherSubreddit - for Y.
           - /r/YetAnotherSubreddit - for Z.
   
   'spam':
   
       Flair: "Removed (Spam)"
   
       Message: |
           Sorry, your post was removed as we don't like spam!
           Check our wiki for more info.

   Reasons' keys cannot contain spaces (e.g. in the example above, 1 and spam are fine, but reason 2 is not).

   Each custom removal reason must have two entries: Flair, which will be what the removed thread's flair is set to, and Message, which is the comment Taskerbot will leave in the thread.

   Also note that Taskerbot will automatically replace all instances of {author} in the Header and Footer with the author's username.

   You can check /r/Android's taskerbot wiki page for a real example (click "View source" in the bottom right).

3. Create a new wiki page on the subreddit called taskerbot_logs. You can keep it blank (Taskerbot will always append to it). This page will be used to log mod actions.

PS. Make sure to make the wiki pages editable by mods only.

Use a YAML validator to make sure the configuration file is valid.

Tips

You might want to leverage AutoModerator to lock Taskerbot's comments. For example:

#Lock any comment Taskerbot makes
    type: comment
    author: [Taskerbot]
    moderators_exempt: false
    set_locked: true
    priority: 9
---
#Lock any comment a mod makes when invoking Taskerbot
    type: comment
    body (regex): ["[!@]rule"]
    author:
        is_moderator: true
    moderators_exempt: false
    set_locked: true
    priority: 10