Table of Contents
Getting Started
Review at least the How It Works and Concepts below, then:
- For Operators (running a bot instance) refer to Operator Getting Started guide
- For Moderators (configuring an existing bot for your subreddit) refer to the Moderator Getting Started guide
How It Works
Where possible Context Mod (CM) uses the same terminology as, and emulates the behavior, of automoderator so if you are familiar with that much of this may seem familiar to you.
Diagram
Expand the section below for a simplified flow diagram of how CM processes an incoming Activity. Then refer the text description of the diagram below as well as Concepts for descriptions of individual components.
Diagram
CM’s lifecycle looks like this:
1) A new Activity in your subreddit is received by CM
The Activities CM watches for are configured by you. These can be new modqueue/unmoderated items, submissions, or comments.
2) CM sequentially processes each Run in your configuration
A Run is made up of a set of Checks
3) CM sequentially processes each Check in the current Run
A Check is a set of:
- One or more Rules that define what conditions should trigger this Check
- One or more Actions that define what the bot should do once the Check is triggered
4) Each Check is processed, in order, until a Check is triggered
In CM’s default configuration, once a Check is triggered no more Checks will be processed. This means all subsequent Checks in this Run (in the order you listed them) are skipped.
5) All Actions from the triggered Check are executed
After all Actions from the triggered Check are executed CM begins processing the next Run
6) Rinse and Repeat from #3
Until all Runs have been processed.
Concepts
Core, high-level concepts regarding how CM works.
Event
An Event refers to the Activity (Comment or Submission) CM receives to process as well as the results of processing that Activity.
Activity
An Activity is a Comment or Submission from Reddit.
Runs
A Run is made up of a set of Checks that represent a group of related behaviors the bot should check for or perform – that are independent of any other behaviors the Bot should perform.
An example of Runs:
- A group of Checks that look for missing flairs on a user or a new submission and flair accordingly
- A group of Checks that detect spam or self-promotion and then remove those activities
Both group of Checks are independent of each other (don’t have any patterns or actions in common).
Checks
A Check is the main logical unit of behavior for the bot. It is equivalent to “if X then Y”. A Check is composed of:
- One or more Rules that are tested against an Activity
- One of more Actions that are performed when the Rules are satisfied
A Run can be made up of one or more Checks that are processed in the order they are listed in the Run.
Once a Check is triggered (its Rules are satisfied and Actions performed) all subsequent Checks are skipped.
Rule
A Rule is some set of criteria (conditions) that are tested against an Activity (comment/submission), a User, or a User’s history. A Rule is considered triggered when the criteria for that rule are found to be true for whatever is being tested against.
CM has different Rules that can test against different types of behavior and aspects of a User, their history, and the Activity (submission/common) being checked.
Available Rules
All available rules can be found in the components documentation
Rule Set
A Rule Set is a “grouped” set of Rules with a trigger condition specified.
Rule Sets can be used interchangeably with other Rules and Rule Sets in the rules list of a Check.
They allow you to create more complex trigger behavior by combining multiple rules into one “parent rule”.
Action
An Action is some action the bot can take against the checked Activity (comment/submission) or Author of the Activity. CM has Actions for most things a normal reddit user or moderator can do.
Available Actions
Available Actions Documentation
Filters
Runs, Checks, Rules, and Actions all have two additional (optional) criteria “pre-tests”. These tests are different from rules/checks in these ways:
- Filters test against the current state of the Activity, the Author of the Activity, or the Subreddit of the Activity – rather than looking at history/context/etc…
- Filter test results only determine if the Run, Check, Rule, or Action should run – rather than triggering it
- When the filter test passes the thing being tested continues to process as usual
- When the filter test fails the thing being tested fails.
Full Documentation for Filters
Configuration And Usage
- For Operator/Bot maintainers see Operation Guide
- For Moderators
- Start with the Subreddit/Moderator docs or Moderator Getting Started guide
- Refer to the Subreddit Components Documentation or the subreddit-ready examples
- as well as the schema which has
- fully annotated configuration data/structure
- generated examples in json/yaml
FAQ
TODO