Bot-moderated help channel automation

[andrewlalis]

Consider adding bot-managed help channels to streamline people's questions and answers.

Proposed Flow

There are several open help channels that are clearly visible. Users are directed to ask their question in one of these channels.

Once the user sends their first message in an open channel, the channel is moved to a separate area for "active questions". It will stay open in a "pending answer" state until another user (not the original question asker) sends a message in the channel, as a response to the question. If no response is given after X hours, the bot sends a message in the channel to ask the user to confirm that the question is still unanswered, and the channel will stay reserved. Repeat this confirmation flow as long as possible (or introduce a hard cutoff limit).

Once some discussion has happened in a reserved help channel, and the user has obtained their answer, the bot will wait for at least X minutes of inactivity, after which it will send a question to the user in the channel, asking if their question was successfully resolved. If they respond affirmatively, the channel is moved back to the list of available channels, or if not, it stays "reserved".

Channel States

• Available - The channel is available for users to ask questions.
• Pending Answer - The channel has been reserved by a user and they've asked their question, and it is waiting for a response from another user.
• Active - Once another user responds, channels are active while any user sends a message within X minutes.
• Inactive - If there's been no activity in an active channel in X minutes, the channel is considered inactive. After some time, the bot will confirm with the original question asker if they got their question answered. If so, channel returns to Available state. After a long time, the channel will return to Available regardless.

[andrewlalis]

On hold awaiting discord threads.

[jasonlessenich]

On hold awaiting JDA 5

DV8FromTheWorld#6297 on JDA (Java Discord API):

Re: Threads

I'm planning to build out threads myself. It is going to take a rework of some of our types and hierarchy to get it right. An example of what the changes could look like in regards to Channel interface typing:
https://lucid.app/lucidchart/254f3104-746b-4806-aae5-f193cabbc687/view

I've been quite busy for a while, but this is one thing I'm setting aside time to work on as it needs a large hand. These changes will result in JDA5. They will include changes outside of just the above Channel hierarchy.

I ask that developers have patience with us as we get to a better state for introducing threads.

[danthe1st]

Bots may not be needed for that as of discord/discord-api-docs#3672.

This would allow to configure a help channel so that users can create threads (and send messages in those threads) while not allowing them to send messages in the help channel directly.

The help channel could have a single message explaining those things and possible the help guidelines.

[andrewlalis]

I still think that the Bot should at the least be involved in actively determining when a user's question has been answered successfully, since this allows us to reward helpers and archive immediately instead of after 24 hours.

[andrewlalis]

Courtesy of Dan, here's the dependency information for the testing/alpha/beta version of JDA thread support:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.dv8fromtheworld</groupId>
    <artifactId>jda</artifactId>
    <version>feature~threads</version>
</dependency>

And the repository:

<repository>
    <id>jitpack</id>
    <name>m2-jitpack</name>
    <url>https://jitpack.io</url>
</repository>

[andrewlalis]

In summary, the agreed upon objectives for this issue are:

• Allow the bot to automatically create a thread for a user when they post a message in the help channel.
• Allow the bot to check up on and archive threads which it determines to be no longer active.

For the implementation of the second point, I suggest that the bot keeps a cache of all help threads which are active, and any message sent in a help thread would "refresh" that thread's cache entry. Stale threads in the cache (of some configured limit, like 1 hour), would become candidates for archiving.

When a thread is categorized as being a candidate for archiving, the bot sends a message in the thread, asking the participants if the question has been answered, and provides a "Yes" and "No" action button which the user can click on. Only the user who opened the thread/asked the question, or helpers or moderators should be allowed to respond to the question. If a "Yes" answer is received, the thread is archived. If "No" is received, the thread is placed back into the cache and has its timer refreshed. If no answer is received after some configured time, the thread is archived regardless.

[Nandagopalvs25]

Is this issue being worked on? if not i would like to work on it.

[andrewlalis]

Well, at the moment we have the following situation:

• Threads are pretty good for help, and they reduce the amount of moderation.
• Some people still don't like threads, and we can't use bots in threads.

So basically, we either stick with threads as they are, or come up with a completely new channel management system like what the python discord uses (or so I've been told, I've never been in it), which must be almost unanimously agreed-upon to be better than threads.

[Nandagopalvs25]

How about this. The help channel will contain a single message, and there will be a button below it to create a thread. When the user clicks the button the bots create a new thread for the user. The bot keeps track of each thread and closes it based on a preset condition. I think this will be better than creating a new thread on each message sent in the channel.

[jasonlessenich]

Imo, an automatic system with normal textchannels would be the best.
I can imagine that there's a high percentage of users which don't know how to create & use threads.
(+ there's no thread-implementation in JDA (yet))