Migrated help system to forums

[Zabuzard]

Overview

Implements and closes #585.

Migrates our help system to a Discord forum channel.

Details

Most of the migration is actually fairly simple and straightforward, because forum posts are still just regular ThreadChannels. So most of our code works out of the box.

The first change that had to be done is to adjust the config to go from 2 channels to just one "helpForumPattern": "question". Obviously, this yields a couple of minor renaming changes in many classes that observe messages in threads of this channel (e.g. TopHelper, Bookmarks, ...).

In terms of the actual logic, the only real change are the semantics of thread categories and activity. In the past, they have been attached to a thread in its title, e.g. 🔻 [Java] How to write Hello World?. Forums actually have dedicated tags which can be used for that. So we moved the categories and activity into forum-tags.

The second bigger change was that we do not have a controlled entry-point into the logic anymore (no /ask command or implicit ask listener). So we had to move some logic (explanation message, ...) into an event handler.

Removed features

Forums bring a lot of functionality out of the box, making the following features obsolete:

• /ask
• ImplicitAskListener
• BotMessageCleanup (since we do not have a staging channel with implicit posts anymore)
• validation for valid titles and title extraction
• question overview HelpThreadOverviewUpdater

Tags

Forum tags are fairly straightforward. We simply add a tag for each category and for each activity:

The code can read the applied tags and find/apply them by name, easy. The code changes for this are all in HelpSystemHelper, where we could remove all the renaming/title extraction logic and replace it by using forum tags.

Discord actually has a limit of 5 tags per thread and also allows the user to select multiple. This creates a couple of edge cases that we have to handle. For example, the user can now select multiple categories, i.e. Java, Frameworks, Spring, JavaFX/Swing.

We probably dont want to ping all of them, so the system will only look at the first selected category and identify as primary tag, only pinging those helpers. The /help-thread change category command has to correctly respect that, deleting the first tag, possibly deleting the desired tag if its somewhere at the end of the list, and then prepend it (see HelpSystemHelper#changeChannelCategory). The activity tags are handled in the same way.

If the user already selected 5 tags (the max) and the bot then wants to add the activity tag, it will delete the last tag in the list first.

Entry point

Since we do not have /ask and the ImplicitAskListener anymore, we created HelpThreadCreatedListener, reacting to the event of threads being created in the forum channel.

Essentially, we just copy pasted the logic from /ask over to here, sending the explanation message and pinging helpers.

The text had some minor adjustments, due to the change of the flow. For example, we do not have to write "@John has a question and will send the details now" anymore, since the user created the thread themselves (no attention-ping needed) and they already entered their details, since Discord forces writing a description.

Release

Config

Replaced stagingChannelPattern and overviewChannelPattern by

"helpForumPattern": "questions"

Discord

1. Create a forum called questions (according to the config).
2. Give it a tag for each of the categories, selectable by normal users.
3. Give it tags for the activities, they should only be selectable by mods. Names:

• Active
• Needs attention
• Nobody helped yet

4. Require that users select a tag when posting

Checklist

• config
• migrate misc users (bookmarks, top helper, ...)
• categories based on tags
• activity based on tags
• AskCommand -> on channel created listener
• multiple selected tags, ping all?
• polish

[java-coding-prodigy]

If people make the forums themselves, what's the use of the bot then?
Is it just going to update the tags when answers are given and give the asker advice?

[Zabuzard]

If people make the forums themselves, what's the use of the bot then?

• explanation message
• soft-ping corresponding helpers
• activity indicators
• auto-close after 12h
• probably some other stuff i forgot

[Zabuzard]

(just rebased)

[sonarqubecloud]

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