This Mattermost bot was created to maintain the discipline of writing in English instead of your mother tongue throughout channels with participants not understanding the language.
To remain unobtrusive, the bot will react to posts with a small union jack.
clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/felix-engelmann/mm-bot-english-please.git
cd mm-bot-english-please
create virtual environment (recommended)
python3 -m venv env
source ./env/bin/activate
install the libraries
sudo apt-get install libicu-dev
install the dependencies
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
run
python3 run.py
to run the bot as a system service, it is useful to create a systemd service.
Adapt the english-please.service file with the correct path and user/group names and copy it into your services:
cp english-please.service /etc/systemd/system/english-please.service
Reload the services
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
and then start and enable (starts automatically) it:
sudo systemctl start english-please
sudo systemctl enable english-please
To connect the bot to you Mattermost instance, create a bot account on your instance:
Integrations
-> Bot Accounts
-> Add New
- Role: Member, no additional permissions
- note the Access Token.
Edit mmpy_bot_settings.py
BOT_URL = 'https://your-mm-instance/api/v4'
BOT_LOGIN = 'english-please' # or whatever name you gave the bot accout
BOT_TOKEN = '0ß9uokjhaodasd' # the token retrieved in the account creation
restart the bot/systemd service.
As the bot is responding to all messages and necessarily is a member of the town square, it actively ignores this channel.
Currently the bot only reacts to sentences with more than 3 words and only complains if the text is German. I noticed that the language detection library used (langdetect) has a hard time with short fragments. Therefore, it is useful to detect the presence of the prevalent unwanted language instead of the wanted one. Feel free to adapt the logic in plugins/language.py.
If you want to know the detected languages for a sentence, you can @mention or direct message the bot to get insight into it's "brain". Be aware that the language detection is not deterministic.