A Bot to match random users?

dinoscool3 · March 2, 2021, 4:37pm

Hi all, I hope this is in the right forum!

I run a number of community book club forums, and one feature we were thinking of starting was a bot that could connect two random users. The idea came from a bot I came across on an MS Teams meetup site, and I think it would increase conversation about the books.

Basically just a bot to send two users a message saying “Hi George, we’d like to introduce you to Bob, send a PM here” and vice versa.

Here’s the bot from MS Teams:

I’ve done a search, specifically to see if I could edit Discobot to do this, but I couldn’t find anything. Has this been done before?

Thank you!

merefield · March 2, 2021, 4:42pm

Doesn’t need to be a’bot’. You can simply create a Job within a plugin that runs some Ruby code to identify and email the respective users.

pfaffman · March 2, 2021, 4:49pm

Welcome @dinoscool3! I think you’ve come to the right place. I’m not quite sure if this will help, but check out Mingle - An Introductions Plugin. I’m not really familiar with it, but I think it’s at least close to what you’re looking for, perhaps if only to give you ideas to solve your actual goal.

I hope this helps!

dinoscool3 · March 2, 2021, 4:52pm

Thanks to you both! I just had bot on the mind because that’s how I’ve seen it used previously. Just searching for a plugin makes a lot more sense. Mingle looks like its exactly what I’m looking for. Thank you!

HAWK · March 4, 2021, 1:09am

discourse-automation can do this. We use it for our Secret Santa matching. I’m not sure when we’re releasing it yet though. @joffreyjaffeux will have more info.

joffreyjaffeux · March 4, 2021, 6:41am

Yes automation would do it, a mingle script is on my list. I don’t have a specific date yet, but release should be in the next 2 months.

dinoscool3 · March 4, 2021, 4:21pm

Awesome! I’ll take a look at that too when it launches

Drew-ART · December 22, 2022, 2:51pm

@joffreyjaffeux did you ever launch your mingle script?

sam · February 21, 2023, 6:25am

Discourse automation now exists:

It has a gift exchange automation script.

dinoscool3 · February 21, 2023, 1:41pm

Interesting! Will take a look…but would the gift mean they are matched secretly? Or could it be used to match them so they both know the other, even if there is no gift exchanged.

sam · February 21, 2023, 8:21pm

I think the may be matched secretly, but it should be reasonably easy to adjust or add a mingle version here