What is the meaning crisis? with John Vervaeke
April 24, 2019
Community Feature Highlight
Bloom Bot
One feature that really helps set our Discord community apart is Bloom, our custom bot. Bloom welcomes all new members, so it’s often the first name people will see when joining the server. While Bloom helps with a wide range of administrative tasks such as this, what makes the bot invaluable to our community members is the meditation tracking and stats functionality it offers. Bloom tracks meditation sessions, provides stats (with graphs!), and manages vanity roles for meditation streaks and total time meditated.
Keep reading to learn how to use these features, along with a handful of other commands that community members may find interesting or useful.
Meditation Tracking and Stats
Community Enhancements
Meditation Tracking and Stats
/add a new session
For many users, /add may be the only command they ever need. Adding session times allows Bloom to keep track of your streak and total time meditated. Based on this data, the bot will automatically award the following vanity roles.
To add a meditation session, simply type the /add slash command. Make sure the Bloom command is selected, then input the time in minutes and hit enter or tap send.
Note that when attempting to add more than 300 minutes at once, Bloom will ask you for confirmation, like the following.
One may wish to add large amounts of time on occasion, e.g., after a silent retreat. Time tracking is based on the honor system and members are welcome to track any legitimate time spent practicing. Vanity roles are purely cosmetic, so there is nothing to be gained from cheating. However, note that exceedingly large false entries will skew the server stats, which is unfair to other members. Please be considerate.
See a list of /recent sessions
If you ever wish to view of list of your previously added sessions, simply use the /recent command, as shown below. Optionally, you may also specify a page number (not shown).
While there are several reasons you might want to review past session data, the most common use for this command is to retrieve an individual session ID. This is required to remove a session, which we will cover below.
/remove an existing session
If you ever need to remove a session, simply use the /remove command. You will need the session ID, which you can retrieve using the /recent command (see above). Shown below is a recently added entry, which we will remove as a demonstration.
Note the session ID: 26743. To remove this session, use the /remove command and offer this ID as input, as shown below. When asked for confirmation, click “Yes.”
Check your meditation /streak
To check your meditation streak, just use /streak. Optionally, you may specify the user whose streak you would like to see. If no user is specified, your own streak will be shown.
View user or server /stats
Bloom can display stats for both individual users and the overall server, using the /stats user and /stats server commands, respectively. All stats include graphs, displayed using the role color of the member whose stats are being displayed, or in orange for the server.
Stats always show the all-time meditation minutes and all-time session count, and individual stats always show the current streak. Optionally, graph data may be specified. You may choose to graph either meditation minutes or session count, using a timeframe of daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. Below are examples of server stats with graphs of monthly minutes and monthly sessions.
Community Enhancements
Get a meditation/mindfulness quote
You may have noticed that Bloom provides a random quote each time a user adds meditation time. Members may also request random quotes using the /quote command, as shown below.
While the occasional quote in #the-lounge is fine, we ask that quotes and other bot fun generally be limited to #bot-commands to avoid interrupting member discussion.
/suggest community improvements
Submitting a server suggestion is easy and anonymous. Simply use the /suggest slash command in any channel where you can type, as shown below. Note that you will not be able to type in the #server-suggestions channel, so you will need to use the command in a different channel. This is to keep suggestions anonymous and limit discussion to the automatically generated threads.
Bloom will post the suggestion in #server-suggestions on your behalf, add voting reactions, and create a thread for discussion. An example can be seen below.
Nominate a post for the starboard
Bloom also manages the server starboard. Any post that receives three or more star reactions will be added to the #
starboard channel. Below is an example of a message that has received three star reactions.
As a result, the message has been added to the starboard, as seen below. A link to the original message is included, and the number of stars a message has received is updated dynamically.
Anonymously report a message
Another reaction-based feature offered by Bloom is anonymous reporting. While our moderators work hard to maintain a harmonious atmosphere, it can be difficult to keep an eye on chat 24/7. There are several ways community members can help alert moderators to a potential issue, and one of the easiest is anonymous reaction reporting. To report a message, simply react with the :reportstaff: emoji (
), as shown below.
Moderators will be notified, and the reaction will be removed immediately to keep the report anonymous. You will also receive confirmation of your report from Bloom via DM, like the following.
As you can see, Bloom adds a lot to the community, and it handles many other tasks behind the scenes, too. We are constantly working on not only improving efficiency and stability of the bot, but also adding new features, which will be added to this page as they are released. A big thank you to our talented developer, Zachary!
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