Owner and moderator guide

Help for the people who run a group with WardForth: the owner and the moderators. Setting up for the first time? "Get started in five minutes" is shorter. Everything here happens in Telegram.

Add the bot

You add WardForth with a link from the bot itself. Open a private chat with @WardForthBOT and send /start. The reply ends with the link. It works for 15 minutes; after that, send /start again for a new one.

Tap the link and choose your group. Telegram asks you to make the bot an administrator with two rights, already ticked: delete messages, and restrict members. Confirm. The bot then posts one line in the group that says it is active and how long bans and their entries are kept.

The bot works in supergroups only. If it says your group is a basic group, convert the group to a supergroup in its settings in Telegram, and tap the link again.

Keep the private chat open. The bot cannot start a conversation with you, and this chat is where it sends what only you should see: a right it has lost, a Super User given or taken away, repeated refused commands, and bans for serious violations of Telegram's terms.

Who can do what

WardForth has four roles.

• Owner: the person who created the group. The owner can do everything, including changing the settings and handing out roles.
• Super User: handed out by the owner or by another Super User. A Super User can do everything in the groups where the role was given, and can read the history of all the owner's groups. The owner is told in private every time the role is given or taken away.
• Administrator: every Telegram administrator of the group gets this role by itself, and loses it when the administrator status goes. It allows ban, unban, mute, unmute, restrict, and reading the group's history.
• Moderator: for someone who is not a Telegram administrator but should moderate. It has the same six permissions as Administrator.

Roles are handed out in the group with /roles: /roles grant @name moderator, /roles superuser @name, and /roles revoke @name moderator or /roles revoke @name superuser. Name the person with their @username, if the bot has seen them in the group, or with their numeric user ID; or reply to one of their messages with the command instead. A username the bot has not seen is refused: the bot then asks for a reply or the ID.

A role given in the bot works even if the person is not a Telegram administrator. It does not work while the person is restricted in the group, has left it, or was removed from it.

Ban, mute and restrict

Everything happens in the group, as a reply to the message that is the problem.

• Ban: reply with /ban. The bot shows the reasons as buttons: Spam, Harassment, Off-topic, Illegal content, Serious violation of Telegram's terms, or Other. Pick one, and the bot says who was banned, until when, the reason, and whether the message was deleted. A ban with no stated time lasts the group's period. For a shorter ban, write the time after the command: /ban 7d for seven days.
• Mute: reply with /mute and pick how long from the buttons. The person cannot write until then.
• Restrict: reply with /restrict, pick what is restricted from the buttons (text only; no link previews; no stickers, animations or inline bots; no polls) and for how long.
• Lift: /unban lets the person join again. /unmute ends a mute or a restriction.

Instead of replying, you can name the person: their @username, if the bot has seen it, or their numeric user ID. That is how you unban someone whose message is gone.

A reason is required for every ban unless the owner turns that off. If the bot restarts before you have picked a reason, no ban is made; reply to the message again. If you own more than one group with WardForth, the bot asks whether the ban applies to this group or to all of them. The other groups see that the ban came from elsewhere, never from where.

The text of the banned message is kept for 90 days, then erased. Appeals are off by default; whether your bans can be appealed is the group's choice.

Serious violations of Telegram's terms

This reason is for content that Telegram itself bans. It works differently from the others.

• The bot asks you to confirm first, because nothing of the message can be brought back afterwards.
• The message is deleted at once. No text, no media and no file identifiers are kept.
• The history keeps one line: who was banned, by user ID and never by username, in which group, when, who made the ban, and the reason code "Violates Telegram's ToS".
• The ban has no end date and is never lifted by a rule. Only a person can lift it.
• The bot asks you to report the content in Telegram or to the police. It reports nothing itself.
• The owner is told in private that a ban of this kind was made: the group and the time, nothing else.

The history

The bot keeps a history of bans, mutes and restrictions, so that you recognise a person who comes back.

• A ban's entry keeps the username the person had at the time, the reason code, the end, and who made the ban. It stays for as long as the ban lasts plus the group's period, counted from the day the ban ends. A ban for a serious violation of Telegram's terms has no end, so its entry stays for the period, counted from the day of the ban. A mute, a restriction or a lift stays for the period, counted from its own day, and keeps no username.
• The text of the banned message is kept for 90 days, then erased; the owner and the moderators can read it while it is kept. The message behind a mute or a restriction is kept for 90 days too, but only the person it concerns can read it; moderators see the entry, not the message.
• Who joined and who left is kept for 90 days.
• Refused commands are kept for one year.
• A moderator sees the history of the groups they moderate. The owner and a Super User see the history of all the owner's groups.

Reading the history in the bot, with /log, /history and /bans, is built but not yet listed as available. See "Coming" at the end of this page.

How long things are kept

The group's period is one year by default. A ban with no stated time lasts the period, and its entry stays for the ban plus the period, counted from the day the ban ends. The owner can choose two years with /settings; the bot then asks you to confirm that the group's purpose needs it, and writes the choice to the audit log. Three years needs a prepaid subscription and is not available in the free pilot. A change applies to new entries only.

Members see the end of a ban or a mute in the bot's reply, and the group's period in the line the bot posted when it was activated.

Refused commands

If someone uses a command they are not allowed to, the bot refuses and notes it: who tried, which command, in which group, and when. Never the rest of the message. Repeated attempts, five within ten minutes by default, warn the owner and every Telegram administrator who has opened a chat with the bot. Refused commands are kept for one year.