Admin Management & Permissions

The Challenge of Managing a Moderation Team

As your Telegram group grows, you cannot moderate it alone. You need a team of admins you trust to enforce rules, handle disputes, and keep the community healthy. But managing a moderation team introduces its own set of challenges. How do you decide who can ban and who can only warn? How do you track which admin took which action? How do you ensure that all admins are enforcing rules consistently? Without a structured admin management system, these questions become sources of conflict within the team, and inconsistent moderation creates confusion among members.

BotWave's admin management system provides the structure that makes delegation safe and effective. Instead of giving every admin the same permissions, you can create custom roles with specific permission levels. Junior moderators can warn and mute but not ban. Senior moderators can ban but cannot change group settings. Only the group owner can assign or remove admins. This granular control ensures that every admin has exactly the permissions they need to do their job, no more and no less, which reduces the risk of abuse and ensures that moderation decisions are made by people with the appropriate level of authority.

Assigning and Removing Admins

The /assign command promotes a member to admin status. You can specify a role when assigning, such as /assign @user moderator, which gives the member the permissions associated with that role. The /unassign command removes admin status, returning the member to a regular group member. Only the group owner or designated super admins can assign and unassign other admins.

The /admins command lists all current admins along with their roles and permission levels. This gives you a clear overview of your moderation team at any time, which is essential for groups with large or changing admin rosters. The /staff command provides a similar list but is visible to all members, not just admins, which promotes transparency and lets members know who to contact when they need help.

Custom Admin Ranks

The /addrank command creates a custom admin rank with a specific set of permissions. For example, you might create a rank called Trial Moderator with permission to warn and mute but not ban, a rank called Moderator with permission to ban and kick, and a rank called Senior Moderator with permission to manage filters and group settings. The /rmrank command removes a custom rank, and /ranks lists all available ranks.

Custom ranks let you build a moderation hierarchy that matches your community's specific needs. A small group might only need two ranks: admin and moderator. A large community might need five or six ranks with finely tuned permissions for each. The flexibility of the custom rank system means you can start simple and add complexity as your community grows, rather than being locked into a rigid permission structure from the start.

Permission Levels

Each admin rank has a set of permissions that determine what commands and actions the admin can perform. Permissions can include the ability to ban, kick, mute, warn, manage filters, manage group settings, assign other admins, and more. The /rankperms command shows the permissions for a specific rank, and /setrankperms lets you modify them.

The permission system is designed to follow the principle of least privilege. An admin should have the minimum permissions necessary to perform their role effectively. This reduces the risk of accidental damage from well intentioned but inexperienced admins, and it limits the damage that can be caused by a compromised admin account. By starting with minimal permissions and adding more as the admin proves their reliability, you build a moderation team that is both capable and trustworthy.

Admin Logs and Accountability

Every action taken by an admin is logged in the log channel, including who took the action, what the action was, who it was taken against, and when it occurred. The /adminlog command shows the admin action log, giving you a complete audit trail of moderation decisions. This log is essential for reviewing admin performance, identifying inconsistent moderation, and investigating disputes about whether an action was appropriate.

Accountability is what makes delegation safe. When admins know that their actions are logged and reviewable, they are more careful and consistent in their moderation. When a member disputes an action, the admin log provides an objective record of what happened, which helps resolve the dispute fairly. And when you are evaluating which admins to promote or remove, the log gives you concrete data to base your decisions on rather than relying on impressions and hearsay.

Owner Controls

The group owner has ultimate control over the admin team. The /transfer command transfers group ownership to another member, which is useful when the current owner is stepping down or handing the group over to a successor. The /owner command shows the current group owner. Only the owner can perform certain actions, such as changing the group settings, assigning or removing admins, and configuring the federation connection.

This separation between owner and admin permissions ensures that there is always a single person with ultimate authority over the group. Even if every admin conspired to take over the group, the owner retains the ability to remove them all. This protects the group from admin coups and ensures that the community always has a clear chain of authority.

Available Commands