William: Group Moderation Bot

The chat grows, and so does the spam: ad bots, scam links, arguments at three in the morning. There is one admin and hundreds of messages. William takes over the moderation routine so you can deal with people. 🛡️

The bot is called William, and its full project name is WilliamButcherBot. It has about 400 thousand users.

What it is and where it came from

William describes itself simply: it can manage your group with lots of useful features. There is a support chat linked in its profile.

The project is written in Python and published openly. Anyone can read the code and, if they want, run their own copy. That is unusual for moderation bots: you can see exactly what it does in your group.

What it does in a group

• Moderation. Banning, warning and removing rule breakers.
• Filters and rules. Automatic reactions to words and bad behavior.
• Command help. The list of features opens with /help.
• Modules. The code is split into modules, so the feature set can differ between copies.

The exact module list in your version is easiest to check in the bot itself after adding it to a chat. 🧰

Setting it up in five minutes

1. Open the bot's profile and tap the button to add it to a group.
2. Pick the group.
3. Make the bot an admin and enable the rights to delete messages and ban users.
4. Send /help and read the command list.
5. Try the commands in a test group before turning them on in your main chat.

Without admin rights the bot cannot delete anything, so step three is a must.

Your own William on your own server

Because the code is open, a technical admin can run a private instance. It needs Python, a Telegram application key, a bot token and a database. A container option exists as well.

The upside of your own copy is that settings and group data stay with you. The downside: updates and security become your job too. 🔧

Admin rights: be careful

A bot with admin rights can delete messages and ban people. Grant only what is needed. Rights to add new admins or change the group profile are almost never required.

Before you hand over any authority, make sure you are adding the original bot and not a lookalike with a similar name. Lookalikes are common.

Who benefits

Admins of large groups where manual moderation cannot keep up. People who want the same rules applied to every member. People who value open code and clear logic.

A small chat of friends often needs no moderator: agreements are enough. For groups with hundreds of members, a bot saves hours a week. ⏰