Phoenix: Group Moderation Bot

Once a chat grows past a couple of hundred people, spammers, flooders and endless "where are the rules?" questions show up. Policing it by hand does not scale. Phoenix handles the grind of moderation so admins can spend time talking to people. 🔥

Where it comes from

Phoenix began as an extended version of a popular open source group management bot, written in Python. The description says it plainly: same base, more features. The code is open on GitHub, maintained by several authors, and there is a support chat for outage reports.

The bot has close to 293 thousand users. It is a tool for groups, not private chats, so the command menu is empty: everything happens inside the group.

What it does in a chat

• Moderation: bans, mutes, warnings, word blacklists, message reports and deleting messages.
• Antiflood: restricts people who bury the chat in rapid-fire messages.
• Locks: you can shut off particular content types, such as stickers or links.
• Federations: a shared ban list across several groups.
• Welcomes, rules and notes: newcomers see the order straight away, and common questions are answered by a command.
• Filters: the bot replies to a keyword with a prepared text.

Five steps to launch

1. Open the bot and press start.
2. Add it to your group.
3. Promote it to admin with the needed rights.
4. Type /help to see the command list.
5. Set up the welcome, rules and antiflood.

Without admin rights the bot cannot delete messages or ban, so do not skip that step. 🛡️

Which rights to grant

Give the bot only what it needs. For moderation, deleting messages, banning members and pinning are enough. Rights to add new admins or change group info are usually unnecessary.

Fewer rights mean less damage if the bot is ever compromised. That is a general rule for any group bot.

Configuring without overdoing it

Harsh rules scare off real people. Start gentle: a welcome message, rules, warnings for repeat offences, and only then a ban. Set antiflood to a sensible message count, or you will catch active members too.

A spammy chat is easiest to clean in three moves: restrict links for newcomers, turn on warnings and keep a shared blacklist. ⚙️

Things to watch

The bot runs on someone's server. If it goes down, moderation features stop, and you must run the group manually. Large communities benefit from a backup bot.

Do not put private data in notes or rules, and before adding any bot, make sure you open its real page and not a clone with a similar name. 🔎

Small habits that pay off

Pin the rules and the welcome so newcomers need not scroll through history. Add a few canned answers for common questions: schedules, material links, how to buy. It noticeably lowers the load on admins.

Review the word blacklist monthly. Unneeded bans annoy members, and outdated filters trigger for nothing.