Moderation

Moderation is the half of protection where a person decides. Its twin, Auto Moderation, is the half where the bot decides, and both file cases through the same engine, so a filter's action and a moderator's action look the same in a member's history.

1Setting it up

1. 1

   Switch it on

   Essentials → Moderation. The page has 8 tabs; General is where you start.

2. 2

   Name your moderator roles

   Moderator roles may use every moderation command that is not admin-only, /ban included. Separately, Administrator roles can also delete cases, change another moderator's case reason, run /role all, and start and end a lockdown.

3. 3

   Set immunity

   Server-wide under Who can't be moderated, and per punishment type, so a role can be warnable but not bannable. The server owner and Arclo are always out of reach, and by default nobody can punish somebody above them in the role list, or another moderator. An immune member is refused before anything happens: no case and no DM, only a log line saying the action was refused.

4. 4

   Choose how a mute works

   Discord timeout (Discord's own, no setup, capped at 28 days per application; Arclo renews longer mutes automatically), a Muted role, or Both. Arclo can build the muted role for you.

5. 5

   Point the logger at a channel

   On the Logging tab, or from Logging.

The eight tabs

Cases

Every action opens a numbered case. There are 22 types, covering members, channels and the server itself.

• Case numbers are allocated atomically, so two simultaneous bans can never share one.
• /case view <case> opens a case; the rest of /case changes its reason, duration or evidence, pardons it, deletes it, searches and counts. /modlogs <member> shows a member's whole history, and the Cases tab edits cases from the dashboard.
• Bans, kicks, timeouts and unbans done through Discord's own interface are picked up from the audit log and filed as cases, so the history has no holes. The member is DMed about one only if DM people punished outside Arclo is on (it is off by default).
• Deleting a case removes it from the record. A punishment it holds that is still in force is lifted first.
• /note keeps private staff notes on a member. They sit beside the case history rather than in it, and are never numbered.

Punishments

The full order of operations (immunity, escalation, the case, the DM before the action, the expiry) is on Punishments. Per punishment, you can set:

Default duration

For punishments that can expire. Used when a moderator gives no duration: leaving a command's duration blank means use this; typing permanent means never expire. A mute lasts an hour by default, everything else is permanent, and Longest a moderator may set caps what a command can ask for.

Tell the member

An editable DM sent before the punishment lands, which can name the moderator and offer an appeal.

Announce it in the channel

An editable public message. Off by default, and never sent for Auto Moderation's punishments.

Roles immune to this specifically

On top of the server-wide immune roles.

Take their other roles away too

On Mute: strips a muted member's other roles and hands them back when the mute lifts. Works for every mute method, not only the muted role.

Also give them these roles

And …and take these away: roles to add or remove when this punishment lands.

What Discord's audit log says

The template written into Discord's audit log, separate from the reason your members see. Empty means {moderator}: {reason}.

Always show the form first

Sends the moderator through a review form before a slash command goes through.

Each tile also has its own switch (a switched-off punishment's command refuses), a default reason and Require a reason for this punishment, and where they fit, Delete their recent messages (ban and softban), warning points and an expiry (warn), and Ask before a mass action hits more than.

@Arclo

ArcloBOTToday at 3:11 AM

You have been banned

You have been banned from Nebula Collective. Reason: Raid participationDuration: PermanentExpires: never

Nebula CollectiveToday at 3:11 AM

Appeal this

#mod-log

ArcloBOTToday at 3:11 AM

Member banned (case #1284)

mira (@Mira) banned throwaway_84

Reason

Raid participation

Duration

Permanent

History deleted

nothing

ID

1290465318820544572

throwaway_84 · ModerationToday at 3:11 AM

Privacy

Per audience (the public announcement and the DM), you choose whether to include who did it, the attached evidence, the message it was about, the case number and how long it lasts. A withheld moderator reads “a moderator”; anything else withheld is left out. The DM goes out before the case exists, so it never carries a case number.

Escalation

Warning thresholds turn repeated warnings into something stronger: three warnings in seven days becomes a mute. Switch them on with Enable warning thresholds (off by default) and add up to 15 rungs, counting warnings or, if you weigh them, warning points. A rung can mute them, kick them, ban them, softban them, give them a role or only notify staff. Each rung names its own window, but a warning that has already expired (Warnings stop counting after) never counts.

Reports

/report, or right-click → Apps → Report Member or Report Message, lets your members bring something to staff. Reports are off until you switch on Enable reports. A report card lands in the channel you choose with buttons on it.

Where reports land

The channel. Left empty, reports go to the moderation log channel.

Who may report

Allow and block lists, roles that cannot be reported at all, and account-age and time-in-server gates.

What a report must say

Template reasons offered by autocomplete, a minimum length, and optionally a required attachment.

Card actions

Which punishments the card's buttons offer: Warn, Mute, Kick, Ban and Delete their messages, all on by default. Claim, History and Dismiss are always there.

When Arclo acts on its own

X members report one member within Y days → do Z. Each member counts once however often they report, dismissed reports never count, and one report can only advance the ladder one rung. Up to five rungs.

Auto-close

Close untouched reports after a while. Off by default.

The automatic actions are nine: warn them, mute them, kick them, ban them, softban them, give them a role, take a role away, send them a message or only ping the staff. The last two deliberately file no case: a server that wants “three reports and they hear about it” should not have to reach for a punishment to say it. A role given this way can be temporary.

Appeals

A banned member is not in your server: no command, no channel and no DM thread reaches them. So appeals live on a public page at /appeal/<your-server>, which they can open from the ban DM. Appeals are off by default, and you choose which punishments can be appealed (bans, mutes, kicks and warnings to begin with). Members still in the server can also use /appeal submit.

1. 1The member signs in with Discord and fills in the form on the web page. The appeal gets its own number.
2. 2Arclo posts a card into your staff channel with Approve, Deny and History buttons.
3. 3Staff decide: in Discord, or from the Appeals tab on the dashboard. Either way the decision is logged, and by default the member is told and an approval lifts the punishment (Tell the member the outcome, Approving lifts the punishment).

Lockdown

Locks a channel, a list of channels, whole categories or the whole server, with an optional automatic end. Voice, stage, forum and media channels lock too: nobody new joins or speaks in a locked voice channel. The Lockdown tab decides which roles are locked out, which can still talk, which channels stay open, and whether a lockdown also raises Discord's verification level or pauses invites. A single /lock posts a notice in its channel; a lockdown posts in up to the first five channels it locks; both post again when the lock lifts.

Clearing messages

/clear deletes up to 1,000 messages at once, with a filter that picks which: any, from one member, bots, humans, containing text, matching a pattern, links, invites, images, files, embeds, pings or emoji, plus one that strips every reaction and leaves the messages. Pinned messages are skipped unless the General tab says otherwise.

Commands

Moderation registers 26 slash commands. The punishments are kept flat on purpose (/ban, /kick, /mute and /warn are muscle memory from every other bot), and the rest group their operations as subcommands (/case, /note, /role, /mass, /lockdown and more). There are also three user context commands and one message context command.