Appeals

What an appeal is

An appeal is a short message from someone your server banned or timed out, asking for it to be lifted. They write it on the Bastion website. It arrives in a staff channel in Discord with three buttons.

Appeals are free. They cover bans and timeouts only. A kicked person can rejoin, and a quarantine is undone by staff with /quarantine remove.

For server owners: switch it on

1. 1

   Open Moderation in the dashboard

   Open the dashboard, pick your server and open the Moderation page. You must be the server owner or a trusted person for the next steps.

2. 2

   Switch on Accept appeals

   It's in the group called Appeals. Two more settings appear underneath.

3. 3

   Choose where appeals go

   Pick a staff-only channel under Where appeals go. If you leave it empty, appeals go to your Moderator actions channel, and if that's empty too, to your Security alerts channel. See logs.

4. 4

   Set the wait after a denial

   By default a denied person waits 7 days before trying again. Change it under After a denial, they can try again in, from 1 to 90 days.

5. 5

   Press Save

   From now on, people who are banned or timed out are sent the appeal link.

Only the server owner and trusted people can switch Accept appeals on or off, or change Where appeals go. Other admins see those two greyed out. They can still change the wait after a denial.

Bastion needs View Channel, Send Messages and Embed Links in the channel you choose. Keep the channel private. It shows what the person wrote and who they are.

Ask your own questions (Pro)

By default the appeal form has one box: why should it be lifted. With Bastion Pro you can ask up to 6 questions of your own instead. Appeals with the one standard box stay free.

1. 1

   Open Appeals in the dashboard

   Pick your server, open the Appeals page and press Questions at the top. Only the server owner and trusted people can change the questions. Other admins can read them.

2. 2

   Press Add a question

   Write the question, up to 100 characters. Then choose the kind of answer it takes.

3. 3

   Choose whether it must be answered

   Leave Must be answered on and the appeal can't be sent without an answer. Switch it off to make the question optional.

4. 4

   Put them in order

   Use Move up and Move down. The form asks them in the order you see. Remove takes a question away.

5. 5

   Press Save questions

   The appeal form changes straight away. Appeals already sent keep the questions and answers they were sent with.

When you have at least one question, your questions replace the standard box. Remove them all and the standard box comes back. All the answers in one appeal can add up to 4,000 characters.

The form always asks your current questions. If you change them while someone is filling it in, they are asked to refresh the page. If Pro ends, the form goes back to the standard box until you subscribe again.

Bans Bastion didn't place

Anyone Discord says is banned from your server can appeal, whoever banned them. That includes bans placed by hand in Discord, bans from another bot and bans from before you added Bastion. They need the appeal address with your server ID. See Lost the link, below.

When Bastion has no ban case for that person, the staff post and the Appeals page both say: Bastion has no record of this ban. It was placed by hand or by another bot. Check Discord's audit log for who placed it and why before you decide. Any moderator who can decide appeals can approve one of these.

Who gets the link

• Anyone banned or timed out by your staff with a command, a right-click action, a warn step or the Timeout button on a report.
• Anyone timed out by Automod for more than 5 minutes. Shorter timeouts are over before an appeal could be read, so they don't mention appeals.
• Anyone Bastion bans on its own, such as a Join Gate ban or a ban while joins are locked.

Kicks and quarantines never include the link. Bastion also can't message someone who has private messages closed, or someone who was banned after they had already left the server. Those people can still appeal. See Lost the link, below.

What the staff post looks like

Each appeal is one post titled Ban appeal or Timeout appeal. It shows:

• What they wrote, quoted in full. An appeal can be up to 1,500 characters and the post shows all of it. If you ask your own questions, each question and its answer is shown instead, one under the other.
• Who: their name, a mention and their user ID.
• Asking to lift: their ban or their timeout.
• Sent: how long ago.
• Not a Bastion ban: only shown when Bastion has no record of the ban.

Answers to your own questions are shown on one line each, up to 1,000 characters. If a set of answers is too long for one Discord post, the post says some were cut short. The Appeals page of the dashboard always shows them in full.

Mentions in the quoted text and in answers don't ping anyone. Links in them are shown as plain text you can't click. That's on purpose, so an appeal can't be used to send staff a scam link.

Once someone decides, the post changes to say Ban appeal approved or Ban appeal denied, with the outcome and who decided. The buttons are removed. Only the first press counts, so two moderators can't both decide the same appeal.

If the ban was already lifted, or the timeout had already ended, Approve still closes the appeal and says there was nothing to lift.

Undo a block

Run /appeals unblock user_id: with the person's user ID. They can then send an appeal again. Only the server owner, a trusted person or someone with Administrator can run it. It doesn't lift the ban or timeout, it only lets them ask again.

A timeout that ends by itself

If a timeout runs out while its appeal is still waiting, Bastion closes the appeal. This is checked every few minutes. The staff post changes to Timeout appeal closed, says The timeout ended on its own, and the buttons are removed. The person can then appeal again if they're timed out another time. If they left the server while timed out, their appeal isn't closed this way.

When many appeals arrive at once

A server can have at most 40 appeals waiting. After that, new people are told the moderators already have a lot of appeals and to try again in a day or two.

If more than 25 appeals arrive within an hour, Bastion stops posting one post each. It posts a single summary called Appeals waiting. It says how many more are waiting and links to the Activity page of the dashboard. Press Open Appeals there to read them. The count updates every 10 minutes at most. Once the backlog clears, the summary is removed and appeals are posted one by one again.

Who can decide

These people can press the buttons:

• The server owner and trusted people.
• Anyone with Administrator.
• Anyone holding one of your moderator roles.
• For a ban appeal, anyone with the Ban Members permission. For a timeout appeal, anyone with Timeout Members.

Denying is open to all of them. Approving is stricter, because it lifts a ban or a timeout.

Everyone who isn't the owner or a trusted person counts as a moderator here, including people with Administrator. If a moderator presses Approve on one they can't approve, Bastion says only the server owner or a trusted person can approve it. They can still deny it.

Bastion works out who placed it from its own case history. If the same person was banned or timed out more than once without it being lifted in between, every one of those counts, so a moderator can't ban someone again to make the appeal theirs to approve.

• Nobody can decide their own appeal.
• A moderator can approve at most 5 appeals in 10 minutes. After that Approve is refused until some time has passed. Denying isn't limited. The owner and trusted people aren't limited.
• Rank still applies to timeouts. To approve a timeout appeal, your top role must be above the member's, the same rule as /untimeout.
• Approving doesn't count towards Anti-Nuke limits.

The same rule about who placed it applies to /unban and /untimeout. A moderator can't use them to undo a ban or timeout that Bastion, the owner or a trusted person placed. See moderation.

Deciding from the dashboard

The Appeals page of the dashboard lists your server's 50 most recent appeals, with the ones still waiting at the top and a count of how many are waiting. Everyone who can open the dashboard can read them. Each one shows what the person wrote, or their answers to your questions, and a note when Bastion has no record of the ban.

Three filters narrow the list. Punishment shows only bans or only timeouts. Status shows Waiting, Approved or Denied. User ID shows one person's appeals. Press Show appeals to apply them and Clear filters to see everything again.

The server owner and trusted people also see Approve, Deny and Deny and block there. Press one and the appeal shows Decision sent to Bastion. Bastion carries it out in Discord a few seconds later and updates the staff post, which says the decision was made on the dashboard.

Other admins see a note telling them to use the buttons in the Discord staff channel. Moderators without dashboard access use those buttons too. The rules under Who can decide apply there.

The Blocked list

Press Blocked at the top of the Appeals page to see everyone you've stopped from appealing with Deny and block. Each row shows the person's user ID, who blocked them and when. The owner and trusted people can press the button on a row to let that person appeal again. It does the same as /appeals unblock and doesn't lift the ban or timeout.

For the banned person: how to appeal

1. 1

   Open the link Bastion sent you

   It's at the end of the private message that told you about the ban or timeout. It looks like https://bastionbot.xyz/appeal/ followed by a long number, which is the server's ID.

2. 2

   Approve the sign-in on Discord

   If you're signed out, the link takes you straight to Discord's approval screen. There's no Bastion sign-in page in between. Check the address bar says discord.com, then approve. This proves the appeal is really from you. Nobody can appeal for someone else.

3. 3

   Write why it should be lifted

   Say what happened and what you'd do differently. Be honest and polite, because real people read it. It must be between 20 and 1500 characters. Some servers ask a few questions of their own instead of one box. Answer each one, and note that the ones marked optional can be left empty. Links you paste are shown to staff as plain text they can't click.

4. 4

   Press Send appeal

   You can't edit it after sending, and you can only have one appeal waiting for a server at a time.

5. 5

   Come back for the answer

   Bastion doesn't message you with the result. Open the same link again, or go to https://bastionbot.xyz/appeal to see every appeal you've sent. If you're signed out, you're sent to Discord to approve first.

Check the link is genuine

• It starts with https://bastionbot.xyz/appeal/. Read the address carefully, letter by letter.
• The message comes from the Bastion bot, at the same moment as your ban or timeout. Not from a person, and not days later.
• Signing in happens on discord.com. Opening the link while signed out takes you straight there. Check the address bar says discord.com before you approve anything.
• Bastion never asks you to type your Discord password on its own site, scan a QR code or download a file.

Lost the link

Ask a friend in the server for the server ID. Then go to https://bastionbot.xyz/appeal/ followed by that number. To copy a server ID, they switch on Developer Mode in Discord's Advanced settings, right-click the server icon and choose Copy Server ID.

What the page can say

What's stored

For each appeal Bastion stores the text, or each question as it was asked with the answer given, the Discord ID and display name of the person who sent it, whether it was about a ban or a timeout, whether Bastion had a record of the ban, the decision, who decided and when. It also stores which staff post belongs to it. If someone is blocked, Bastion stores their ID, the server and who blocked them.

Appeals are deleted 365 days after they were sent. Signing in to appeal creates the same login record as signing in to the dashboard. See privacy and data.