Sanctions and appeals
YAWBDB can create appeal links when a member receives a sanction.
Appeals give sanctioned users a structured way to contact your staff team, while keeping the conversation organized in the panel.
⚖️ What is an appeal?
An appeal is a request from a sanctioned user asking staff to review a moderation decision.
Depending on your configuration, appeals may be created for actions such as:
- Ban
- Softban
- Mute
- Kick
- Warn
The exact behavior may depend on how your server configured moderation.
🚪 How users access appeals
When a sanction is applied, YAWBDB may send the user a direct message containing an appeal link.
The user can open the link to:
- Read the current appeal status
- Submit an appeal message
- Add follow-up context
- View the staff response
Some appeal links can be accessed without a full panel account, depending on the flow used when the appeal was created.
🏷️ Appeal statuses
Appeals can move through statuses such as:
- Pending
- Under Review
- Accepted
- Rejected
- Closed
Status names may vary slightly depending on the page.
⏰ Appeal window & auto-close
In the Moderation feature settings you can set an appeal window — how long after a sanction the user can appeal (24 hours up to 30 days, or always open).
With Auto-close expired appeals enabled, appeals that are still open when their window expires are closed automatically:
- A system notice is posted in the appeal thread — the default text, or your own auto-close message.
- The user is notified by DM with a link to their appeal page.
- The action appears in your moderation log channel as Appeal auto-closed.
Once closed — automatically or by staff — the user can no longer write in the thread. Only a moderator can reopen a closed appeal.
🔓 Reopening a closed appeal
Staff can reopen any closed appeal from its detail page (Reopen button). The appeal goes back to Under Review, and the user can reply again — even if the appeal window has expired, an explicit reopen overrides it. Reopened appeals are never auto-closed again.
👮 Staff workflow
Staff can review appeals from the panel.
A typical workflow:
- Open the server moderation area.
- Go to Appeals.
- Review pending or open appeals.
- Read the user's message and history.
- Add an internal note if needed.
- Write a response visible to the user.
- Accept or reject the appeal.
If an appeal is accepted for a ban, YAWBDB can automatically lift the ban when the bot has permission to do so.
🗒️ Internal notes
Staff can keep internal notes that are not visible to the sanctioned user.
Use internal notes for:
- Staff-only context
- Evidence summaries
- Team discussion points
- Reasons for accepting or rejecting the appeal
Do not put sensitive information in a user-visible response.
👁️ User-visible responses
The response message is shown to the user.
Good responses are:
- Clear
- Short
- Respectful
- Specific enough to explain the decision
Avoid arguing with the user inside the appeal. The goal is to communicate the final staff decision.
💡 Best practices
- Explain the original reason for the sanction.
- Review the member's history before deciding.
- Keep internal staff discussion separate from the user response.
- Use consistent appeal rules across your moderation team.
- Close old appeals when they are no longer active.
🔧 Troubleshooting
🚨 The user did not receive a DM
Discord users can block DMs from server members or bots. In that case, the DM may fail silently.
🚨 Accepting the appeal did not unban the user
Check whether the bot has permission to unban users and whether its role is high enough in the Discord role hierarchy.
🚨 The user cannot access the appeal
Make sure they are using the correct appeal link and, if required, that their Discord account is linked to the correct panel account.