In this article
An invite link can be turned into a request rather than a door. Nobody is added on tapping it — they join a queue, and a bot with the right permission can talk to them privately, ask them something, and approve or decline before they reach the room.
It is the most effective anti-spam tool a group has, and the one most likely to cost you the members you wanted.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Turn a link into a request queue.
- check_circle Say what a check at the door actually filters.
- check_circle Weigh it against the members you lose.
- check_circle Keep a human in the loop where it matters.
The queue is the feature; whatever asks the questions is just something you attached to it.
how_to_reg A gate stops the flood and slows the trickle
Against automated joining this works extremely well. Accounts arriving in bulk to post the same link do not complete anything at a door, and a group that was being raided weekly stops being raided — that is a real result and it is why every large community ends up here eventually.
Against a person it works differently. Somebody who saw your group mentioned, tapped the link out of mild interest, and now finds themselves in a queue being asked a question by a bot has been given a moment to reconsider. A proportion of them do, and you never find out how many.
So the decision is not whether gates work. It is whether your problem is bad enough to spend the people who will not bother, and that depends entirely on how the group grows. A community that gains members from a public link every day pays this cost constantly; one that grows through recommendation barely pays it at all.
What does turning on join requests actually change?
The link produces a request rather than a membership, and the person is outside the room until that request is handled. This is a stronger change than it sounds: a queue nobody empties is a group nobody can join, and plenty of communities have quietly stopped growing because the admin who used to approve people stopped opening the list.
A challenge at the door mainly filters for what?
Anything a person can do at a door, a person running spam can also do — the filter is effort, not identity. That is enough to defeat bulk automated joining, which is the actual threat for most groups, and it is not a check on intent. Somebody paid to post advertising will answer your question correctly and join.
What does a bot need in order to run the gate?
Approving people is an administrative action, so the bot has to be an administrator to do it — which means handing real powers to whoever operates it. Worth granting the narrowest set that works: the right to add and approve members, and nothing about promoting others. A gatekeeping bot that can appoint administrators is a gatekeeper that can hand the group to somebody else.
The queue has two hundred pending requests. What is the problem?
This is the ordinary failure and it is invisible, because a growing queue looks exactly like a quiet week from inside the group. Nobody is notified that they are waiting, nobody follows up, and the people who wanted in most are the ones who tried earliest and have now forgotten. If you gate a group, somebody has to own the list — and if nobody will, automatic approval is better than a queue that is never read.
task_alt
group The layers, in the order that works
A door check is the third thing to try, not the first. Restricting who can post links removes most of the incentive to join a group for advertising, and it costs ordinary members almost nothing. Slow mode ends flooding. Both of those are settings rather than systems, and between them they solve the majority of what people install gatekeepers for.
The gate earns its place when the arrivals themselves are the problem — when the group is being joined faster than it can be moderated, or when a raid has happened. At that point it is the only thing that helps, and the cost is worth paying.
What to ask at the door is a smaller question than it looks. A single simple action is enough for automated joining, and anything more elaborate filters the wrong people: the ones with the patience for a puzzle are not the ones you were worried about.
settings Setting up a gate
- Try link restrictions and slow mode first They cost members nothing.
- Turn the public link into a request Keep a direct one for people you invite.
- Give the bot the narrowest admin rights Never the power to promote.
- Ask one simple thing Elaborate puzzles filter the wrong people.
- Give the queue an owner Or turn the gate off.
- Say what the gate will never ask In the description.
This page automates the door. The curriculum step is the door itself: how requests work, what an admin sees when one arrives, and how to screen people without building a system to do it.
At a glance
- 1Join screening
A bot can check new members at the door.
- 2Filters effort
It stops mass bots but delays real people too.
- 3Someone must watch
An unattended queue is worse than an open door.
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