When verification goes wrong

Most people run /verify, get their roles, and you never think about them again. This guide is the other pile: the ones who landed as a guest, sat in review for a week, or kept the wrong roles after a rank change. Every fix here is one command.

1. Ask Hootus before you fix anything

/hootus check user:@them is the diagnostic. It tells you what is on file for that person, what Hootus makes of them right now, why he decided that, and whether their Discord roles match. When they do not match, the reply carries a Fix roles button that moves them.

Run /hootus check with no user and he checks the server instead: whether setup ever finished, which WoW guild is linked, how long ago the roster was read, permissions he is missing, roles sitting above his own, and channels he posts to that are not mapped anywhere.

Do this first. A good share of "the bot is broken" turns out to be a roster read that has not happened yet, and the fix is to wait.

2. What each standing means

Everyone with a verification record sits in exactly one standing. Hootus works it out from the Blizzard roster, the armory, applications, and any override an officer set.

• A member (approved). Their character is on the guild roster Hootus reads from Blizzard, or an officer put them there.
• Accepted and waiting on the in-game invite (incoming). Their application was accepted here, but the guild invite has not landed in game yet. This one fixes itself: the next roster read makes them a member. No action needed.
• A guest (friend). Hootus found a real character of theirs and none of it is in your guild. Socials, friends of the guild, and applicants who verified on a character still sitting in their old guild all land here.
• One for an officer to look at (needs_review). Nothing Hootus can read confirms them either way. They queue up at Guild → Review.
• Half way through verifying (pending). They started and never finished, or your verification mode holds unconfirmed characters for a human. /pending is that queue.
• Turned down (denied). An officer denied them, and that beats everything else, roster included. Clear it with /manage member reset if it was a mistake.
• Gone from the server (left). They are not in this Discord any more. Their record stays so they get their standing back if they come home.

3. When Hootus holds instead of moving

Sometimes /hootus check says he is not moving anyone. That is deliberate, not a failure. Three things make him hold:

• Stale roster. No successful roster read in the last six hours, or the last one came back empty. Rather than demote half the guild on missing data, he freezes every standing until a good read lands. Force one with /manage sync.
• Shrunk roster. The newest read came back far smaller than the one before it. Same treatment, for the same reason. Usually a Blizzard hiccup that clears itself.
• The armory disagrees. Blizzard's two endpoints do not update together: the character profile refreshes on login, the guild roster trails behind it. So if a demotion is on the table but the armory put that character in your guild within the last day, Hootus leaves them alone and lets the roster catch up.

None of these need fixing. They need the next roster read.

4. The three tools for a stuck member

/pending, the approve and deny queue

/pending lists everyone waiting on you, oldest first, in two sections. Applications are people asking to join. Needs a look are people whose automatic check did not settle, with the reason next to each name. Both carry Approve and Deny buttons, five cards split between the two, and the summary lists up to 25 so you can see the size of the pile. Clear them, run it again, repeat. Approving hands out roles and posts the welcome. Denying files them as turned down.

Approve on a Needs a look entry re-runs the check rather than forcing it through, so it only lands if something changed in game. To count someone regardless of what the armory says, use /manage membership set with grant.

/officer-verify, verifying on someone's behalf

/officer-verify user:@them name:Fjorvalt verifies a person who cannot do it themselves: a phone-only raider, someone whose character name Discord keeps mangling, a trial you already vetted in game. Character name autocompletes from your synced roster.

If the character is not on the roster, add class: as well, because Hootus will not guess it. If they already have a record he refuses and tells you the character, so reset them first if you are trying to replace it.

Whether this approves them outright or files them for review depends on your verification mode. The reply says which happened.

/manage member reset, starting over

/manage member reset user:@them deletes their member record and their characters, so they can run /verify again from scratch. Use it when someone verified as the wrong character, claimed a name they do not own, or got denied by accident.

Their Discord roles are left exactly as they are. Reset only clears what Hootus knows, so if they were carrying a Member role they should not have, take it off in Discord or run /hootus check on them afterwards.

5. When the roster is wrong and stays wrong

Some people never show up on a Blizzard roster and never will: the officer who plays on an alt account, the raid lead between guilds, the ex-member you would rather stop counting. Overrides settle those by hand.

• /manage membership set user:@them effect:grant counts them as a member whatever the armory says.
• /manage membership set user:@them effect:hold stops counting them. It does not remove anyone from the WoW guild, Hootus cannot do that, and they keep guest access to the server.
• Both take an optional reason and a days expiry. With no expiry it stands until someone clears it.
• /manage membership clear user:@them drops the override and hands the vote back to the roster.
• /manage membership list shows every override set in the server, which is the first place to look when someone's standing refuses to budge.

An override beats the roster and the armory. It does not beat a denial.

6. When the standing is right but the roles are not

If /hootus check reports the right standing and still says roles do not match, it is almost always Discord role order. Hootus can only hand out roles that sit below his own, so drag HootusPlootus above every role he manages in Server Settings → Roles. The check names the exact roles he cannot touch.

For a one-off where you just want the record set by hand, /manage member role user:@them name:Fjorvalt class:Druid writes the character, hands out the class and member roles, and renames them to match. It is the blunt instrument. Reach for /hootus check and its Fix roles button first.

Where to configure this

• Settings → Verification: the mode that decides what gets held and what sails through.
• Settings → Permissions: which of your Discord roles can approve, verify, reset, and set overrides.
• Guild → Review: the same queues with a mouse instead of a slash command.

Commands in this guide

/hootus check · /pending · /officer-verify · /manage member reset · /manage member role · /manage membership set · /manage membership clear · /manage membership list · /manage sync