Commons:Telegram

Commons has a popular and active Telegram group, because we have to avoid letting in spambots or random vandals, the link we use is https://t.me/wikimediacommons which takes you to a public "reception group" where valid accounts are assessed in good faith then added or invited to the private "Wikimedia Commons Community" group. All contributors are welcome to try it out, you can find some privacy tips for the app here, because nobody wants to share mobile phone numbers by accident!

If you want to run Telegram from a PC, laptop or other device that is not a mobile phone, without installing the Telegram app on a smart phone, the steps are:

1. Install Telegram for your laptop/PC from the official https://desktop.telegram.org/ site or the app store for your tablet.
2. Fill out the options and provide a mobile number that will be used to approve your account. You do not have to install anything on a mobile phone, or share your mobile contacts, nor even use a real name!
3. Telegram sends you a text message with a one time code, use this to authorize the version on your device.
4. Check your profile and options to increase privacy as much as you need, in particular, you can set the options to never have to share the mobile number you used with anyone nor even say anything about where in the world you are located.

Tips

By default accounts get deleted, along with all personal information, if unused for a year but you can set "self destruct" to be faster than that if you want. You can delete your account at any time using this page, though if you want to abandon the old account and use the same number to start a new one, there has to be a gap of "several days". You can export your chat history if you need to keep a record of who said what. Take care to understand the difference between public groups and private groups, as public groups are as public and searchable as making posts to an open website forum, while private groups can only be seen by accounts that are let in by administrators of that group.