IntenseDebate Comment System

As an admin, you have some powerful tools at your fingertips to help keep your comments in order and make the job a piece of cake. All of your moderation options are located at your Moderation Settings page.

Comment Settings

These are your general settings to stipulate any restrictions to which commenters can openly comment. Options are:

• Moderate all comments
  • Holds all comments in moderation for your approval before being displayed in the comment section.

• Readers must sign up with IntenseDebate or WordPress.com before commenting
  • Disables other authentication methods like Facebook Connect, Twitter Sign-in, along with Guest commenting.

• # of links a comment can contain before automatically pulled for moderation

• Automatically approve comments written by users with a minimum reputation score of ## points
  • This option will flag any comment submitted by Facebook Connect, Twitter Sign-in users, and Guests, since those commenters do not have reputation scores. Only IntenseDebate and WordPress.com users have reputation scores.

• Automatically approve comments written by IntenseDebate and WordPress.com users who have previously been approved
  • Option does not apply to Facebook Connect, Twitter Sign-in, or Guest comments, since comments submitted by those users are not tracked. Only comments submitted by IntenseDebate and WordPress.com users are tracked.
  • Comments submitted using Facebook Connect, Twitter Sign-in, or Guests will be held for moderation for your approval.
  • Tip: when using this setting, you should require readers to sign up with IntenseDebate or WordPress.com.

Spam Filter↑ Table of Contents ↑

• Enable Akismet spam filtering
  • Akismet provides powerful spam protection so you can spend your time doing better things.  When a new comment, trackback, or pingback comes to your site it is submitted to the Akismet web service which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down.
  • Tip for WordPress plugin users: IntenseDebate imports your comments from WordPress including any spam that’s submitted via WordPress. Don’t worry though! We run all imported comments through our Akismet integration as well as our own proprietary spam filters. It is still a good idea to keep your Akismet enabled on your WordPress blog to make sure that no spam comes through.

• Run WordPress comments through IntenseDebate filters

Re-check approved comments for spam↑ Table of Contents ↑

There’s a nifty option in your moderation page to re-check all of your approved comments for spam with the click of a button.

Just click on the “Re-check For Spam” button and we’ll do the heavy lifting for you, and run all of the comments on your site through Akismet again.

If we’ve found any spam, there will be a notification waiting for you the next time you go to your Moderation page. If there isn’t one, then your site is spam free.

Keep in mind that the more comments you have, the longer it will take for us to re-check them all. If you return to your moderation page while we’re still checking, then the “Re-check For Spam” button will be greyed-out and inactive.

Moderation & Blacklist↑ Table of Contents ↑

These are handy filters to automatically flag comments for moderation if they contain a keyword, or are submitted by a specific commenter based on their email address or IP address.

Keyword Tips:

• Entering a keyword will flag any instance of that particular word, including partial matches. This means that if you flag a word like “the” then any comment containing a word that includes “the” will be flagged. This would include “them”, “theme”, “thesis”, “theory”, “theoretical”, etc.  This is done so that you don’t have to identify and enter every instance of a keyword.
  • Choose your keywords wisely! Proceed with caution when adding two or three letter keywords – this might cause a lot of false hits and flag tons of comments for moderation.
  • We auto-populate your keyword list with words that are commonly found in spam. One of these words includes “cialis” which can cause some false hits with comments containing the word “socialist” and “socialism”, since both of those words include the word “cialis”. Keep an eye out for this if loads of comments are being held for moderation.
• Separate multiple entries with a space – a space in an entry designates that it is a separate entry. Unfortunately this means that you cannot stipulate phrases to be flagged since phrases contain spaces. In other words you cannot/shouldn’t enter a phrase in your keyword list like “the mouse ate the cheese”, as these words will all be identified as separate entries – you would in fact be entering “the”, “mouse”, “ate”, and “cheese” in your keyword list.

IP Address Tips:

• Flagging an IP address can be handy for blocking comments made by spammers who don’t leave an email address, especially if they change their email address.
• But keep in mind that multiple commenters might use the same IP address (ex: in an office setting), so if you block the IP address of a particularly problematic commenter, you might also be blocking all of their colleagues if you’re blocking their office IP.
• IntenseDebate does not support wildcard entries in our blacklists.

Profanity Filter↑ Table of Contents ↑

This is particularly handy if you don’t want to restrict the flow of comments by moderating your comments, but still want to keep comments clean. Your profanity filter will replace a few characters of the word with asterisks. Like our moderation and blacklist keyword filters, entries in your profanity filter include partial matches so you don’t have to enter every possible instance of a word (see above for details).

Banned Users↑ Table of Contents ↑

Easily block problematic users from commenting by entering their IntenseDebate or WordPress.com username or email address in the text field, and wash your hands of them.

Whitelisted Users↑ Table of Contents ↑

Our spam filters are very powerful… sometimes too powerful and can cause false hits. If you notice that a particular commenter is routinely flagged as spam, add their IntenseDebate or WordPress.com username or email address, and ensure that their comments are always approved.

Additional Moderators & Admins↑ Table of Contents ↑

You can assign as many people to help manage and moderate comments on your blog as you’d like. This option is located at the bottom of the page. Just add their username or email address associate with their IntenseDebate or WordPress.com user account, set their privileges to either moderate comments or give them full access to the account settings, and you’re all set!

FAQ about additional admins:

• Email notifications: unfortunately you cannot stipulate which admins and moderators receive email notifications for new comments and comments held in moderation. This is a blanket setting available in your Account Settings page. We plan on offering this in the future.
• Primary Admin: the primary admin is the user who originally created the blog account. This cannot be changed on your end, and must be done by us (something we plan to change in the future). If you require the primary admin to be changed on your account, first add the new user on as an admin, and then send us an email with the subject line “Primary Admin Swap” along with details and we will take care of it.
  • DO NOT delete the blog account or your user account when attempting to change the primary admin. This will not solve the issue, and will only lead to further issues.

Tags: Blacklists, email notifications, Facebook Connect, moderation, Profanity Filter, Spam, twitter, Whitelist — Can't find your answer here? Let us know.

Last modified: February 3, 2012 by Michael