Moderating 101
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Written by Disqus
Updated over a week ago

This is a guide for navigating and using the Disqus moderation panel. For information on word filters and other Moderation Settings, please visit this page.

In this Guide:

  • Bulk Actions

  • Trusting and Banning Users

  • Moderate All Comments by a Single User

  • Editing Comments

  • Searching Comments

  • Moderation History

  • Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Moderating through the Embed

  • Moderate by Email

  • Closing comment threads

Additional Resources:

Using the Moderation Panel

Your moderation panel gives you a quick view of your forum's comments, and their status (Approved, Pending, etc.). There are many detailed functions that are easily accessible with a couple of clicks as well.

Approving, deleting, and marking comments as spam

In the moderation panel, you can perform bulk actions by checking multiple comments, or you can moderate them individually in the expanded comment view.

  • Approve: Approves a comment to be shown publicly on your site.

  • Delete: Removes a comment from your site.

  • Spam: Removes a comment from your site and marks it as spam. Read more about Dealing with Spam.

Priority Sort Order

When you only have a few minutes to moderate, the new “Priority” sort option does all the heavy lifting for you. This option intelligently surfaces comments that might need your immediate attention using a special calculation of flags, downvotes, restricted words, reputation, and guest account status. This maximizes your ability to keep your community healthy and civil. Priority sort can be found next to the existing “newest” and “oldest” options within the sort menu in the top right navigation.

Pending reasons and filters

No more guess work. New filters have been added to the top navigation of the moderation panel which allow you to quickly view groups of comments based on the reason they’re pending your approval. This allows you to divide and conquer more efficiently and use signals like reputation to focus your effort. Here are the new filters:

  • No Issue

  • Guest comment

  • Contains a link

  • Low reputation

  • Restricted word

  • Flagged

  • Toxic (What's this?)

Bulk Actions

Individual Moderation

Expanded comment view

Click the comment to bring up more options.

Trusting and Banning Users

In the expanded comment view, click the "Trust User" or "Ban User" options.

Timeouts and Shadow Banning

After clicking "Ban User", you will be presented with additional options to either remove the user temporarily or allow them to continue to post comments that nobody will be able to see.

Read more about timeouts and shadow banning!

Moderate All Comments by a Single User

The "More Info" button allows you to view other comments made by that commenter — you can drill down by their username, email address, or IP address, as well as view only that thread's comments.

This will only search for that single account, and if the person has used multiple accounts or email addresses this won't find the others.

Editing Comments

As a moderator you can edit any comment if it contains undesirable information.

Searching Comments

You can use a variety of search commands to find certain comments:

  • user:username

  • thread:0000000 (Enter the thread ID number)

  • id:0000000 (Enter the comment ID number)

After clicking on a comment, can view the user's recent comments for context.

Can't find a missing comment?

  • Try viewing the Spam or Deleted filters.

  • Make sure there's no space between the search command and what you're searching for.

  • When searching for a comment, pick the most unique word from it to search.

  • Search a variety of words in the comment, or simplify what you're entering in the search field.

  • Take note if the person is using a third-party login, or if they're using multiple accounts and/or email addresses.

  • If you're searching by username or email for a third-party login account — users who log in to Disqus via Twitter, Facebook, or Google — the account won't have an email address or a standard Disqus username. The username will be similar to facebook-12345678. You can find the username by going to any comment, expanding it, and clicking the More Info button (the silhouette of a head and shoulders).  

Moderation History

The Moderation panel will also show past moderation actions for comments, in addition to moderation overview for other comments made by that user

To view this information, select any comment to toggle the sidebar panel. Then select the History tab to view a log of all the moderation actions for the commenter. 

Currently, we show the following actions: comment approval, deletion, marked as spam, and featured.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Moderate faster in the Moderation Panel using keyboard shortcuts. To display the full list of keyboard shortcuts in the Moderation Panel, type '?' (without the quotes).

Moderate through the Embed

You can moderate comments directly on the thread's page while logged in as a moderator. After mousing over a comment, click the comment menu dropdown and then 'Moderate' link.

Moderate by Email

You can moderate your comments via their email notifications with three simple commands: Approve, Delete, Spam. Remember to reply above the notification text, respond only with the appropriate single command word, and to not include any email signature.


 You can also post a comment reply to a new comment notification by responding directly to the email.

Closing comment threads

Closing a comment thread is used to halt the discussion while allowing the current comments to remain visible. Closing comments can be done several ways.

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