This guide includes many tips and tricks on how to get the most out of your moderation tools to keep your community commenting with minimal interruptions.

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.

Read more about Dealing with Spam

Expanded comment view

Click the comment to bring up more options.

Whitelist/Blacklist options

In the expanded comment view, click the "Add ..." menu to bring up whitelist and blacklist options.

Read more about Using the Blacklist and Whitelist.

Finding more comments

The Find ... button allows you to view other comments made by that comment's username, email address, IP address, as well as view only that thread's comments. Note that 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. A note will be left on the comment itself that it was edited by a moderator.

Searching Comments

You can use a variety of search commands to find certain comments. When searching for a comment, pick the most unique word from it to search.

Search commands

• email:user@example.com
• user:username
• thread:0000000 (Enter the thread ID number)
• id:0000000 (Enter the comment ID number)

Tip: If you're searching for a third-party login account, they won't have an email address or regular username. Their username will be similar to facebook-12345678. You can find this by going to any comment, expanding it, and clicking their avatar to bring up the Whitelist/Blacklist options.

Can't find a missing comment?

• Try viewing the Spam or Deleted filters on the right-hand side.
• Make sure there's no space between the search command and what you're searching for.
• 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.

Moderating on 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 'Moderate' link. This will bring up options to quickly edit, delete or mark the comment as spam, and even blacklist the commenter.

Moderate by Email

You can moderate your comment notifications by email with three simple commands. Remember to reply above the notification text and to respond only with the appropriate single command word.

• Spam: Removes a comment from your site and marks it as spam.
• Approve: Approves a comment to be shown publicly on your site.
• Delete: Removes a comment from your site.

Moderation Settings

Specifying who can comment

This option is found in the Admin panel's General settings.

• Anyone: Turns on Guest Commenting in addition to the regular login options
• Registered only: Only registered users of Disqus or a third party login (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) can comment.
• Registered only with verified email: All Disqus users would be required to verify their email address. Users with third party logins are already considered verified accounts

Can I remove the email requirement for Guest commenting?

No, Guest commenters are required to provide an email address for notifications and moderation purposes, however the email address will of course never be displayed and does not require verification.

Adding additional moderators

Additional, or secondary, moderators can be added under the Moderation settings tab by clicking the Add a moderator button.

Keep in mind that additional moderators must already be registered with Disqus before being added as moderators. Single Sign-on (SSO) accounts can be added as moderators too by entering either the SSO username (e.g., cnn-4e24e88607ab41b791fd0b80c0) or email address.

Screening comments

Screening options can be found in the Disqus admin panel under the Moderation settings tab. You can choose to pre-screen either all comments or comments made by guest profiles. You may also choose to screen comments which contain links as a way to control spammers and against posting inappropriate links.

Flagged Comment Moderation

You can choose to email all moderators when a comment is flagged, and you can specify how many unique flags are needed to hide a comment (if any).

Note: We don't count duplicate flaggings based on the user and IP address.

Restricted Words

Any time a comment or name contains a word you've specified in this filter, it will go to the Unapproved queue. You may use wildcards by entering a .*, but be careful where you use it; for example, s.*ck will match suck, but also sock and stack.

The restricted words list will also work for blocking certain HTML code. Read more about How do I moderate HTML in comments?

Automatic closing of comment threads

You can specify globally how long you want a comment thread to remain open after it's created. Entering 0 will disable the automatic closing process. This can be overridden for particular threads using the Settings panel on the embed.

Read more on How do I close comment threads?