Learning Commons:Student Orientation/Working With Content/Comments Outreach and Social Media/Comment Moderation
Step 1
In order to moderate comments, the first thing you must do is log into the Learning Commons and get into the Dashboard by following the instructions that were laid out in this post
NOTE: If a comment is posted directly from a Learning Commons page, an email notification will be sent to the admins and the page author. However, no email notification will be sent when a comment is replied from the backend of WordPress.
Step 2
The image below shows the Learning Commons WordPress dashboard. If you look down the sidebar on the left, you may see an orange bubble with a number within it. This number indicates the number of comments that are still awaiting moderation—either being approved, marked as spam or deleted. To the right of the sidebar is widget called “Recent Comments” where you can see the most recent comments. It is best to click on the “Comments” button on the sidebar to get a full view of them, rather than just the latest listings.
Steps 3
Click on the “Comments” section in the sidebar. We have a few options to undergo the moderation of these comments. Comments that have not been moderated will have a light cream yellow colour while comments that have been taken care of will have a white background. To see all comments that have not been moderated, click “Pending” at the top and in the example below, we see that there are 8 comments that are pending.
After clicking on the Pending button, you should be in a page that has all the comments with a cream yellow background (the ones that are awaiting moderation). If you hover your mouse cursor over a certain comment, you will see a bar of options that relate to that specific comment pop up under the comment itself. In the image below, the bar that pops up when I hovered over the first comment is in the red
From this menu bar, there are 6 options.
If you choose the approve the message, select approve and it will go into the “Approved” comments section and will no longer show up as pending. A general rule of thumb for approving comments is to ask yourself, "Will the UBC Community benefit from this comment?" Questions can still be replied to and answered even if they are not approved.
If you mark it as spam then it will no longer show up on the site and will be stored in the “Spam” section. Only use this if there is some irrelevant comment that doesn’t apply to the Learning Commons or any sort of advertisement of some company or product. Since the Learning Commons is an academic site, all comments are expected to relate to the post and be of an academic nature. If this is not the case, mark it as spam right away even if it is borderline and get a judgment of whether it actually is spam from higher authorities on the team after the fact. We could always approve these comments from the “Spam” section at a later date, where they are stored, if need be.
If you choose the delete, then it will simply delete that comment without any other sort of consequence. These comments will not be backed up, so be sure that you want to delete something before doing so. If the comment is not appropriate or whatever, mark it as spam instead of deleting, so we can keep that commenter as reference.
If you choose edit, you can actually change the wording in the comment of the original poster. If you choose to edit a comment, be sure to check in with a supervisor before hand and also make note that the comment was edited by typing for example, “—–This comment was edited by a Student Development Assistant——-” at the bottom of the post.
Quick edit is essentially the same as edit, but allows you to be able to edit the comment in the same area as the other “pending” comments.
If you choose to reply to the comment, proceed to Step 4. Otherwise you can skip to Step 5.
Step 4
You can reply to a comment in two ways: publicly or privately.
To reply publicly, you can pretty much answer the question or statement that was made and it will appear as a comment under the posters comment, so that all users can view it. This will make your job easier because you will only have to answer the question once and not multiple times for multiple people!
NOTE: Ensure your replies are approved because they are acting as comments as well for them to appear on the site. If they are not approved, they will be like any other pending comment and will not appear!
You can reply privately maybe because the answer is not appropriate to be presented in public. No options are directly available on WordPress for replying comments privately. Therefore you have to reply via email. The email address are right below the author’s name on each comment, shown in the picture below.
After you reply privately, let others know that the comment has been replied. To do this, edit the comment that you’ve replied to, and add the line “Replied privately by (your name goes here)” to the author name field. An example is shown in the picture blow.
Step 5
Good work and always try to be as prompt as possible with comments! If there are any further questions regarding the comments, make sure to get in contact with a supervisor because this is an essential service on the Learning Commons and the better job of answering comments well and timely that is done, the more satisfied people there will be!
Replying to Comments
If a comment is posted directly from a Learning Commons page, an email notification will be sent to the admins and the page author. However, no email notification will be sent when a comment is replied from the back end of WordPress.
Reply publicly: On the Dashboard, comments are listed under the “Recent Comments” area. Mouse over to the one you want to reply to and click on “Reply”. Another way to do this is to click on the “Comments” tab on the left sidebar of the Dashboard and select “Reply” on the comment that you want to reply to.
Reply privately: No options are directly available on WordPress for replying comments privately. Therefore you have to reply via email. To find the email address of the author of a comment, click on the “Comments” tab on the left sidebar of the Dashboard. The email address are right below the author’s name on each comment. After you reply privately, let others know that the comment has been replied. To do this, go into “Edit” of the comment that you’ve replied to, and add the line “Replied privately by (your name goes here)” to the author name field.