Do you want to allow users to report inappropriate comments in WordPress?
To help keep their audiences safe, platforms such as Facebook allow users to report inappropriate comments. However, WordPress doesn’t have a built-in reporting feature, so removing offensive, rude, or hurtful comments from your website isn’t always easy.
In this article, we will show you how to crowdsource comment moderation by allowing users to report inappropriate comments in WordPress.
Why Allow Users to Report Inappropriate Comments in WordPress?
Despite having tools to combat comment spam in WordPress, trolls often find ways to post their negative comments, especially if you allow users to post anonymous comments in WordPress.
Offensive, rude, and hurtful words appearing on your website can damage your brand image and negatively impact your business. Thankfully, you don’t have to do anything drastic, such as completely disabling comments.
By allowing users to report inappropriate comments, you can remove offensive messages quickly and make your website a more positive and enjoyable place. This can help you get more comments on your WordPress blog posts.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at how you can easily allow users to report comments on your WordPress blog.
Video Tutorial
If you prefer written instructions, then continue reading.
Allowing Users to Report Inappropriate Comments in WordPress
The best way to allow users to report inappropriate comments in WordPress is by using Zeno Report Comments. This plugin automatically removes flagged comments from your site and places them in the moderation queue, ready for you to review.
The first thing you need to do is to install and activate the Zeno Report Comments plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you need to go to the Settings » Discussion page in your WordPress admin area. Here, scroll to the ‘Allow comment flagging’ section and check the box.
After that, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button to store your settings.
Once the page refreshes, you will see some new settings under ‘Allow comment flagging.’
First, you will see a ‘Flagging threshold’ option. This is how many reports a comment needs to get before it’s flagged for manual review.
We recommend setting this to 1, but you can use any number you like. For example, if your audience starts flagging comments that you are happy to have on your WordPress blog, then you may want to increase the threshold.
By default, Zeno Report Comments will email you every time a user reports a comment and when a comment needs manual review. These emails can help you remove offensive messages more quickly, but they may also become overwhelming if you get lots of comments on your WordPress website.
You can disable these emails using the checkboxes next to ‘Administrator notifications.’
If you disable these emails, then we recommend reviewing your comments every day.
When you are happy with how the plugin is set up, make sure to click on the ‘Save’ button.
Now, if you visit your blog, you will see a new ‘Report comment’ link beneath each comment. Users can report a negative comment by clicking on this link.
When a user reports a comment, the plugin will show a message confirming that you have received their feedback.
This lets them know you are taking their report seriously, which is a great user experience.
As soon as a comment’s report count reaches the flagging threshold, it gets sent to the moderation queue.
You can now delete or re-approve the comment.
For more information, please see our complete beginner’s guide on how to moderate comments in WordPress.
We hope this article helped you to learn how to allow users to report inappropriate comments in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to allow user registration on your WordPress site and our expert picks for the best contact form plugins.
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Gautam Doddamani says
i moderate each and every comment on my blog, if there are negative comments i simply trash it lol…i bet others do the same thing!
asim nawaz says
Its good to see such things which allow to stop spamming. I am currently on blogger. Is there any way to report in appropriate comments in blogger.?
Thanks for the article.
Editorial Staff says
We don’t cover blogger platform on this site. If there is a way, then we don’t know about it.
Admin
Pamela says
I didn’t know how to do this, thanks! We have a big spam problem in our company blog, we receive almost pure spam… not real comments, quite sad actually hahaha.
zimbrul says
Few days ago a reader asked me to remove her comments as there were spam comments in reply to what the reader was saying. Unfortunatelly some nasty comments slipped throuh the filters. The plugin above comes handy…