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How to Allow Users to Report Inappropriate Comments in WordPress

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Do you want to allow users to report inappropriate comments in WordPress?

WordPress doesn’t have a built-in reporting function in its comment system. This can make removing offensive, rude, or hurtful comments from your website difficult. That said, there is an easy way to enable this feature.

In this article, we will show you how to allow users to report inappropriate comments in WordPress.

Why Allow Users to Report Inappropriate Comments in WordPress?

Despite having tools to combat comment spam bots in WordPress, negative comments can still go unchecked. This is especially true 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.

Plus, search engines prioritize user satisfaction. Websites featuring inappropriate or offensive material may be penalized, resulting in lower rankings.

Thankfully, you don’t have to do anything drastic with your comment settings. You won’t need to completely disable comments to combat this issue.

By allowing users to report inappropriate comments, you can quickly remove offensive messages and make your website more enjoyable. 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.

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Allowing Users to Report Inappropriate Comments in WordPress

The best way to enable people to report inappropriate WordPress comments is by using Zeno Report Comments. This plugin automatically removes flagged comments from your site so that you can review them.

The first thing you need to do is to install and activate the Zeno Report Comments plugin from your WordPress dashboard. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After that, 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.

Adding blog moderation in WordPress

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button to save changes.

Once the page refreshes, you will see some new settings under ‘Allow comment flagging.’

How to allow comment flagging in WordPress

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 actually happy to have on your WordPress blog, then you may want to increase the threshold.

Changing the threshold of comment flagging in WordPress

By default, Zeno Report Comments will email you every time a user marks a negative comment and when a comment needs manual review.

These emails can help you remove offensive messages more quickly. However, they may also become overwhelming if you get lots of comments on your WordPress website.

You can uncheck the boxes next to ‘Administrator notifications’ to disable the email notifications.

How to allow users to report inappropriate comments

If you untick these checkboxes, then we recommend reviewing your new 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 open your blog, you will see a new ‘Report comment’ link beneath each comment. Users can report a negative comment by clicking on this link.

Reporting negative or offensive comments in WordPress

When a user reports a previously approved comment, the plugin will show a message confirming that you have received their feedback.

This lets them know you are taking their report seriously.

Flagging a comment in WordPress

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.

Moderating flagged comments in WordPress

For more information, please see our article on how to moderate comments in WordPress. It covers everything about comment moderation, from configuring the WordPress Discussions settings to tips to protect your website against spam comments.

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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Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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Reader Interactions

6 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Syed Balkhi says

    Hey WPBeginner readers,
    Did you know you can win exciting prizes by commenting on WPBeginner?
    Every month, our top blog commenters will win HUGE rewards, including premium WordPress plugin licenses and cash prizes.
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  2. 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! ;-)

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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…

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