Discussion settings options

More than just venues for sharing your research, Hypotheses blogs are forums for discussions open to everyone. On the blog itself, this discussion includes the possibility for your readers to leave comments under your articles and pages. Thus, when creating a blog, the possibility of commenting is activated, but this setting can be adjusted at will.

You may have noticed, under your published posts, the presence of a form allowing people who are consulting an article in your blog to leave comments (the appearance of this form depends on the graphic theme used on your blog).

Form to fill in to leave a comment under an article

Blog-scale settings

In your blog’s dashboard > Settings > Discussion, you can decide whether or not to allow your readers to comment on your blog articles. Checked, the line “Allow people to post comments on new articles” offers your readers access to this form under each post, which the person must complete to comment.

Comments general settings

The other two lines checked by default in the default settings of the discussion options in the image above relate to pingbacks and trackbacks (more explanations in this post from the House of blogs).

Below, in “Other comment settings”, the line “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” is unchecked by default. We advise you not to check it, as this option does not allow people who are not logged into a Hypotheses user account to comment, which severely limits the possibilities of interaction and discussion.

Another important setting, in the “Before a comment appears” section: the line “Comment must be manually approved”, checked by default, means that you want to moderate the comments published on your blog before their publication.

Moderation of comments before publication

The editor-in-chief of a blog is legally responsible for any content in it, including comments, even if published by someone outside the blog’s editorial team. Thus, it can be interesting to review the comments left by your readers before approving -or not- their publication. Comments “pending approval” can be found in the “Comments” menu of the dashboard of your blog.

If you choose to uncheck the box “Comment must be manually approved”, remember to regularly check the nature of the comments published on your blog. The Hypotheses platform has a very good anti-spam system, which filters out the vast majority of “false” comments, but it is up to you to check that the content of the published comments does not go beyond the limits of legality.

Article-scale settings

When creating or editing a particular post, you may wish that, unlike the rest of your content, it be closed to comments. On the other hand, if comments are not allowed at the level of your blog, you might want to get your readers’ opinion on a specific content. You can configure the comment settings at the scale of an article, from the article’s editing interface. This setting takes precedence over the choices made at the blog level in Settings > Discussion. To do this, scroll down under the main content editing area, and check for a “Discussion” module. If you do not see it, click on the “Screen Options” tab at the very top right of this interface and check “Discussion”.

“Screen Options” tab at the top right of a content editing interface (article or page)

The module should now be displayed under the main content editing area, and proposes to accept or not comments and pingbacks for this content.

Discussion settings at the scale of an article or page available in the Discussion module

Featured Image: Photo by Chris Kristiansen under Unsplash license

Cite this article as: "Discussion settings options" from Marion Wesely. Published on The house of blogs, 05/09/2018. Link: https://houseofblogs.hypotheses.org/427.

Marion Wesely

Anciennement Chargée de l'accompagnement des communautés et de la valorisation des contenus d'Hypothèses / Community manager & communication officer for the Hypotheses platform (OpenEdition)

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