CUNY Academic Commons

It's on the CETLS web site. Here are the two comments (which I have since unspammed and approved):

https://bmcccetls.commons.gc.cuny.edu/blog/2019/10/21/six-things-prison/#comment-170

https://bmcccetls.commons.gc.cuny.edu/blog/2019/10/21/six-things-prison/#comment-169

I just noticed a third comment that is currently in the spam folder (despite the fact that the commenter is a site subscriber who has commented on posts in the past - it seems like Akismet does not learn what is not spam).

Thanks, Ray. I must have turned on Jetpack Comments at some point, but I'm not sure why. Perhaps the salient question is what will happen if I turn it off? Will I lose any functionality that I'm actually using? It looks like I would not be able to have a custom greeting on the comments form if I turn it off. That may cause a different problem. I am moderating comments on the blog. In the past, commenters submitted their comments multiple times when they did not appear immediately. The custom greeting lets commenters know that their comment will not appear immediately. Do you know of another plugin that would allow me to customize the greeting?

Thanks for all this information, Ray. A couple of things:

- I'm pretty sure that the customized greeting was my primary purpose for turning on Jetpack Comments.

- Yes, you can manage comments through Jetpack, but I don't think that's any different from managing them through the dashboard. And I don't see any way to alter the Akismet settings through Jetpack. So I think turning it off would be the way to go.

- I tried submitting three comments when I was logged out of the Commons. I did not see the comment held for moderation notice that you send me a screen shot of. Instead, I briefly saw a message that I was submitting a duplicate comment. That message disappeared very quickly, too quickly for me to get a screen shot. So my blog commenters do not have any indication that their comments were received.

- Oddly, although all three of my test comments were held for moderation and were not posted on the blog, one of them was emailed to all the members of the Commons group connected to the site. Even more oddly, I used a personal email address for that comment and used my BMCC email address for the two comments that were not emailed to group members.

- Boone created the custom child theme for us to address issues with the Co-Authors Plus plug-in. Unfortunately, at the moment I do not have anyone who could customize the theme to add the custom greeting. So it would be great if we could figure out why people are not seeing that their comments are awaiting moderation.

Hi Gina,

Just going to reply to a few of your points:

I tried submitting three comments when I was logged out of the Commons. I did not see the comment held for moderation notice that you send me a screen shot of. Instead, I briefly saw a message that I was submitting a duplicate comment. That message disappeared very quickly, too quickly for me to get a screen shot. So my blog commenters do not have any indication that their comments were received.

When you were doing your testing, did you have Jetpack Comments enabled?

I forgot to mention that my screenshot was taken from my testing environment where most plugins are disabled. Maybe you can try your comment testing on the CETLS dev site:
https://bmccetlsdev.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

Ensure that Jetpack Comments is deactivated. You'll also want to make sure that your "Settings > Discussion" options are the same on both sites.

If you want me to disable Akismet on the CETLS dev site for your testing, let me know.

Oddly, although all three of my test comments were held for moderation and were not posted on the blog, one of them was emailed to all the members of the Commons group connected to the site. Even more oddly, I used a personal email address for that comment and used my BMCC email address for the two comments that were not emailed to group members.

I'm not sure why the comment posted with a personal email address was able to bypass the moderation settings. Is it possible that in the "Settings > Discussion" admin page, you had "Comment author must have a previously approved comment" checked on the CELTS site? If not, perhaps it has something to do with Jetpack Comments?

Boone created the custom child theme for us to address issues with the Co-Authors Plus plug-in. Unfortunately, at the moment I do not have anyone who could customize the theme to add the custom greeting. So it would be great if we could figure out why people are not seeing that their comments are awaiting moderation.

Let me know what happens when you try commenting with Jetpack Comments disabled.

If disabling Jetpack Comments does not solve the "Comments are awaitng moderation" message, I can add the custom comment greeting to your custom child theme since the child theme already exists.

Yes, I did have Jetpack Comments activated when I did this test. I turned off Jetpack Comments and re-tested and I now see the message "Your comment is awaiting moderation," though I might not have noticed it if I hadn't been looking for it. I know that commenters did not notice it in the past because they attempted to submit their comments multiple times, thinking they had not been received. That is what prompted me to turn on Jetpack Comments in the first place. If it would be simple to add a custom greeting to our child them, I think that would be helpful. The Jetpack greeting was "Join the Conversation. Comments are moderated and will not appear immediately."

Regarding the comment that bypassed moderation settings, I am sure that "Comment author must have a previously approved comment" was not checked, and in any case, I had never before submitted a comment using that email address. So that's a bit of a mystery.

Update: after I turned off Jetpack Comments, I tried another test comment, this time with a different personal email address, and like the previous comment, it was held for moderation within WordPress, but triggered an email to the group.