Comments held in moderation even after previously approved comment

Hello!

Comment author must have a previously approved comment – Check the box to insure comments are only posted if the comment author’s email address matches the address of a previously approved comment, otherwise, the comment is held for moderation. Comments from blacklisted email addresses (those listed in the Local Spam Words Text Box) are held for moderation regardless of whitelist status.

Did your contributor added the same email every time? Also, her mail could be flagged as spam.

Hi Blade! Yes, she has used the same email address every time, although the IP address is sometimes different. I don’t have any blacklisted email addresses in the Discussion Settings.

Perhaps it has been flagged somewhere else. Are you using any spam protection plugins, like Akismet?

Yes, I am using Akismet… everything there looks normal, with no false positives.

FYI, I am having the same problem and I have found this same complaint outstanding also on the wordpress.com forum – from a dot com user.

I am, like you, experiencing this problem on a dot org install with previously approved users having the comments held for moderation.

That makes at least 3 of us. But it seems worthwhile to know that it has been reported going back to March 2017 (at least on the dot com wp). I didn’t start getting Please Moderate emails until April 2017. That’s how long it took me to bump this up on my to do list!

@fb2ts, good to know I’m not the only one! As of today, several months after the issue started happening (I think around the same timeframe as you indicated), I am still experiencing the same problem. Annoying that no one seems to be able to offer any solutions, or even an explanation as to what is causing it.

The dot com complaint got Staff on board, and they said they would file a bug report, but haven’t said that they did post one. I just specifically asked for confirmation that a bug report has been filed.

[drumroll]

Here’s the verbatim as of July 7th – just about a month ago.

WordPress.com Staff: Okay. Well, we’ve duplicated the issue now so that’s a great start. I need to do some testing to see if this happens on a WordPress.org installation without Jetpack. If it does I’ll file a bug report there. If it only happens on WordPress.com / Jetpack sites, I’ll file a report accordingly.

Do you have Jetpack installed?

What the paucity of complaints seems to suggest is that relatively few people are getting repeat commenters. That is, of course, a whole different kettle of fish – but an interesting one, for sure.

According to Built With, as of the week beginning August 7th, 2017, there are 18,744,034 active wordpress installs.

@fb2ts, thanks for that update! No, I do NOT have Jetpack installed.

That is interesting how so few others are having this problem… I wonder if it’s a plugin incompatibility of some sort? Or maybe it’s just one of those problems that few people tend to notice, even if they have it?

The plugin theory is a bit tough to test, otherwise I would have tried disabling all my plugins. Maybe we could compare notes instead, and see if we have any plugins in common?

Here’s what I currently have installed and active:

Akismet
Author Bio Box
Beaver Builder Booster
Beaver Builder Plugin (Lite Version)
Capability Manager Enhanced
Coming Soon Page & Maintenance Mode by SeedProd
Edit Flow
Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights
Instagram Feed
Make Plus
Nelio Featured Posts
Never Moderate Registered Users (<– this was installed in an attempt to correct the problem… needless to say, it didn’t work)
OptinMonster API
Quick Page/Post Redirect Plugin
Search Engine Visibility
Send email only on Reply to My Comment
Social Warfare
Social Warfare – Pro
Table Maker
Ultimate Nofollow
WP Custom Widget area
WPForms
Yoast SEO Premium

The only plugin we have in common is Akismet. That and the No Jetpack lead is excellent information – I’ll take it to the other forum and see what we get.

I just ran a test with Akismet disabled and it didn’t make a difference.

It’s only some of your users experiencing this problem, correct? Not all of them?

Thanks for running that test with Akismet disabled– good to know that it’s not a plugin issue!

Correct: only some of my users are experiencing this problem.

I just filed a bug report. For the record, they’ll want to be sure, please confirm the version of WordPress you are using.

Here’s the ticket. It seems like you can probably add yourself to its watchlist and maybe also add a comment.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by fb2ts.

Thanks @fb2ts! I just followed the ticket and added a comment. *fingers crossed*

Maryefern, have you had any luck with this issue? I have the same sort of problem on two sites I manage:

1. On site A, a long-time reader and commenter suddenly has all his posts held for moderation. He isn’t flagged by Akismet, and he hasn’t changed his user name, email, or IP address.

2. On both site A and site B, a long-time reader and commenter was made an “author” (different person for each site). In both cases, their comments are suddenly being held for moderation. I’ve checked the author settings, and nothing there indicates their comments should be held.

We have Akismet but not Jetpack. Both sites use the Going Green Pro WordPress template and are hosted by HostGator.