User Levels and Comments – thoughts

…didn’t see where to register…

That would be the link under the search box titled “Registration”.
There’s an Admin option entitled “Any Register Member Can Publish Articles”. If uncheck the box, then any users who register are created as Level 0 users, and cannot make new posts. (If the box is checked, then new users are created as Level 1).
Have you seen the “Kittens Friendly Comments” plugin? This seems to do at least some of what you’re after…

When a new comment is posted, this plugin checks to see if the authors email address has been use to submit a comment that was previously approved. If it hasna€?t, it will be flagged for moderation, and you can decide what to do with it. If a comment is submitted by someone whoa€?s been approved in the past, the comment posts as normal, with no intervention from the user or adminsitrator.

I don’t think it would be too difficult to write a plugin which would only display the comment form to logged-in users, but I’m not sure there’s really a great need for it.
Neil.

Yep – noticed it after one more cup of coffee.
Kitten’s plug-in isn’t really what I’m going for. I’m actually thinking along the lines of phpBB’s forum permissions, allowing each blogmaster to decide if he needs it. Scoop has something similar, but (a) I gave up PERL for my sanity, and (b) I don’t want to own my own server.
As to need itself, if you’re just writing a personal blog, I agree. If you’re writing a political blog, the blogmaster might love a tool that allows him to put the trolls (posting hundreds of comments to disrupt conversation) in “time out.”
I sent a note to Matt – if it’s something that appeals to the development team I’ll be happy to work on it.
JAC

jac – welcome.
This is something that has been kicked around a few times, with no real decision being made other than to possibly look at it again later. At which time the process repeats. I think registering to leaver comments would turn some people off. From my own experience, if I had to register just to leave a comment, I’d proly never do it. The reason is simple: it’s an added barrier to the communications that’s mostly unnecessary. Plus, would the commentor have to wait to be verified? Would I then need to wait for the activation email? By the time I got it, I’d probably forgot what I was going to say in the comment.
So far I have found that using the Blacklist hack, and closing comments on posts older than 21 days has proved quite effective is stemming the flow of spam.
TG

I’m having a bit of an issue with this. A friend posted a comment on one of my articles, anonymously. He realized there were some spelling mistakes, and wished to correct them, but was unable to do so. I tried to test whether it would help if he created an account, so that he could log in, post and modify his own posts if he needed to (without modifying other people’s), but whenever I try, I get: “You dona€?t have the right to edit a€?s posts.” (i.e. “You dona€?t have the right to edit <blank>a€?s posts.”)
I guess it’s fair that, as the owner of the post, I would also own the comments. But it would be nice to give people who contribute comments the ability to edit them, without giving them the same user level as the poster himself.
Has there been some discussion/reflection on this?
Eric

I think there’s a GREAT need for this. In fact, the main reason I’m switching from MT to WP for better control of commenters. So far, I have found plugins that force the commenter to verify the e-mail address each time (cool), verify the e-mail address once (cool, kitten), and force the user to register to be able to see the comment form (very cool).
What I’m wondering is: is theer any way to have an auotmatic link to the user’s profile go along with her comment? This would really enhance the community aspect of my blog.
Thanks in advance for any tips!

Just to flesh out the proposal, here’s what I’d suggest.
Edit the menu generation function in /wp-admin/menu.php to pull user levels from a new table.
Replace all hard-coded user levels in the various files with calls to the table.
Add an admin function to manage these levels, and turn on / off various functions (users can / can’t post without logging in, moderate individual users, etc.).
One possible default user schema is:
User Level 0 – Unregistered, or registered but unapproved/unpromoted.
User Level 1 – Approved but moderated. Able to post comments into approval queue.
User Level 2 – Able to post comments, edit own comments. Ditto links.
User Level 3 – Able to post categories, add images to comments, post to blog.
User Level 4 – Functionally, a moderator.
Can manage users, edit posts and comments of others.
Can promote users from level 0 up to level 3.
Can demote users from level 3.
Can NOT change the user status of other moderators.
User Level 5 – Can edit timestamps of posts and comments.
–
–
–
–
User Level 10 – Site Goddess. Can cause rain to fall, crops to fail, rivers to fill with blood.
This is purely arbitrary, somewhat based on the existing hard-coded values.
One possible table structure:
CREATE TABLE $wpdb->user_level_config (
admin_set_userlevels int(2) NOT NULL default 10,
admin_upgrade_version int(2) NOT NULL default 10,
admin_manage_plugins int(2) NOT NULL default 10,
admin_edit_blog_options int(2) NOT NULL default 10,
admin_edit_templates int(2) NOT NULL default 10,
admin_upload int(2) NOT NULL default 10,
mod_comments int(2) NOT NULL default 4,
mod_posts int(2) NOT NULL default 4,
mod_links int(2) NOT NULL default 4,
mod_categories int(2) NOT NULL default 4,
mod_users int(2) NOT NULL default 4,
post_write int(2) NOT NULL default 3,
post_edit int(2) NOT NULL default 3,
post_edit_timestamp int(2) NOT NULL default 5,
post_del int(2) NOT NULL default 3,
comment_add int(2) NOT NULL default 0,
comment_edit int(2) NOT NULL default 2,
comment_edit_timestamp int(2) NOT NULL default 5,
comment_del int(2) NOT NULL default 2,
link_add int(2) NOT NULL default 2,
link_edit int(2) NOT NULL default 3,
link_del int(2) NOT NULL default 3,
categories_add int(2) NOT NULL default 3,
categories_edit int(2) NOT NULL default 3,
categories_del int(2) NOT NULL default 3,
user_add int(2) NOT NULL default 4,
user_edit int(2) NOT NULL default 2,
user_del int(2) NOT NULL default 2,
user_moderated int(2) NOT NULL default 1
)
If a current WordPress user likes the way things run today, he need only adjust the user levels so that anonymous posts and registrations work the way they do today.

The main reason I switched from MT to WP since I couldn’t afford EE was so that I could have some flexibility in who was reading what I wrote. The ViewLevel plugin seemed to immediately solve my issue and give me a world of freedom in writing what I wanted or needed to write while still having some privacy.
The problem is that in doing so, I’m not only offering registered users reading privledges, but also other privledges, such as writing, editing, etc. This is not acceptable.
If there were (is??) a way to change which privledges WP gave to which level users, that would be heaven sent. I have very clearly unchecked the box that says “Any registered member can publish articles” but apparently, that doesn’t mean much of anything since… any registered member can still publish articles. I am not impressed.
*whine* I hate being a newbie. I love the flexibility and functionality of WP but there are certain things I absolutely hate but have no clue on how to fix.