nostin
web development
Good Visitor Comment Moderation Technique
20th Jun 2009 2:24pm
I just came across a technique that is probably old, but I hadn’t seen it before just now. It involves the moderation of comments on a blog. I saw this on a word press blog called Alice and Kev and I liked it a lot. In fact, I am not sure if the technique I am thinking of is actually employed here but it certainly put the idea in my head.
Usually, the dichotomy in dealing with use feedback is that we do not want to allow spammers to post unmoderated comments on the page, but we also don’t want to force legitimate contributers to sign up or create an account before they can post, which can turn off a lot of people.
So, if you want to have a form on your page that allows visitors to leave some feedback, you might have something like the following:
It seems like what is happening here, is that the “Name” and the “Mail” fields are being stored in a database table that lists authenticated users. If the visitor submits a username and an email address combination that is not stored in this table, the comment will need to be moderated before it will appear on the page.
Once the comment is moderated and the administrator is satisfied that the name and email address combination supplied is from a real person wishing to make a real contribution, it can be stored so that if the person returns to the site, they can contribute again without their future comments needing to be moderated.
Since the email address is never published, it seems unlikely that someone could guess the username and email combination required in order to post an unmoderated visitor comment. Certainly unlikely that a spam bot could at least.
This prevents user frustration experienced by waiting for comment moderations and spares the moderator some time in performing the extra moderations from past visitors.
Of course, some functionality will need to be provided for an administrator to edit the list of accepted email and username combinations in case any become compromised. However the technique certainly seems to have merit.
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