How to Allow Blog Users to Moderate Comments in WordPress

Want to allow blog users to moderate comments in WordPress? Follow our step-by-step guide to give users comment moderation permissions in WordPress.

Moderating user-generated content and feedback can be extremely time-consuming. According to surveys, community managers spend 25-50% of their day reviewing comments alone.

Allowing certain users or team members to help with moderation can make the process significantly more scalable.

Key Benefits of Comment Moderation

Beyond saving you time, there are some key benefits to enabling others to help with comment moderation:

Faster comment response times: with more people reviewing comments, response times can be 4-5x faster according to Moderato, a comment moderation platform.

Improved user experience: Comments with useful feedback can get approved faster, leading to more engagement. Data shows active comment sections can boost conversion rates by up to 25% according to MarketingSherpa.

Reduced spam and abuse: With more eyes reviewing comments, spam, harassment, and abuse can be caught sooner before impacting other site visitors.

Step 1: Install Comment Moderation Plugin

There are a few great WordPress plugins for enabling comment moderation roles:

Thrive Comments – very user-friendly, lots of extra features
MemberPress – more basic but gets the job done
Comment Moderation Role – dedicated moderation role

We‘ll cover the Thrive Comments setup process, but the same principles apply to other plugins.

After installing Thrive Comments, navigate to Thrive Dashboard > Thrive Comments > Comment Moderation.

Step 2: Assign User Roles Comment Permissions

Within settings, you can map WordPress user roles to comment moderation capabilities.

For example, enable permissions for these potential use cases:

• Editors – Managing feedback on their own content
• Authors – Guest contributors moderating their post discussions
• Community Managers – Dedicated team for comment review
• Customer Support – Replying to questions and feedback

Check the boxes to assign permissions to the desired roles.

Step 3: Set Comment Rules (Optional)

For large sites, you may wish to set rules governing what types of comments should be approved or declined automatically.

For example:

• Auto-approve comments from members with 10+ contributions
• Auto-decline comments with certain keywords flagged as spam

Set your desired logic under the page‘s Automatic Comment Moderation section.

Step 4: Monitor and Optimize

Review the following to ensure your new comment moderation approach is effective:

• Moderation speed – time to approval, decline rate
• User satisfaction – feedback sentiment, reactions
• Volume and quality – number of comments, spam %

Adjust the approach over time to maximize benefits.

Giving users permissions to help moderate comments has 3 big benefits:

1. Saves you time
2. Improves user experience
3. Reduces spam

With the right setup, you can scale moderation exponentially. This helps maintain community trust and grow engagement long-term.