Moderating your community

This guide includes many tips and tricks on how to get the most out of your moderation tools to keep your community commenting with minimal interruptions.

In this Guide:

Additional Resources:

Using the Moderation Panel

Your moderation panel gives you a quick view of your forum's comments, and their status (Approved, Pending, etc.). There are many detailed functions that are easily accessible with a couple of clicks as well.

Approving, deleting, and marking comments as spam

In the moderation panel, you can perform bulk actions by checking multiple comments, or you can moderate them individually in the expanded comment view.

  • Approve: Approves a comment to be shown publicly on your site.
  • Delete: Removes a comment from your site.
  • Spam: Removes a comment from your site and marks it as spam. Read more about Dealing with Spam.

Bulk Actions

Individual Moderation

Expanded comment view

Click the comment to bring up more options.

Whitelist/Blacklist options

In the expanded comment view, click the "Whitelist" or "Blacklist" options.

Read more about Using the Blacklist and Whitelist.

Finding more comments

The "More Info" button allows you to view other comments made by that commenter — you can drill down by their username, email address, or IP address, as well as view only that thread's comments.

This will only search for that single account, and if the person has used multiple accounts or email addresses this won't find the others.

Editing Comments

As a moderator you can edit any comment if it contains undesirable information.

Searching Comments

You can use a variety of search commands to find certain comments:

  • email:user@example.com
  • user:username
  • thread:0000000 (Enter the thread ID number)
  • id:0000000 (Enter the comment ID number)

Can't find a missing comment?

  • Try viewing the Spam or Deleted filters.
  • Make sure there's no space between the search command and what you're searching for.
  • When searching for a comment, pick the most unique word from it to search.
  • Search a variety of words in the comment, or simplify what you're entering in the search field.
  • Take note if the person is using a third-party login, or if they're using multiple accounts and/or email addresses.
  • If you're searching by username or email for a third-party login account — users who log in to Disqus via Twitter, Facebook, or Google — the account won't have an email address or a standard Disqus username. The username will be similar to facebook-12345678. You can find the username by going to any comment, expanding it, and clicking the More Info button (the silhouette of a head and shoulders).  .

Moderate through the Embed

You can moderate comments directly on the thread's page while logged in as a moderator. After mousing over a comment, click the  comment menu dropdown and then 'Moderate' link.

Moderate by Email

You can moderate your comments via their email notifications with three simple commands: Approve, Delete, Spam. Remember to reply above the notification text, respond only with the appropriate single command word, and to not include any email signature. 


You can also post a comment reply to a new comment notification by responding directly to the email.

Moderation Settings

  • These options are found in the Disqus admin > Settings > General page.

    Can I remove the email requirement for Guest commenting?

    No. Guest commenters are required to provide an email address for notifications and moderation purposes. However the email address will of course never be displayed and does not require verification.

    Adding additional moderators

    Additional moderators can be added at the Disqus admin > Settings > Moderators page by clicking the "Add a moderator" button.

    Add a moderator button

    Keep in mind that additional moderators must already be registered with Disqus before being added as moderators. Single Sign-on (SSO) accounts can be added as moderators too by entering either the SSO username (e.g., cnn-4e24e88607ab41b791fd0b80c0) or email address.

    Comment Pre-moderation

    Pre-moderation options can be found your forum's Settings > General page. You can choose to pre-moderate either all comments or comments made by guest profiles. You may also choose to screen comments which contain links as a way to control spammers and against posting inappropriate links.

    Flagged Comment Moderation

    You can choose to email all moderators when a comment is flagged. You can also specify how many unique flags are needed to hide a comment (if any).

    Note: We don't count duplicate flaggings based on the user and IP address.

    Restricted Words

    Any time a comment or name contains a word you've specified in this filter, it will go to the Unapproved queue. You may use wildcards by entering a .*, but be careful where you use it; for example, s.*ck will match suck, but also sock and stack.

    The restricted words list will also work for blocking certain HTML code.

    Automatic closing of comment threads

    You can specify globally how long you want a comment thread to remain open after it's created. Entering 0 will disable the automatic closing process. This can be overridden for particular threads using the Settings panel on the embed.

    Read more at How do I close comment threads?

    Media Attachments

    You can choose whether or not Media Attachments are enabled for your forum. If enabled, thumbnails for images and YouTube links will display within comments

    Read more at Adding images or videos to comments.

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