Let’s face it, spam happens. While we’ve made a lot of improvements to our Akismet integration to catch future spam from sullying your comments with links to cheap prescription drugs, it’s possible that some spam might have slipped through in the past.

Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

There’s a nifty new option in your moderation page to re-check all of your approved comments for spam with the click of a button.

Just click on the “Re-check For Spam” button and we’ll do the heavy lifting for you, and run all of the comments on your site through Akismet again.

Think of all of the time that will save you. While we do that, you can take some time away from your computer and slow things down. Go relax with a beverage and rest your eyes for a bit. You can read an old-fashioned newspaper (you know, the kind that you can tear), or catch-up with a long-lost friend – after all, IntenseDebate is all about connecting people.

When you get back, head over to your moderation page again. If we’ve found any spam, there will be a notification waiting for you. If there isn’t one, then your site is spam free.

Keep in mind that the more comments you have, the longer it will take for us to re-check them all. If you return to your moderation page while we’re still checking, then the “Re-check For Spam” button will be greyed-out and inactive.

You can learn more about the rest of our moderation tools at support.intensedebate.com/moderation and read our past posts on our moderation options here.

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

We released a cool new setting for reported comments (comments that your readers flag as inappropriate). You can now opt to have the comments automatically put into moderation for review. This handy option can help you and your readers keep your comments clean and debates friendly.

To enable this option, visit your Comments Settings, and check the box next to Send comments to moderation when reported (located at the bottom of the page). Make sure you save your settings. This setting excludes comments posted by site admins and moderators, as well as comments that you have already approved.

While you’re there you can also take advantage of our Auto-Delete setting for reported comments. With the Auto-Delete option, you can set a maximum number of times that a comment is reported before the comment is deleted. This is another super-handy feature for crowdsourcing moderation.

Both of these options are based entirely on your feedback, and we’re happy to deliver them!

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

We love it when the entire Automattic team gets together – it gives us an opportunity to hang out and work side-by-side. During our last meetup in San Francisco, fellow Aussies, Beau Lebens and Alex Shiels, sat down to brainstorm some ways to improve our Akismet spam filter integration in IntenseDebate. A short-while later they cranked out a completely reworked integration that has drastically improved the accuracy of our spam filtering.

If you haven’t already, please make sure you enable Akismet in your IntenseDebate account at http://intensedebate.com/edit-site-moderation.

Please give us a shout at support@intensedebate.com if you continue to encounter spam issues. Thanks!

Posted by Michael Koenig in features,News

We’re stoked to introduce our new Moderator Role for your blog account.  One of the standard features of IntenseDebate is the option to assign multiple admins to help manage your blog account.  Assigning additional admins would give them full permissions to change your blog account settings and moderate comments.  But we’ve found that sometimes that’s a little too much power to dish out (you know… “with great power comes great responsibility”).

As of today you can keep them all in check.  Now you can promote any IntenseDebate or WordPress.com user to help moderate comments without having to give them full access to your account settings.  You can add additional Moderators and Admins to manage your account in your Moderation Settings page.

Promoting a user as a Moderator will give them access to your Moderation and Comment History pages.  They’ll also be able to remove comments that are out-of-line directly from the comment section. We’ve got some development plans in action to further expand your arsenal of admin features.

Voting
We’ve added a new option for you to disable thumbs-down voting if you want to keep things a little more positive in your comment section. This option is available in your Comment Settings page.

Our goal with this option is to minimize voting bias and the mob mentality that can kick-in when you see a comment in the red. Votes are one of the main factors for user reputation scores, and negative votes can have a major impact on a commenter’s score, especially if they’re brand new to IntenseDebate.

Commenters might also be more likely to give the thumbs-down to users with negative rep scores, so it’s even more difficult for them to climb out. We don’t want them to feel defeated and stop commenting, especially if their crime is that they voiced an unpopular opinion on a political blog or news site (which is quite common). We wanted to give admins the option to avoid this.

On the other hand, there are some malicious comments (and commenters) that deserve the negative ratings, so we wanted to still give admins the option to offer the thumbs-down. We hope that you’ll find this helpful in further encouraging conversations.

More updates and additions to come!

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

Nothing ruins a vibrant comment thread faster than a link to buy cheap Xanax and play online poker at a porn site. Even worse is the friendly spam that can sometimes slip through – you know, it says “great site, I’ll be subscribing to your blog” but it’s really a link to a spammy website.  With that in mind, we’re doing some major work on our backend to improve the IntenseDebate spam filters and Akismet integration.

While there’s still work to be done, the good news is that we’re making excellent progress to improve the effectiveness of our filters. The not-so-good news is that our filters are sometimes too strict, and legitimate commenters are flagged as spam. This is happening because either the user’s past comments have been marked as spam, or their comments are confused as friendly spam. While we’re working to correct this issue, we’ve added a User Whitelist to serve as an immediate fix.  Adding a user to your whitelist will automatically approve all of their comments.

Your User Whitelist is located in your Moderation Settings Page at http://intensedebate.com/edit-site-moderation. To add a user to the whitelist, just type in their username and select the “Whitelist” button. Then make sure to click the save button at the bottom of the page.

User Profile Update
We’ve also made a minor change to the display name links in the comment section.  If you have added a blog or website to your IntenseDebate profile, your display name will now link to that instead of to your IntenseDebate profile page. If you haven’t added your blog or website to your profile, you can add it at http://intensedebate.com/editprofile.

Don’t have a blog or website? Don’t worry! Your display name will link to your IntenseDebate profile. You can still access IntenseDebate profiles by selecting “View IntenseDebate Profile” when you hover over an avatar. This was a popular request so we’re happy to provide this update!

Posted by Michael Koenig in features