Comment moderation puzzle

marjoleink · 2011-04-26 19:27:08

Noob at Textpattern, I’ve tried searching the forum but I’m obviously not using the correct terms…

I have a freshly-installed site, with just the default home page and the default comment “I enjoy your site very much.” by Donald Swain. :) (He seems to live in my server, since his IP address is 127.0.0.1)

Anyway to get a feel for how commenting works, I wrote a reply to his comment. When I submitted it, I got a notice that the comment was in moderation. Good.

So I switch to the admin side (next tab in the browser), went to Content -> Comments and sure enough there it was. I checked its checkbox, and applied ‘Show’, reasoning that this must be how to approve a comment. Back to the front end, reload the page — sure enough, now the comment appears but the notice about it needing moderation is also still there.

What gives? No amount of reloading the page gets rid of it.

Did I do something wrong, or is there a bug(let) somehow?

Fresh version 4.4.0, no plugins at all (yet), first in (intended) multi-site installation.

Cheerrs,

Last edited by marjoleink (2011-04-26 19:28:11)

Gocom · 2011-04-26 20:53:59

Are you possibly reloading the URL you were presented after posting the comment? If you are that could explain why the message is still shown. In that case you should to reload the real article permlink w/o the extra parameters added by comment posting process. The comment moderation/greeting message is shown when commented parameter is set in the URL.

Last edited by Gocom (2011-04-26 21:01:36)

marjoleink · 2011-04-26 21:49:19

Gocom wrote:

Are you possibly reloading the URL you were presented after posting the comment? If you are that could explain why the message is still shown. In that case you should to reload the real article permlink w/o the extra parameters added by comment posting process. The comment moderation/greeting message is shown when commented parameter is set in the URL.

Well, that confuses me. A lot. :) Reloading the page to see if the comment has been approved is what I always do.

I traced step by step what is happening, and I do see a parameter ‘commented=0’ appear in the URL of the response when I submit a comment, and the moderating message appears on that page. But when I reload the page that parameter is sent to the server; when in the meantime the comment has been approved, why does the server send the page back with the comment, but does not remove the notice nor remove the parameter (or adapt it)?

Every blog I’ve ever commented on that has moderation active, works differently than this. You get a moderation notice on posting, which either disappears immediately when you reload the page (usually), or (rarely) when the the comment has been approved and is shown. I’ve never had to hunt for a link to reload the page in a different way, just to make that notice disappear. I just hit reload and eventually the comment appears (or not), but the moderation notice just disappears. IMO that’s how it should work.

I don’t even see why the ‘commented’ parameter is necessary at all: when someone comments, there are two possibilities when the comment is submitted:

moderation is on, so you return the page (with all by then available comments) with a moderation notice attached
moderation is not on, so you return the page with all available comments (including the new one, since that is available, too)

In both cases, some comments may not be ‘available’ because they’re regarded as spam, but you either don’t tell the spammer that (fail silently), or you act as in #1 and show the moderation notice.

If you just send the moderation notice as response to the ‘comment posted’ event (case 1 above), you don’t need a URL parameter (on output) at all.

So why is that parameter used? It is attached to the page as response by the server (which only makes sense if it is going to request something when that URL is sent to the server again), but doesn’t seem to have any effect when actually received as request.

I just don’t get it… I don’t get this as a developer (you don’t attach parameters to a URL unless you’re going to act on them when received), and I don’t get this as a visitor (who has visited countless pages over 15 years or so, and never seen a mechanism like this).

Or maybe I’m just tired… sorry. :-/

Last edited by marjoleink (2011-04-26 21:50:15)

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#1 2011-04-26 19:27:08

Comment moderation puzzle

#2 2011-04-26 20:53:59

Re: Comment moderation puzzle

#3 2011-04-26 21:49:19

Re: Comment moderation puzzle

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