Could comments by article author automatically published?

Hi Anja,

Thanks again for all the feedback and suggestions!

Actually, I think this use case may already be covered using Joomla permissions, depending on your workflow.

You can go to the CommentBox permissions and give the Authors user group the “Edit Comments State” permission. Users with this permission will have their comments published automatically, so article authors will be able to reply without waiting for moderation.

Please note that this permission is not limited to comments on their own articles. It applies to all comments, so authors will also be able to change the state of other comments.

Could you check if this workflow works for the Joomla Community Magazine?

If this does not cover your needs, let us know and we can reconsider adding a more specific option that only applies to the author of the article.

Thanks again for helping us improve CommentBox!

Hi Anja,

Thanks for the clarification. That makes sense, and I understand why giving authors permission to change the state of all comments is not ideal for your workflow.

We will look into improving this. I was also thinking about another possible approach: instead of adding a specific setting to bypass moderation only for the author of the article, maybe introducing a new Joomla permission that allows users to change the state of only their own comments would make sense.

This way, websites would have more flexibility through the existing Joomla permissions system, and authors could have their own comments published automatically without getting access to moderate everyone else’s comments.

Another benefit of this approach is that it would work with any extension supported by CommentBox. A separate option like “auto-publish comments from the article author” would only work for Joomla articles (or integrations where we can detect the content author) and only when commenting on the author’s own content.

Do you think this permission-based approach would cover your use case, or do you think the rule should specifically be limited to the author of the article being commented on?

Yes, exactly. It would only allow changing the state of their own comments. Editing the actual content of a comment is controlled by a different permission, so this would remain separate.

And yes, it would work on the user group level, just like the rest of the Joomla permissions. For example, you could enable it for the Authors group.

The only thing to keep in mind is that this permission would allow users in that group to have their comments automatically published everywhere, not only on articles they have written. So an author commenting on another author’s article would also bypass moderation.

If this is not a blocker for your workflow, I think this approach covers the use case while keeping the feature more flexible, and I can start working on it.

Hi Anja,

We have just released CommentBox 1.4.0.

Instead of introducing a special rule for article authors, we implemented the more flexible approach we discussed. There is now a new permission called “Edit Own Comment State”.

Users with this permission can have their own comments published automatically, without being able to change the state of other users’ comments. Since this is a Joomla permission, it can be assigned to any user group and works across all supported CommentBox integrations, not just Joomla articles.

Thanks again for the suggestion and for helping us arrive at a solution that is flexible enough to benefit many other sites as well.

You’re very welcome! 🙂

Thanks again for taking the time to share your feedback. Suggestions based on real-world usage are always appreciated and help make CommentBox better for everyone.

Have a great day!