Why Is Your Comment Pending in Disqus?

Disqus is one of the most popular comment plug-ins. It helps publishers build engaged communities on their website by fueling colorful discussions. If you were a part of one of those discussions, you know how exciting it can be to go back and forth with other users. That’s why it can be frustrating if your comment suddenly fails to show up, effectively removing you from a discussion indefinitely.

Keep reading to learn why your Disqus comment is marked as “Pending” and what you can do about it.

Who Moderates Comments on Disqus?

Before moving on to reasons why a comment might not be published immediately, it’s important to note that Disqus doesn’t moderate comments directly.

In most cases, the owners of the website using the Disqus plug-in are in charge of moderation. For that reason, your commenting experience can be significantly different based on the website’s individual moderation policies.

Therefore, if your comment isn’t appearing in a thread and you can’t seem to identify the reason, the best option is to contact the site moderators.

You can find a contact form or a listed e-mail address on most websites, allowing you to quickly get in touch with the support team. They’re the only ones who have the authority to approve a comment or offer an explanation for its status.

Why Is My Comment Waiting for Approval?

Website administrators using the Disqus plug-in can pre-moderate comments based on specific criteria. If your comment meets any of these criteria, it will be marked as “Pending” until a moderator reviews it. After the review, your comment will be either published or removed.

When you notice a “Pending” message next to your comment, we suggest revisiting the thread after some time to check if the comment is visible. Sometimes there’s a lag in duplicating data across the Disqus system, causing a delay in publishing comments.

If your comment is still pending, take a look at the most common reasons for this status.

Pre-Moderation Is Enabled for All Comments

Website owners can choose to put all incoming comments through moderation before allowing them to be published. Therefore, all comments on that particular website will be initially marked as “Pending.” The moderators can then manually approve the comments or remove them.

You Are Commenting for the First Time

Websites owners subscribed to Pro and Business plans on Disqus can choose to pre-moderate new commenters. As a result, your comment will be automatically marked as “Pending” if you’ve never posted on that particular website before.

The website publishers can set the time frame for new commenters being pre-moderated. After that, you’ll be able to use the commenting options like the rest of the website users.

You Made the Comment as a Guest

Some websites allow users to leave comments without creating a Disqus account.

If you check the “I’d rather post as guest” checkbox after writing the comment, you’re only required to leave an e-mail address. This address isn’t verified by Disqus. As a result, all guest comments are automatically marked as “Pending,” regardless of the pre-moderation settings on the particular website.

You Haven’t Verified Your E-Mail Address

Your comment won’t be published if you’ve registered on Disqus but failed to verify your e-mail address. To prevent your comments from being marked as “Pending” in the future, simply click the  “Verify” button in the welcome email sent by Discuss.

Your Comment Contains a Link

One of the pre-moderation settings allows publishers to prevent comments containing links from publishing until they’re approved by a site moderator.

Your Comment Contains a Restricted Word

Website administrators can make a list of up to 2,000 restricted words. If your comment contains at least one of these words, it won’t be published immediately.

The restricted words significantly differ depending on the website you’re visiting. For example, some websites allow profanities while others choose to review comments containing them first.

Disqus pre-populates the restricted word list with their recommendations. In general, they prohibit the following content in their comments:

• Hate speech
  
• Targeted harassment
  
• Active threats of harm
  
  

Your Display Name Contains a Restricted Word

Suppose your comment doesn’t contain any words that can be deemed inappropriate, but it’s still marked as “Pending.” In that case, take a look at your display name. If a restricted word appears in your display name, all your comments will remain pending until manually approved.

Your Comment Is Flagged as Spam

Sometimes the spam filter can automatically flag a comment if it detects it as spam. This may occur if you do any of the following:

• Post multiple comments to promote a product or a service
• Post the same comment repeatedly, thus disrupting a thread
• Include your signature in multiple comments
• Use strange syntax, such as excessive paragraph breaks or odd punctuation

Your Comment Has a Low Reputation

If website users disagree with a comment, they can express their disapproval by downvoting the comment. A large number of downvotes leads to the comment having a low reputation. The website administrators can choose to include these comments in the pre-moderation settings. As a result, the comment will get a “Pending” message next to it until the moderators decide if it’s appropriate to stay on the site.

Your Comment Contains Media

According to Disqus’ Basic Rules, graphic media containing pornographic content or violence is explicitly prohibited. However, web publishers can choose to stop any comment containing media from publishing, regardless of the content itself. After reviewing the media, the moderators will decide if your comment can be published.

Discuss Away

Now that you know the factors that may have contributed to your comment not being published, you know what to pay attention to moving on. If you follow the guidelines when leaving comments, you won’t have any problems participating in lively discussions across websites using Disqus.

Has your comment ever been marked as “Pending” on Disqus? How did you resolve it? Let us know in the comments section below.