moderating comments

[brianlee]

In OJS 2.2 is it possible to enable reader comments so that the journal manager or editor can review the comments *before* publishing to the website? If not, are journal managers or editors notified by email or in some other way when a new comment has been posted?

Thanks!

Brian

[brianlee]

And as a related question: in OjS 2.1, how does the editor or journal manager delete individual comments? I have looked at the article record and can't find a feature to do this.

Thanks for your help!
Brian

[jmacgreg]

Hi Brian,

Regarding the first question: I don't believe it's possible in OJS 2.2.0. We've identified article comments as a definite point of improvement (see http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3536 and http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3293, the fix for which was included in 2.2.1 and may be applicable to 2.2.0; also http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4045, http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3487). I don't believe your first point has been addressed yet, and I think it's a great idea, so I've posted it as a feature request here: http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4138. Please feel free to CC yourself to that report for further updates.

You might also be interested in our recent work towards a more robust notifications system: http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3922.

Regarding your second question: I honestly don't remember how to delete comments. Is there not a delete button next to the comment text if you are logged in as an Editor? As a general note, you may want to consider upgrading from 2.1, as 2.2 includes Captcha support, which will significantly cut down on spam posts if you are suffering from any.

Cheers,
James

[brianlee]

James,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, now I see the comment delete button while logged in as editor. I had been looking only at the comment thread and hadn't gone to the comment itself, where the delete button is located.

We haven't enabled comments on any of our journals yet, we are just exploring the option. I like the idea of having a WordPress-like comment check/management feature. I also like the idea of having the comments/number in the TOC (Bug 4045). Most of our journals are PDF only and it seems a little confusing to try to find the comments sometimes if you go straight to the PDF and the sidebar tools aren't enabled.

Thanks!

Brian

[jmacgreg]

Hi Brian,

Glad to hear the problems have been solved, or are on their way to being resolved! And please, if you have any additional thoughts on those reports, go right ahead and post them to the reports themselves; feedback is always appreciated.

Cheers,
James

[gerbenzaagsma]

I wanted to revisit this thread as we are currently trying to see whether or not to switch on comments for our journal.

In OJS 2.2 is it possible to enable reader comments so that the journal manager or editor can review the comments *before* publishing to the website?

If I understand correctly there is no review functionality at the moment prior to posting?

If not, are journal managers or editors notified by email or in some other way when a new comment has been posted?

This is much more important. As far as I can see (but please correct me if I am wrong) there is no way to get notified at all when a comment is posted? This means that journal managers have no way of tracking comments or knowing they have been posted and thus cannot moderate comments. This seems essential comment functionality in order to prevent comment abuse. Is this something that might be in the works or is it possible to implement a notification option oneself?



Thanks and best,
Gerben Zaagsma

[asmecher]

Hi Gerben,

Since we first wrote the commenting functionality a lot of add-on commenting tools have sprung up; you're now much less likely to see built-in commenting tools on websites and much more likely to see Facebook, Disqus, and other embedded tools. If you're interested in experimenting with commenting in your journal and the built-in tools aren't up to the task, I'd suggest working with one of those. You'll probably have to drop some Javascript into a template file but I don't think anything else will be necessary.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

[MMeijer]

Hi Alec,
It looks like there is a problem with notifications (incl. emails) on reader comments.
It seems that only the site administrator is receiving such notifications, no matter what notification settings the other users may have.

This is the problem Gerben refers to in the 2nd half of his post. As a journal manager/editor, he wants to get notifications about reader comments.
We are using OJS 2.3.6.0 (and PHP 5.3).
Could you confirm we've stumbled upon a bug?

Best regards,
Maarten

[asmecher]

Hi Maarten,

Is it possible for you to upgrade to the newest 2.3.x to see if that resolves the issue? There were some fixes made to the notification code since 2.3.6 and I'd rather not spend time debugging problems that may have already been solved. It's a good idea to keep up to date anyway.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

[MMeijer]

Hi Alec,
Thanks! This OJS installation will soon be upgraded to the latest release, so it's good to know that the notification code has had some fixes and the problem will disappear - hopefully.
gr.Maarten

[MMeijer]

Hi Alec,
Sorry, back again. I realized that we have several 2.3.8 test installations, so I could test if anything in the notification area has changed, but nope!
Even the site administrator doesn't get notifications of reader comments, so my conclusion for now:
if the idea is that any registered user gets a notification about any reader's comment on any article (if the proper notification setting has been checked), then this doesn't work!

I'm willing to dive into the intestines and may be come up with some solution, if you could confirm the above.
gr. Maarten

[asmecher]

Hi Maarten,

I'll never turn down a willing pair of hands. The notifications should be created in pages/comment/CommentHandler.inc.php in the "add" function; look for a call to "$notificationManager->createNotification". It appears in a loop that should fetch a list of all users. The first thing to check would be whether that list is correct.

You'll find the implementation for the createNotification function in lib/pkp/classes/notification/PKPNotificationManager.inc.php -- that's where the notification email should be getting sent. That'll be the second piece of code to check.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

[MMeijer]

Hi Alec,
From the source code it becomes clear that only the users associated with the article (author, and all kinds of editors) are notified about reader comments. For the journal at hand, it was the site administrator who initially uploaded lots of backissue articles. He became "author" of all these.
So that's the explanation why only this user#1 was getting notified, without anyone else - there are no editors involved.

Still, it's a bit contradictory that only a journal manager can delete the comments, while he 's not being notified. Although in practice, editors are often journal managers too. Anyway, nothing wrong!

Maarten

[asmecher]

Hi Maarten,

Thanks for following this through. (We'll be making heavier use of notifications in future releases of OJS and will probably tweak some of the quirks.)

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team