If you have Coral Comments enabled on your site, review this document for relevant configuration options.
Coral Admin Access
Someone from your organization will already be added as an Administrator to your Coral Admin. This person can then add additional users to the Coral Admin.
To invite additional users:
- Log in to your Coral Admin.
- Go to Community > Invite.
- Enter email addresses for additional people to invite and select their permission level (Staff, Moderator, or Admin).
- Note: Staff members who need Coral moderation ability must use a separate email address from the one they use to comment on the site. (You can add +coral to your staff emails to work around this. Example: “ops+coral@joinlede.com”)
- Selecting the permission level in this modal will provide a short description of the associated privileges.
- Note: Staff members who need Coral moderation ability must use a separate email address from the one they use to comment on the site. (You can add +coral to your staff emails to work around this. Example: “ops+coral@joinlede.com”)
- Selecting the permission level in this modal will provide a short description of the associated privileges.
- Click Send Invitations.
Coral Configure Options
Coral has a variety of configuration options for the commenting experience on your site. After logging into your Coral Admin, go to Configure. When updating any settings, be sure to click the “Save Changes” button in the left sidebar.
General
Sitewide commenting
By default, you will likely want to leave comment streams opened for new comments. If you want to close comment streams site-wide (not on a specific post):
- Select “Off – Comment streams closed for new comments”
- Add a Sitewide closed comments message
Community guidelines summary
Consider adding a community guidelines summary. This will appear above the comments site-wide. You can format the text using Markdown.
Below is an example message provided by Defector to use as inspiration:
- “Before leaving a comment, please take a moment to read through our guidelines for commenting on Defector. It is imperative that all commenters follow these guidelines in order to prevent our comments section from sucking!”
Rich-text comments
We recommend enabling rich-text comments and allowing Strikethrough and Spoiler formatting.
Comment length
You can set minimum and maximum comment length requirements. Blank spaces at the beginning and the end of a comment will be trimmed. Some organizations we’ve worked with prefer a limit between 2000 and 5000 characters. Commenters will be alerted that they have gone over that number and won’t be able to submit their comment until they’ve edited it. This can be a useful tool to ensure commenters are concise with their comments.
Comment editing
You can set a limit on how long commenters have to edit their comments site-wide. Edited comments are marked as (Edited) on the comment stream and the moderation panel.
Closing comment streams
You can set comment streams to close after a defined period of time after a story’s publication. When this feature is enabled, existing stories older than the defined period that have not been manually opened or closed will also be updated and set as closed. Manually opening or closing a story will permanently override the auto-close functionality.
Closed comment stream message
Add a message that appears when an individual story is closed for commenting.
Example:
- Comments on this story are now closed.
Reactions
Coral comes with a Respect button out of the box. The defaults are: Respect, Respected, and Most Respected. Why a “Respect” button, you ask? Read more here.
You can create your own custom reaction buttons by modifying the Reaction label.
- Consider these alternatives:
- +1, +1’d, and Most +1’s
- Like, Liked, Most Liked
- +1, +1’d, and Most +1’s
- Like, Liked, Most Liked
Member badges
Badges differentiate users on the comment stream. By default, the Staff user badge displays when a commenter has an Admin, Moderator, or Staff role.
You can customize the badge label used for Staff roles by providing your own custom badge text. e.g.: “NewsSite Team”
Embedded media
Options include allowing Twitter embeds, YouTube embeds, and animated gifs from GIPHY. To enable GIPHY, a GIPHY API key is required.
Moderation
Pre-moderation
When pre-moderation is turned on, comments will not be published unless approved by a moderator.
Toxic Comment Filter
Using Google’s Perspective API, the Toxic Comment Filter warns users when comments exceed the predefined toxicity threshold. You can read more about Google’s Perspective API and/or request an API key here: http://perspectiveapi.com/.
Comments with a toxicity score above the threshold will not be published and are placed in the Pending Queue for review by a moderator. Comments in the Pending Queue will only be published if approved by a moderator.
If a comment exceeds the threshold, the commenter is warned that their comment may be toxic, and are given the chance to modify their comment before posting. If the revised comment is below the Toxicity Threshold, it is posted and displayed normally; however if the revised comment still exceeds the Toxicity Threshold, it is not displayed on the stream and instead is sent to the Pending queue for moderation.
Perspective API uses machine learning based on existing databases of accepted/rejected comments to guess the probability that a comment is abusive and/or toxic. English is the default language, but experimental models are available in multiple languages. Sites can also work with Jigsaw to create an individualized data set specifically trained on their own comment history. Read more about Coral’s take on toxicity.
Recent History
Prevents repeat offenders from publishing comments without approval. When a commenter’s rejection rate is above the threshold, their comments are sent to the Pending Queue for moderation. This does not apply to Staff comments.
Rejection rate time period determines the look back period of commenter activity that will be considered in performing the calculation.
Rejection rate threshold is calculated by dividing number of rejected comments by (rejected comments + published comments) over the time period specified, and is displayed as a percentage. It does not include comments pending for toxicity, spam, or pre-moderation; only moderated comments are considered.
Banned & Suspect Words and Phrases
Banned words are a list of words or phrases that will trigger a comment to be automatically Rejected.
Comments containing a word or phrase in the Suspect Words List are placed into the Reported queue for moderator review and are published (if comments are not pre-moderated).
Lists of words/phrases are not case sensitive, and are separated by new lines.
Authentication
Commenter account management features
- Change their username – Set this to No, commenters should change their username on their “My Account” page.
- Download their comments – Either Yes or No is fine.
- Delete their account – Set this to Yes.
Your Users
Your users with the commenting entitlement can add a username and an avatar for commenting on their “My Account” page on your site. Once a user has created their account, they will be listed in the Coral Admin > Community, where you can manage their role and status if needed.