Why a comment waits or disappears

Each site decides how its comments are checked. On sites that use moderation, most comments are published within a second or two, but some wait for a person to look at them first.

Your comment is waiting for review

While a comment waits, you see it as submitted, but other readers do not see it yet. Common reasons:

• The automatic check was unsure about it, so it went to the site's moderators.
• It contains a link and your account is new, or the link uses a link shortener.

The site's moderators then publish or reject it. If nobody gets to it, the site's own settings decide it after a while.

Posting limits

To keep spam out, you can post up to 5 comments per minute and 30 per hour. Posting the same text over and over is treated as spam: that day's comments go back for review, and you cannot post for 24 hours.

Trust

Every author builds up trust over time:

• Each approved comment adds trust; a rejected comment costs as much as ten approvals.
• Accounts gain a little trust when they turn 30 days and 90 days old.

Authors with a long, good record are trusted: their comments are published at once, without waiting. Comments that are decided automatically, because nobody reviewed them in time, never change your trust.

Your comment was rejected

A rejected comment is hidden from the site. It is kept for a while in case the decision is questioned, then its content is deleted for good.

The decision belongs to the site's moderators. If you think it was a mistake, contact the site and include the comment ID: in the comment section, use Copy comment id from the comment's ⋯ menu.

You cannot comment on a site anymore

A site's moderators can stop someone commenting on that site, and can also remove that person's earlier comments there. This only affects that one site: you can keep commenting everywhere else. If you think it is a mistake, contact the site.