Rules and lifecycle
Open Site Console → your widget → Moderation Rules. Owners and admins can change these settings. The page has two parts: Lifecycle and the flag rules below it.
Changes apply to the next comment that is posted. Nothing on your site needs to be republished. When you change something, Save and Cancel appear; leaving the page with unsaved changes asks for confirmation.
Lifecycle
| Setting | Default | What it controls |
|---|---|---|
| Moderation | Off | Whether comments are checked at all. When off, comments are published as posted, and word rules and spam limits stop too. |
| Content category | Not set | The context the AI reads comments in. |
| Review deadline | 7 days | How long a comment may wait in your queue before the system decides it. 1 to 365 days. |
| Deadline action | Automatic | What happens when the deadline passes. |
| Automatic cut-off | 60% | Only for Automatic: at the deadline, a score at or above it is rejected and a lower one approved. |
| Retention window | 180 days | How long a rejected comment is kept before its content is permanently deleted. 30 to 3650 days. |
Content category
Choose the one closest to your site: general, comics, ecommerce, news, gaming, forum, education or social. The AI reads every comment with this context. Harsh words about a fictional villain are fine on a comics site and not the same thing when aimed at a seller in product reviews. Without a category, the AI judges the text alone.
Deadline action
- Automatic decides by the AI score and the Automatic cut-off. Raise the cut-off to publish more of an old backlog, lower it to reject more.
- Approve always publishes waiting comments.
- Reject always rejects them.
- Keep waiting never decides. Choose it only if someone really works the queue.
Automatic decisions never change an author's trust score. Reported comments and comments their authors deleted follow their own rules, see How moderation works.
Retention window
Flag rules
The AI gives every comment a confidence score (CS) from 0% to 100% per category: how sure it is that the comment belongs there. Each category has a row with two handles:
- Review: from this score, the comment is sent to your queue. The row also reminds you what your deadline action will do with it.
- Reject: from this score, the comment is rejected immediately.
Below the review handle, the comment is published. Drag a handle, or focus it and use the arrow keys, then select Save.
Rows marked Default still use the built-in thresholds. Saving a row turns it into your own rule; each category is independent, so you can tune one without touching the others.
To keep the rules sensible, the console holds the handles within these limits:
| Handle | Allowed range |
|---|---|
| Review | from 30%, always below Reject |
| Reject | 70% to 95% |
Tuning tips
- Too many good comments in the queue? Raise Review for the category that keeps firing. The flag badges in Comments & Moderation show which one it is.
- Harmful comments getting through? Lower Review for that category, so more of them wait for you.
- The AI rejects good comments? Raise Reject. The random 1% sample of rejected comments that lands in your queue is the best way to notice this.
- A queue you cannot keep up with? Invite another moderator, or let the deadline action handle the backlog.