We all want to believe that our readers are the smartest in the world and would leave nothing but valuable comments on our posts. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Every blog has its trolls. If you want to keep the discussions in your community at a certain level, you want to rely on your loyal readers to help you identify those bogus or trollish comments. That’s where Comment Rating comes into play. It empowers your readers and lets them essentially moderate your comments for you.
The good thing about Comment Rating is that it puts the power in your readers’ hands. You may not like the comments that you get on your blog, but it’s always better to see what your community thinks. This plugin adds thumb up/down buttons to your comments. You can style comments accordingly based on how your community has voted on them.
I like the fact that Comment Rating makes it possible to differentiate between good, poor, and controversial comments. You can style comments depending on the number of likes and dislikes they have gotten. This plugin does have 3 different styles for your buttons, so you have got some options there. You can also choose to show one to three values.
The advanced options are worth exploring. If you do not want to change the way your comments look or do not want to auto-insert this system into your comments, you can just turn off the option. This plugin does prevent vote fraud (though it’s not foolproof). Localization is supported too.
If you have got issues with some of your commenters and want to give your community the chance to identify the trolls, Comment Rating is a nice plugin to consider.