Managing comments on your poems

Overview

Comments are where readers meet your poems — but on GS Poetry, you decide how that conversation runs. As the author of a poem, you get a full set of controls: you choose who’s allowed to comment, filter out words you don’t want to see, review anything that gets flagged, and lift up the responses that matter most. This article walks through each of those tools and where to find them.

Most of these controls live on one page: Settings → Comments. The one exception is who’s allowed to comment in the first place, which sits with your other privacy controls. We’ll start there.

Who can comment

Before you moderate anything, you can decide who’s even able to leave a comment on your poems. This is a single account-wide setting called Comment Control, found under Settings → Privacy. It has three options:

• Everyone — any member can comment on your poems.
• Followers Only — only people who follow you can comment.
• Nobody — comments are closed; no one can leave a new one.

The change applies across all your poems and saves automatically. Tightening this is the bluntest tool you have — if you just want to filter out particular words or handle the occasional bad comment, the tools below are a lighter touch.

Keyword filters & auto-hide

Keyword filters let you name words or phrases you never want appearing in your comments — spam, self-promotion, slurs, whatever you’d rather not read. When a new comment matches one of your keywords, GS Poetry catches it before it lands quietly on your poem. Open the Keyword Filters tab under Settings → Comments.

1. Type a keyword into the box. You can add several at once by separating them with commas — for example spam, offensive, self-promo, buy now.
2. Click Add Keywords. Each word appears as a small pill; click the × on a pill to remove it later.

Underneath the keyword box, a few switches decide what happens when a comment matches:

• Hold matched comments for review — matches are set aside in your moderation queue for you to look at, instead of appearing publicly.
• Automatically reject keyword matches — matches are turned away without waiting for you. These two options work as a pair: exactly one of them is always active, so switching one on switches the other off.
• Notify me when a comment is held for review — get a heads-up whenever something lands in your queue.
• Auto-discard held comments after — clear out held comments you never got to, after 15, 30, or 45 days, or set it to Never so they wait indefinitely.

Every switch here saves the moment you flip it — you’ll see a small Saved note appear next to the control you changed.

Your moderation queue

The Moderation Queue tab is where held comments wait for you — both the ones your keyword filters caught and the ones other readers reported. Each row shows who commented, the comment itself, which poem it’s on, and why it’s here (for example Keyword Match or User Reported). You can filter the list by reason and sort it to find things quickly.

For each one, you have three actions:

• Approve — the comment is fine; it becomes visible on your poem. This is also how you bring back a comment that was held or hidden — approving it restores it.
• Reject — the comment stays off your poem and won’t appear.
• Block — block the commenter entirely. Their existing comments are hidden and they can no longer comment on your poems. For the full picture of what blocking does, see Block, mute, or report a user.

When the queue is empty, you’ll see an “all clear” message — nothing is waiting on you.

Comment Studio (GS Pro)

Comment Studio is the power-user layer on top of the free tools above — built for poets handling a lot of comments. It gathers several tools in one place:

• Advanced keyword filters — write smarter word patterns that catch whole classes of spam at once, and hit Preview to see exactly what a rule would have hidden over the last 30 days before you ever turn it on. It also includes an auto-hide setting that quietly hides a commenter once you’ve manually hidden them enough times.
• Rule packs — bundle your filters into named groups and switch a whole group on or off with one toggle. Deleting a pack keeps the rules inside it.
• Whitelisted commenters — a list of trusted readers whose comments are never caught by any filter, whatever they write.
• Comment digest emails — instead of an email for every comment, get them grouped together: once a day, once a week on Mondays, or only when a poem suddenly takes off. Delivery times follow your profile timezone.
• Saved replies — store up to ten ready-made responses and drop one into any comment box by typing / followed by its shortcut.
• Export received comments — download every comment your poems have received as a CSV or JSON file, for your own records or to reply offline.

Pinning a comment

Pinning lifts a favorite comment to the top of a poem’s conversation, so it’s the first thing new readers see — a thoughtful response, a kind word, or your own note about the piece. You pin from the poem itself (on the comment), not from the settings page: you’ll only see the option on your own poems.

Free accounts can pin one comment per poem; GS Pro raises that to three. If you’re already at your limit and pin another, the oldest pinned comment is quietly unpinned to make room. If a GS Pro subscription lapses, any comments you’ve already pinned stay pinned — the lower limit only applies the next time you pin something new.

If something goes wrong

• “A comment I don’t want is still showing.” Keyword filters only act on new comments, not ones already posted. Open your profile’s Comments tab to find and remove older comments, or add the commenter to your queue’s Block action.
• “I turned off ‘hold for review’ but it turned something else on.” That’s expected — holding and auto-rejecting are a pair, and exactly one is always active. Switching one off switches the other on.
• “I can’t open the Comment Studio tab.” The tools there are GS Pro features. Free accounts can see them but not use them; confirm your membership under Settings → Membership.
• “My pin disappeared.” Pinning a new comment when you’re at your limit unpins the oldest one automatically. To keep more pins at once, GS Pro raises the limit from one to three per poem.
• “No one can comment at all.” Check Settings → Privacy → Comment Control — if it’s set to Nobody or Followers Only, that limits who can leave a comment before any filter runs.

Where to go next

For the community norms that keep comment threads kind and useful, see Commenting etiquette. If a single reader is the problem, Block, mute, or report a user covers the harder boundaries. To adjust any of these controls now, head to Settings → Comments. Still stuck? Contact support and we’ll help.