Solution, in case anyone needs it:
I had a big list of typical spam words in my “Comment Moderation” box under discussion. Even though I never did find any that in anyway matched any part of these commenters’ names, emails or URLs, removing that list did the trick.
(@betacandy)
13 years, 7 months ago
I set my blog to auto-approve comments from any user who’s had a comment approved before. Yet, three of my regular commenters’ comments always go into the “pending” comments. One of them is a site administrator, another is an author, and the third is just a regular visitor.
Because two of them use yahoo emails, I first thought it was Akismet being weird. But I’ve dumped Akismet and it’s still happening. I can’t find anything in my Comment Moderation box that matches any part of their names or email addresses. I can’t think what else could be causing just certain people to never get their comments auto-approved. Anyone seen anything like this or have any suggestions where else I could look for trouble?
ETA: hmmm, I just did a test comment using one commenter’s name (the other admin) and email addy, and it went right through, no problem. So, could it be something on her end somehow? If so, what? I’m only running WP-Captcha Free at the moment, and as far as I can tell, it doesn’t look at IPs. I don’t use IPs in the Comment Moderation or Blacklist boxes for this very reason (they can block good commenters while failing to catch the spammers).
I’d love to be able to give these guys an answer as to why this is happening just to them.