How to approve comments from a user with previously approved comments

Question

WordPress has a useful option for comment moderation in its Discussion Settings panel called "Before a comment appears: Comment author must have a previously approved comment".

How can one configure Drupal to approve future comments if a user has a previously approved comment in the site?

This is a follow-up from an unresolved post on Drupal.org: Auto-publish comments after that anonymous user’s previous comments have been approved [X] number of times

Answer 1

You need to create a small custom module. In D6 you override hook_comment:

function MYMODULE_comment(&$comment, $op) {
    if ($op=='insert' && !$comment['uid'] && $comment['status']==COMMENT_NOT_PUBLISHED){ //only perform on operating  insert for new comments and if the user is anonymous
        // query database for a previously approved comment by this email
       $has_published=db_result(db_query("SELECT cid FROM {comments} WHERE status=%d AND mail='%s'", COMMENT_PUBLISHED, $comment['mail']));  
       if ($has_published){
          db_query("UPDATE {comments} SET status=%d WHERE cid=%d",COMMENT_PUBLISHED,$comment['cid']); //set the current comment to unpublished
          $comment['status']=COMMENT_PUBLISHED; //return with a status of not published so the user is notified that their comment is  awaiting approval
       }
    }
}

It should be easy to convert this to D7 using hook_comment_insert.

The solution was originally suggested here.

Answer 2

If you don't have programming skills use the Rules module.

Answer 3

You can use the Comment Trust module (Drupal 7 only) in order to auto-approve comments from trusted visitors.

Comment Trust auto-approves comments by users with previously-approved comments. It rewards trusted commenters with immediate approvals, while requiring you to approve the comments by new visitors. Works for both anonymous and authenticated users.