Comment moderation is a way to prevent spam in your comments, as well as stop trolls who want to leave off-topic inflammatory comments.
Pingbacks are a way of tracking when someone has linked to one of your posts, reblogged it, or when you have created a link to one of your own posts. It’s also a way for you to notify someone when you have linked to or reblogged one of their posts. An example of how a pingback looks can be found here.
Both settings are adjusted in your dashboard. Go to settings, then discussion. From here you can select the notifications that you want. At the bottom is a picture of my own settings for your reference.
I want to know let other bloggers know when I’ve linked to them, be notified when my posts are linked, and allow comments. I’ve set when I want WordPress to notify me (on everything!) and I do not allow comments to be posted unless I have previously approved the commenter.
When someone leaves a comment for a first time and I do not know them, I take time to check them out. Unfortunately, once you’ve approved a commenter that is not legitimate, it’s hard to get rid of them again unless you moderate all comments.
Some first-time commenters I recognize because I follow their blogs or left a comment on their blog. For others, I will check out their blogs, looking at a number of posts and the “about me” page. If it looks legitimate (and not offensive), I will approve the comment.
I don’t want to moderate every comment. It’s fun for a commenter to see it post right away and it’s fun for other readers to see the comments left already. However, if you’re worried about what kinds of comments will be posted and cannot get to a comfort level, then moderate them all. At some point you’ll either build confidence or you’ll decide you do want to keep moderating all comments. It’s a personal choice.
At this time, I have not closed any comments. Some blogs close them after 14 or 30 days to prevent comments from being left on old posts. I haven’t had that problem!
Some very popular blogs, such as Seth Godin and Bedlam Farms, do not allow any comments. I can understand why. I’m surprised that Ree Drummond over at The Pioneer Woman hasn’t turned hers off either, although they are fun to read. Her readers are the greatest.
If you’re not happy with your comments and pingbacks, adjust your settings. If you’re still not happy, keep adjusting. It’s all a matter of personal preference.
Here are links from WordPress that you might find helpful:
A Daily Life 
February 10, 2012 at 2:55 am
I always check before approving the first time, too.
February 10, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Great minds think alike!
February 10, 2012 at 1:00 pm
Thanks Nancy. Very helpful. Hope you don’t mind my asking another question…I have tried to embed a video from You Tube but it doesn’t appear. Any thoughts on this topic?
Really appreciate both your blogs. Paige
February 10, 2012 at 8:34 pm
You’re welcome.
Here’s some help from WordPress on this issue:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/videos/youtube/
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/cant-embed-youtube-videos-2?replies=21
I’ll try it for myself this weekend and let you know if I see any other little tricks.
February 12, 2012 at 6:59 pm
My friend, I have been wrestling with this myself. I switched from moderating everything to automatically accepting if they had a previous post accepted. I was quickly losing track of who I ‘owed replies to’. i think i have it set up right now! thanks.
February 13, 2012 at 9:42 pm
There’s a learning curve on all of this. Trying to figure out what works and doesn’t can be frustrating. Thankfully it’s all easy to change.
February 28, 2012 at 11:34 am
I moderate all comments – not just first ones. I do this mostly so that people who know me from ‘real life’ don’t put personal stuff in comments that I don’t want others to know about me, the other is that as my blog is for my artwork, there are quite a lot of comments that people unthinkingly post that are completely out of context and can be quite unpleasant without them actually being trolls.
By the way, with WordPress.com blogs, the pingbacks are automatic. Oh, if it isn’t already, to enable pingbacks to appear on your posts, you need to check the box for it in each post. Then when someone posts a link in a post in their blog it should appear in the comment area of your own post that it refers to. :)
June 25, 2013 at 5:07 pm
I am a fairly new blogger and these tips and knowledge really help. Thanks.
July 7, 2013 at 11:16 pm
You’re welcome. I put this out there after getting questions from my fellow bloggers. Be sure to check out the WordPress support – there’s a lot of good stuff there.
September 27, 2013 at 9:45 pm
Thank you, I will.