Disabling author field in comments makes "awaiting moderation" go away

[hakankpunkt]

If one disables the author field via

unset($fields['author'];

then writes a comment, the comment does not show up as "awaiting moderation" on the comment overview page.

Disabling the email and/or url field does not effect the "awaiting moderation" status.

I missed the closing brace:

unset($fields['author']);

I don't understand where the unset() line goes. Did you modify a core WP file?

I added this filter in the themes functions.php to disable some
fields including the author field. Please note, that only disabling
the author field is causing the bug.

/**
 * Disable comment fields
 *
 * @param array The fields array
 * @return array The fields array with the disabled comment fields
 */
function disable_comment_fields($fields)
{
	unset($fields['author']);
	unset($fields['email']);
	unset($fields['url']);

	return $fields;
}

add_filter('comment_form_default_fields', 'disable_comment_fields', 10030);

As a workaround I used following filter in the themes function.php

/**
 * Set a default author name for comments
 *
 * This is a workaround for this bug http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/21877
 */
function set_default_author_name($data)
{
    return 'John Doe Default';
}

add_filter('pre_comment_author_name', 'set_default_author_name', 10050);

Much better; thanks.

Does this happen with the twentyeleven theme or just with your theme?

It happens with our theme and the Twenty Eleven theme. I just tested the Twenty Ten theme and it happens with it as well.

Just tested it with WordPress version 3.4.2 and the Twenty Ten theme and it happens with it as well.

Comments awaiting moderation are only displayed to their authors:
http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/3.4.2/wp-includes/comment-template.php#L885

If comment author is logged in, then $user_ID is passed, and comments from moderation queue are still displayed (since [5238]), regardless of whether 'author' field is disabled or not.

If comment author is not logged in and 'author' field is disabled, then $comment_author is empty, and comments from moderation queue are not retrieved.

This sounds like expected behaviour, I don't see a bug here.

Nice investigation. I agree.

Sergey, thanks for the details. Now the behavior makes sense.