WordPress Ver 4.3 broke "Allow Comments"

[SilvaLau]

Hello,

I am writing this to you because after updating our blog to ver. 4.3

I noticed the "Reply" and "Quick Edit" and the Comments Dashboard works now but there's a new bug.

Under SETTINGS > DISCUSSION > Default article settings

I have enabled:

Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new articles

Allow people to post comments on new articles

But whenever I tried to "Add a New Page", the Allow Comments and Pingbacks are both unchecked.

I have to manually select them every time I Publish a New Page.

I found out that Pages default to comments disabled is intentional now and I find it VERY inconvenient...

At least make a function to allow user to disable or allow comments by default at posts OR pages!!

Not make it so it is disabled by default FOR ALL USERS!!

That's not an improvement but an annoyance!

WHERE IS OUR FREEDOM OF CHOICE?

Thank you and best regards, I hope to see this get fixed soon.

[peterwilsoncc]

Hi @SilvaLau, welcome to trac.

This was changed by design in ticket #31168. As part of these changes, the filter get_default_comment_status was introduced to allow site owners to enable comments by default should they wish to.

Modern WordPress development is focused on including sensible defaults as part of the core experience but allowing plugins to add settings for sites that require them.

I'll close this ticket off for now, but you should feel free to add any bug reports and feature requests in future.

[SergeyBiryukov]

See also ​https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/07/06/comments-are-now-turned-off-on-pages-by-default/.

Here's a snippet you can add to your child theme's functions.php file or turn into a plugin:

function wp33516_open_comments_for_pages( $status, $post_type, $comment_type ) {
	if ( 'page' === $post_type ) {
		$status = 'open';
	}
 
	return $status;
}
add_filter( 'get_default_comment_status', 'wp33516_open_comments_for_pages', 10, 3 );

[swissspidy]

#33535 was marked as a duplicate.

[peterwilsoncc]

#33535 was marked as a duplicate.

[peterwilsoncc]

Some additional notes for comments made on #33535.

Biggest take-home: there is now a plugin called ​Allow Comments on Pages by Default in the repo.

@SergeyBiryukov commented:

Adding a new option would go against the ​"Decisions, not options" philosophy, so using the filter is the way to go here.

I just wrote a plugin that restores previous behaviour: ​Allow Comments on Pages by Default.

@DrewAPicture commented:

Anyway, I understand your frustration with this change.

When decisions like this are made during WordPress development, we first ask, "would this change be useful for 80 percent of users?". If the answer is a resounding "yes" as this one was, then we follow our core ​decisions, not options philosophy in making the change. This is why a filter was introduced instead of a new option.

Think of it this way: WordPress is well-known for our commitment to backward compatibility. And in introducing a filter, we're saying, "yes, absolutely, you can still do this" but maybe making it a little harder by switching it from opt-out to opt-in. This change, I think, is natural to the evolution of WordPress and is how many other opt-out situations have been changed throughout the years.