Problem

You have some commenters that always make relevant contributions, so you don't want to bother moderating them.

Solution

Designate the commenters as "trusted."

Discussion

In the course of allowing comments on your weblog, some users will emerge as trusted commenters -- those who become known to you and make appropriate and relevant contributions to the conversation. Perhaps they are friends, colleagues, or even other authors from your weblog. Or maybe they are like-minded people with similar interests and insightful views.

Giving commenter trusted status allows the system to handle them differently, publishing their comments immediately, while other commenters are queued for moderation. Besides the goodwill this designation generates, it can save you the time and effort of moderating and publishing queued comments.

In order to identify and trust a commenter in the system, you must be using authentication (i.e., TypeKey).

Denoting a commenter as trusted can be done a couple of different ways. The most common is from the Commenters Listing screen. Click Commenters on the Weblog Toolbar, check all of the commenters you want to mark as trusted, and click the Trust action button.

Another way commenters can be marked as trusted is in the Comments Listing screen. In this screen you mark comments made by a commenter you wish to trust (only one comment per commenter is needed), select "Trust Commenter" from the Actions pulldown menu, and click Go.