Comments Approval Workflow

We are interested in approving comments, like this, rather than page edits.

Storytelling...
Our campus IT department uses Confluence to identify needs, assess resources, gather functional requirements and communicate during development/implmentation. In order to get input from as many potential users, both those we know about with Confluence ID's and those we may not know about (who by the way always have the best issues to contribute), we leave Confluence open for anonymous commenting (not editing). Each day Confluence pushes out daily reports to the campus were folks can see the current issues under discussion, development and deployment. If they see something that they may have an affinity for, or expertise in, they go to the page and comment on the subject. Project managers are then required to answer the question or embed the issue directly into the body of the Confluence page. The test for addressing the point raised is, "if the person came back to the page, would they ask the same question?"

Unfortunately, even with CAPTCHA on, some bad posts are from humans (students can also participate). We have received several rude or offensive posts and even some from vendors who are promoting, rather than collaborating.

The result is that a few folks want to turn off anonymous comments due to obscenity concerns.

Use Case...
An anonymous user finds a page of interest and would like to contribute an idea. They click on the "Add Comment" button, the comment form appears, and enter their comment through the RTE or Wiki markup form. After placing their comment, they can enter their email address to be notified when the comment is approved and posted and receive notifications of follow-ups. They click "Post" and the browser screen updates notifying the anonymous user that their comments have been submitted to the "page's owner."

Once an anonymous comment is submitted, an email is sent to the "page's owner" (the page's owner would be the person who originally created the page by default or defined later by the original author), with a copy of the comment, an indication of which page was commented on, a place for a response to the comment (if an email was given) and an "Approve" "Deny" option.

If the page owner approves the comment, it is posted just like normal user comments.

If the page is denied, an email is sent back to the anonymous commenter telling them they were denied and, if a response was included, why.