Replace "Comments" Calypso view with standard WordPress "Comments" view

[richtabor]

Important

Project thread: pekYwv-4PY-p2
Tracked by #98483

As part of the Untangling Calypso epic, let's remove the custom implementation of the wordpress.com/comments view, in lieu of the standard WordPress wp-admin/comments.php view—for all users.

This will reduce confusion navigating between Calypso and proper WordPress admin.

Requirements

• Selecting "Comments" from the WordPress or Calypso menu opens the standard WordPress pages view at wp-admin/comments.php

[tanjoymor]

Recommendation: Switch to WP Admin for All users / All platforms

Suggestion: Add the ability to Block Users

No other considerations

[Copons]

I don't see any blockers for this. Let's use wp-admin for all users, as recommended!

Considerations

• Block Users
  • On paper, it's an essential feature. In practice, it's used ~15 times a day (which is a good thing!!).
  • I don't consider this a blocker. However, in the context of this issue, we should do a quick investigation on how we handle comments marked as spam. Maybe we don't explicitly need to block users, but we can simply rely on our regular anti-spam capabilities.

[Aurorum]

Calypso also offers the ability to collapse replied comments - not sure how essential that is, but it’s something which I have found useful.

[Copons]

@Aurorum Well noted!

The Calypso comments section has loads of nice UX touches — I shouldn't say so: I was one of the people who originally developed it in... IIRC... the late 1950s. 😅
However, now that we are moving back to wp-admin, we are more concerned about any missing functionality, and even if sometimes painful, UX niceties are not blockers.

[rcrdortiz]

I don't see any blockers for this. Let's use wp-admin for new users, as recommended!

Considerations

• Block Users

  • On paper, it's an essential feature. In practice, it's used ~15 times a day (which is a good thing!!).
  • I don't consider this a blocker. However, in the context of this issue, we should do a quick investigation on how we handle comments marked as spam. Maybe we don't explicitly need to block users, but we can simply rely on our regular anti-spam capabilities.

If we want to replicate blocking users from commenting we could do so in the Discussion Options settings page by adding a new section. I will not work on that as part of the main issue since the feature isn't used much and has declined in the past 3 years.

• /wp-admin/options-discussion.php

[Copons]

@rcrdortiz is the Calypso version simply adding IPs and keywords to these options?

If that's the case, I'd say we are fundamentally covered. Maybe we could mention the change in an "educational" tooltip. 🤔

[mmtr]

for new users

We discussed this today and decided that, considering we'll release changes with a holdout test, we want to target all users (new and existing), so I updated the issue summary to reflect that. See p1733745514693799-slack-C04DZ8M0GHW.

[rcrdortiz]

@rcrdortiz is the Calypso version simply adding IPs and keywords to these options?

If that's the case, I'd say we are fundamentally covered. Maybe we could mention the change in an "educational" tooltip. 🤔

Yes, the Calypso version is fundamentally a glorified text field where you can input IPs.

[rcrdortiz]

These changes are now live.

@Copons should we create an enhancement issue for providing IP filtering on wp-admin?