Locating Restored Comments in WordPress Requires Detective Skills

Every now and then, I’ll come across a user experience in WordPress that makes me scratch my head. Earlier today, I needed to edit a comment’s details before restoring it from the Trash. However, WordPress doesn’t allow this without restoring it first.

After restoring the comment, it disappeared from the trash and nothing happened. This is not the user experience I expected and needless to say, I was annoyed.

Since restored comments do not appear at the top of the approved list because of their original published date, I searched the WordPress backend for comments by the author’s first name and found it after the sixth page of results.

At first, I thought about how it would be nice to be able to edit a comment’s details while it’s in the trash so I don’t have to search for the post or author to edit it. However, Mika Epstein raised a good point.

https://twitter.com/Ipstenu/status/901152068534022144

The other idea is that after restoring a comment, WordPress redirects me to the post where it was restored. It would be even better if it took me directly to the comment in the discussions meta box. However, users can hide these meta boxes from view via Screen Options, so I’m not sure how to account for that. Perhaps redirecting users to the post is enough?

After searching WordPress Trac and not finding a ticket related to this issue, I created one. Please leave your feedback and suggestions either in the comments or on that Trac ticket.