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How to make comments private on a comment-enabled question
How to make comments private on a comment-enabled question

Allow participants to submit comments privately

McKenzie avatar
Written by McKenzie
Updated over a year ago

Open Ended questions are the most common comment question format, but you can opt to enable comments for single option or multiple option questions, contact information questions, as well as matrix questions, just to name a few.

Comments for comment-enabled questions are public by default - meaning once a participant submits their comment response, it is visible on the public site.
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You can elect to change this setting when you set up the question by clicking "Private" under the Comment Display options:
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A few things to note about Comment Display and Privacy Settings:

  • You will see more display options under the Public display settings, such as "Participant's name is public." This is because the comment won't be displayed on the live site when Private comments are selected.

  • Comments collected privately cannot be made public at a later date, as this would be a violation of public trust.

  • There is a toggle to allow participants to elect to submit their comment privately. These cannot be made public later, either.

  • Privately-submitted comments can only be viewed by PublicInput admins on the project's Comments tab.

  • If your project is required to collect comments publicly (FOIA), please select Public as your comment display option. Any off-topic comments can be moderated or hidden on the Comments tab.

You can update this setting once you've created the comment-enabled question as well.

To change this setting, click the question's gear icon.

Scroll down past advanced options:

and click Private.
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As a project administrator, you'll still be able to see private comments on the project's Comments tab, but this will hide them from public view.
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Note: If comments were set to Private initially, and you change this setting to Public, you won't be able to make any existing private comments public at any time after changing this setting. This is by design to ensure participants who wish to submit their comments privately can do so without fear of those comments being made public.


​See also:
​Can I moderate comments?
​How comment moderation works
​Comment admin options and actions
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