LJ filters and screening interactions?

[xela]

LJ technical question: I just for the first time made a (locked) post with comments screened. And was annoyed to discover that replying to a comment unscreens it. I was thinking I'd just send replies using LJ's send-a-message interface, but that's clunky and loses context. So now I'm thinking

• go to the edit entry interface
• resave the entry as private (i.e. viewable only to me)
• reply to all the comments
• re-screen all the comments, and my replies
• go to the edit interface again, and
• save it as friends-locked to that same filter again

What a fucking kludge! Also, given how stupid LJ's interface appears to be with regard to this, I find myself wondering —

• if I re-save a post as private, will LJ retroactively delete the existing comments?
• Is LJ really this brain-damaged around screened comments, or am I missing something?

Comments

[coraline]

yes, it is that dumb. but it seems to be a deliberate policy decision.

no, private posts can still have comments in them, so the kludge you're describing will work fine.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[gardenfey.livejournal.com]

It may be easier to answer the comment, go back to the entry and re-screen it.

The down side is the comment & reply are visible for some amount of time, which makes them pick-up-able by spiders.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

It's not the spiders — it's a locked post. It's that I promised my commenters confidentiality unless they explicetly said it was okay to unscreen their comment. Violating that promise for only a few seconds is still violating it. (I can easily imagine that next time I screen comments, I may explicitly say "Comments will be screened unless you explicitly tell me to unscreen them, except perhaps for a few seconds, during which only others of my friends will be able to see it, if I reply to your comment. If that's an issue for you, please say so in your comment and I won't reply to it in a way that will allow that." But I didn't know to think about it this time.)