Comment screening is a method of preventing abuse, which allows account holders to control the circumstances under which comments that are left in their journals are visible to their readers. It is not intended as a way for you to have private or protected conversations in comments, as any screened comment that you reply to will automatically be unscreened. If you wish to have a private conversation with someone, you should e-mail them. Additionally, only the user who posted the entry (and, if the entry was made in a community, the maintainer of the community) can screen or unscreen comments in it.
A screened comment is only visible to the user who posted the entry, the person who posted the comment, and, if the entry was made in a community, the maintainer of that community. If you are not logged in (
http://www.livejournal.com/login.bml) you will not to be able to see screened comments.
To set up your account's screening options, visit the Personal Info edit page (
http://www.livejournal.com/editinfo.bml), where there is an option labeled: "Which replies do you want screened by default?". In this drop down box, you can select the type of accounts you wish to screen. If instead you want to ban someone from commenting in your journal entirely, please read
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=20.
Once you have established these settings, comments made by users who fall into the category you have selected will be screened by default. When you view your Recent Entries page while logged in, the link indicating how many comments a journal entry has will only list the number of unscreened comments. If an entry has only screened comments, the link to read comments will appear with the entry, but it will indicate that there are 0 (zero) comments. This will not be visible to other people who view your Recent Entries page.
When you click on the link to view your journal entry, you will see the entry with all of its comments. If you are using the S1 style system, the title bar of an unscreened comment will have a blue background, while the title bar of a screened comment will have a grey background. If you are using the S2 style system, consult your "Customize" or "Edit Customizations" page (see
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=170 for details) to see the colors for the title bars of screened and unscreened comments.
The comment screening options you select are not retroactive, which means you may need to manually screen or unscreen comments that were added before you made the changes to your account settings. Information on screening, unscreening, and deleting comments can be found at
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=15.
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