IntenseDebate has announced two new features, a moderator role and comment voting. IntenseDebate has always allowed users to assign multiple admins to help in administering the comments but these admins had full permissions to change various settings such as the blog account. Therefor, this required a fair bit of trust in the users you chose to be helper admins. The moderator role changes that.

Now you can promote any IntenseDebate or WordPress.com user to help moderate comments without having to give them full access to your account settings.

Moderators will have access to the moderation and comment history pages. They’ll also be able to remove comments that are out-of-line directly from the comment section which is convenient. I wonder if IntenseDebate will at some point create their own user roles/capabilities system or if they will keep things simple with pre-defined roles such as the Moderator position.

IntenseDebate has also added the option to disable thumbs-down voting just in case you want to make your comment system look a little more positive. I have to question why someone would want to enable that feature. Maybe Michael can fill me in on that.