Users with custom roles can’t read each other’s comments

My site has a custom role (“coach”) with its own set of capabilities (via map_meta_cap along with a few built-in roles). Each user is assigned a page on the site that they “own” and can edit (via a front-end editor).

Each page has comments (rebranded as “reviews”).

This system works pretty well, except for one thing: WordPress won’t return comments on pages that this user (with the “coach” role) doesn’t ‘own’.

I’m getting comments with get_comments(), and it returns exactly what I expect if I’m logged out, logged in as an administrator, or logged in as a ‘coach’ and viewing that coach’s page. When logged in as a ‘coach’ and viewing another page, get_comments() returns an empty array.

This seems like a role/capability issue, but I’m having a hard time pinning down exactly what’s happening. I’ve played with adding various capabilities to the coach role, but with no luck.

Here’s the code I’m using to return comments:

$testimonials = get_comments( array(
    'post_id' => $coach_post_ID,
    'status'  => 'approve',
) );

Running var_dump( $testimonials ); returns an empty array, unless I’m logged in as that ‘coach’, an administrator, or logged out entirely.

The coaches have all the public read capabilities enabled (read and read_coach) and can otherwise see all the content on other coach pages.

I’m happy to provide any information you might need to help diagnose the problem. Thanks in advance!

I had the same issue, main users have the contributor role and a simple sidebar comment sidebar widget was not working when logged-in! Strange. I solved it by some sql:

function getLatestComments ( $postid ) {
    global $wpdb;
    $sql = "SELECT * from $wpdb->comments WHERE
             comment_post_ID = $postid AND 
             comment_approved = 1 
             ORDER BY comment_ID DESC";
    return $wpdb->get_results($sql);
}

I used this instead of get_comments. You may modify the sql and customize as required.