blueinstyle

Options include showing comments from specific categories, or excluding categories.
Exclude users from comment list by email address.
Uses a template to display comments exactly the way you want.
Limit amount of words or characters to display in each comment.
Include user’s Gravatar or Facebook avatar in comment list.
Create unlimited comment lists each with their own unique settings and options.
Support and Feature requests are on my forums at http://justmyecho.com/forums/

Customized Recent Comments

Display recent comments on your blog with complete control over the layout and format of comments.

Scott Reilly

By default, the ‘Comments’ section of the ‘Activity’ admin dashboard widget only shows an excerpt for the comments, truncating the content of the comments to the first 20 words while at the same time stripping out all markup.
This plugin adds a link at the end of the comment actions row (the links for the comment that become visible under the comment when you hover over the comment). The “Show more” link, when clicked, will replace the excerpt with the full comment. The full comment will include all markup, including originally utilized markup and changes applied via filters, plugins, etc (such as shortcode expansion, smilies, paragraphing, etc). The full comment can be switched back to the excerpt by clicking the “Show less” link (which replaces the “Show more” link when the comment is expanded).
“In-place expansion” refers to the ability to click the link to see the full comment and it will be presented in place of the excerpt without requiring a page reload or navigation.
NOTE: This plugin only works for users who have JavaScript enabled.
Links: <a href="https://coffee2code.com/wp-plugins/expandable-dashboard-recent-comments/" rel="nofollow ugc">Plugin Homepage</a> | <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/expandable-dashboard-recent-comments/" rel="ugc">Plugin Directory Page</a> | <a href="https://github.com/coffee2code/expandable-dashboard-recent-comments/" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub</a> | <a href="https://coffee2code.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Author Homepage</a>
<h3>Hooks</h3>
The plugin exposes one filter for hooking. Such code should ideally be put into a mu-plugin or site-specific plugin (which is beyond the scope of this readme to explain).
c2c_expandable_dashboard_recent_comments_start_expanded (filter)
The ‘c2c_expandable_dashboard_recent_comments_start_expanded’ hook allows you to configure the ‘Recent Comments’ admin dashboard widget initially display all comments in their expanded state (i.e. not excerpted).
Arguments:
<ul>
<li>$default (boolean): The default state, which is ‘false’ (therefore comments are initially shown excerpted)</li>
<li>$comment (object) : The comment object being displayed</li>
</ul>
Example:
<pre><code>// Initially show dashboard comments fully expanded
add_filter( 'c2c_expandable_dashboard_recent_comments_start_expanded', '__return_true' );
</code></pre>

Expandable Dashboard Recent Comments

Very Cool

Enables in-place expansion of excerpts in the admin dashboard 'Comments' section of the 'Activity' widget to view full comments.

Customized Recent Comments vs Expandable Dashboard Recent Comments