[cheesegrits]

Originally Posted by Ted S

I don't think that would accomplish the goal. You're not interested in the helpful thread button but some people are. Hence a different mod... similar code but different.

The reasons I'd like to see a Helpful Thread system based purely on the ratings of the posts are:

1) We already have Forum Ratings. It's a well known, well understood interface / concept. Replacing this with a Helpful Threads which is separate from Helpful Posts would seem to be reinventing the wheel.

2) It'd one less widget / knob / dial for the user to worry about. If they poke the helpful post button, they would automatically be giving the thread a rating bump. And as a user, this would seem totally natural ... if I found the post useful, then pretty much by definition I'm finding the thread useful (or not, as the case may be). I wouldn't really understand why I would have to go and manually give the thread a rating bump as a separate action.

3) Replacing the existing (and somewhat arbitrary 1 to 5 star) Thread Rating with a numeric Helpful Threads rating derived purely from the combined ratings of the posts in the thread would provide a true measure of how helpful any given thread is.

Perhaps there's a need for a Helpful Threads mod as a separate beastie instead of Helpful Posts ... but if I'm running Helpful Posts, I'd really like that option to replace the existing Thread Rating stuff with a derived value from the sum of the helpful posts. So instead of the rating stars on forumdisplay, I'd see a (sortable) numeric rating column.

-- hugh