Add-On Releases - [AJAX] Helpful Answers - Post Rating System (plus many sub-features)

Note: While this modification is updated for compatibility, I am only developing features for the 4.x version. I understand many sites continue to use 3.8 for a variety of reasons but dual developing takes time away from adding anything new. I encourage you to develop out your own change and share them back as no modification is ideal for every forum out of the box.

Every day your users contribute hundreds if not thousands of posts making it hard for new members and guests to separate out the best answers from those that are less helpful. The Helpful Answers System offers your members a quick way (AJAX) to rate individual posts as either helpful or not allowing future visitors to understand the benefits of each post.

Designed for maximum flexibility:


This addon is built to be flexible and offers several customization options including:

• The ability to show a user's vote stats in posts
• The ability to use image or text ratings.
• The ability to offer yes/no or scaled 1-10 point ranking.
• The ability to turn off negative ratings for a positive only system.
• The ability to decide which forums are open for helpful answer ratings.
• The ability to audit the system and identify top users and potential abusers.
• The ability to ban specific members from using the system.
• The ability to customize the AJAX message shown after a post is rated.
• The ability to edit all text and messages through phrases.
• The ability to show a page with the top helpful posts.
• The ability to show rating stats on a user's profile.
• Integration with the reputation system for ratings.
• Template driven display that can easily be customized to your forum.

For advanced users template conditionals and variables let you further extend the functionality to color highlight good or bad posts, include ratings in user?s profiles and much more.

Load & Scale:
This addon is designed to work with small to large sites and is currently being used by sites with more than 2 million posts. If you have questions about integrating with your big board please contact me.

Modification Installation:
This addon requires uploading multiple files, installing a vBulletin product and enabling the feature in any forums you wish. No template modifications are required. Please see the included install file for detailed instructions.

If you are not seeing the rating bar double check that you have enabled the feature in the forum you are in and insure the Manual Template override option is not enabled.

Rating Review & Deletion:
To identify and remove abuse a reporting system is included with this addon and can be found in your vBulletin ACP under the Helpful Answers tab. Through this panel you will be able to view a user's overall rating history and individual ratings and can remove either if necessary. Users can also be explicitly banned from the system.

Reputation System Integration:
Helpful Answers can be extended to directly tie into your reputation system giving users positive or negative points based on the ratings of their posts. There are numerous options on how to handle ratings that can be found in a separate Helpful Answers Reputation part of your vBulletin Settings page.

External Integration:
vB Plaza Modification - http://www.vbplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?p=6359
vB Experience - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=199556

Anonymous Stats Tracking (optional):
vBulletin forums reach millions of consumers around the world yet little is known about their habits and opinions. This addon was released to the public out of requests but also to further the research of forum user's behaviors and actions through collecting the most basic data on thousands of sites.

By default this addon will pass basic rating data (positive or negative) to a 3rd party site for statistical purposes. Only the most basic data is captured (the vote and your site name) and no user information or specific forum details are logged, not even an IP address.

While you may disable this feature through the administrative options I ask that you consider leaving it in place to help this research effort and insure the continued support of the addon.

The tracking feature uses the php library cURL on a 5 second timeout. If cURL is not installed this option is automatically disabled.

Updates:
- 5/13/2011 - Release of 2.0.6 minor bug fix
- 08/31/2009 - Release of 2.0.0
- 08/07/2009 - Release of 1.9.5 stable

Other Versions:
This addon will work with 3.7 but to avoid issues with different code versions please see the 3.7 version thread here.

Before you download this modification please remember this is a free tool provided as a courtesy to you and support responses are subject to the availability of the author and other members. If you are looking for a professionally supported system this is not the solution for you.

[Simon Lloyd]

Ted don't you already provide 3 of those in the userprofile stats? isn't possible to already use that query? currently you show:

Helpful Postings
Simon Lloyd has Rated xx posts
Simon Lloyd's Posts have been rated good xxx out of xxx times

Would it not be possible to use that in the postbit (split the variables out of the last statement to give the 3 seperate lines, Helpful Answers xx, Positive Votes xx, Negative Votes xx), i remember i asked for just the one (number of answers marked helpful in postbit) here https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....postcount=1681

But if the load on server is going to outweigh the usefulness of that then forget it, we can live without it!

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Simon Lloyd

Ted don't you already provide 3 of those in the userprofile stats? isn't possible to already use that query? currently you show:
Would it not be possible to use that in the postbit (split the variables out of the last statement to give the 3 seperate lines, Helpful Answers xx, Positive Votes xx, Negative Votes xx), i remember i asked for just the one (number of answers marked helpful in postbit) here https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....postcount=1681

But if the load on server is going to outweigh the usefulness of that then forget it, we can live without it!

Simon you remember my mods better than I do. Whoops!

There are two fields that you can call [which isn't all 4 but hey it's a start]

hagoodrank
hatotalrank

These deal with what the user does and not with what's done to their posts. You can call them up from the postbit template if you like and format them in their own box, under the post count, etc.

As for adding others, the issue is subqueries. I [apparently] added these two in all 3 versions of the mod on demand but they calculate as votes come in so there is literally a field within user's profile table for each. If you for example wanted to figure out the number of votes they had left in a certain forum you would need to run a query... 10 posts per page and you get 10 queries... very very ineffective, thus avoided.

[jl255]

think i tried those 2 before... doesn't work on postbit. if i'm not mistaken, i asked you abt them before and you said they only work on profile page.

$hagoodrank
$hatotalrank

[Simon Lloyd]

Hi Ted, i can confirm this, i tried using the variable a few different ways, have you an idea of how to call it for the postbit?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by jl255

think i tried those 2 before... doesn't work on postbit. if i'm not mistaken, i asked you abt them before and you said they only work on profile page.

$hagoodrank
$hatotalrank

In the postbit the variables are called up per post using the array $post[] so $post[hagoodrank] or such. $hagoodrank on it's own would be blank as it's not defined...

This is explained in the 2nd post of the mod: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....65&postcount=2

[Simon Lloyd]

Yes i remember , however using $post[hagoodrank] will only show if that post has been ranked not your overall helpfulanswers, using this post[$hatotalrank] just shows []

[Simon Lloyd]

All your posted variables in that post show like this in postbit

- The total number of ratings
- The number of good ratings
0 - The number of bad ratings
0 - True if the post is positive overall (more good than bad ratings)
- True if the user can rate the post (false if they are banned or have rated it).
- True if the user has already rated the post.
0 - The number of good votes the user's posts have
0 - The total rank the user's posts have
0 - The number of bad votes the user's posts have
- The total ratings of a member's ppsts
- The total good ratings of a member's posts
- The total bad ratings of a member's posts

Trust me i don't have zero votes

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Simon Lloyd

Yes i remember , however using $post[hagoodrank] will only show if that post has been ranked not your overall helpfulanswers, using this post[$hatotalrank] just shows []

$post[hatotalrank] or $post['hatotalrank']... refers to the variable hatotalrank from the $post[] array where as $post[$hatotalrank] tries to call an element $hatotalrank in an array that doesn't exist.

I don't have a 3.8 server up anymore, so debugging has become a bit harder but if you look at the postbit template and don't see a lot of calls $post then I'm remembering the wrong array name. It should be exactly the same context as the variable for posts or joindate.

[Simon Lloyd]

Ted, you still have access to my test site, if you've forgotten i'll pm you details.

I just added all your variables as a test like this

$post[totalrank] - The total number of ratings <br />
$post[goodrank] - The number of good ratings<br />
$post[badrank] - The number of bad ratings <br />
$post[helpfulgood] - True if the post is positive overall (more good than bad ratings)<br />
$show[rate_helpfulanswer] - True if the user can rate the post (false if they are banned or have rated it).<br />
$post[rate_helpfulanswer] - True if the user can rate the post (false if they are banned or have rated it).<br />
$post[helpfulanswerid] - True if the user has already rated the post.<br />
$post[hagoodrank] - The number of good votes the user's posts have<br />
$post[hatotalrank] - The total rank the user's posts have<br />
$post[habadrank] - The number of bad votes the user's posts have<br />
$helpfulposts[totalranks] - The total ratings of a member's ppsts<br />
$helpfulposts[goodranks] - The total good ratings of a member's posts<br />
$helpfulposts[badranks] - The total bad ratings of a member's posts<br />
$post[totalranks]<br />
$post[goodranks]<br />
$post[badranks]

[Simon Lloyd]

Ah, incommunicado eh? right then, email me at simonDOTlloydATthecodecageDOTcom and i'll send you the details