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.

[tpearl5]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Let me look at the data structure a bit and see what I can do.

Did you happen to find anything with the "helpful user's" report

[The Realist]

Are there any template edits?

Reason I ask is I've uploaded the files and the product and the box is ticked no for template placements but nothing shows.

What are the edits?

Regards

PS,

It does show up but the yes/no options dont as well as the thumbs dont show.

All I see is the rate thread as 12345 etc etc.

Regardless if I tick the option for the thumbs they still dont show up.

Also, its dropped some of my icons down a line, how can I get them back?

[The Realist]

Well I have this problem and I cant even find the code $helpful_answers in my templates?

Originally Posted by Quantnet.org

Some feedback after installing 1.3.4

Reading the installation instruction for the template edit,

In the search box enter "$template_hook[postbit_controls]".
Add the code $helpful_answers directly above this line.

This should be below instead of above

When I use above, it will split the Thanks button from Post Thank You mod which I reported a few pages back.

Now, using below, it is fine.

Also, when i set it up not to allow poster to rate their own posts, beneath those own posts, there is a line without the rate part.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by tpearl5

Did you happen to find anything with the "helpful user's" report

With the way data is stored (we capture the ID of the person who did the rating, not the ID of who the rating was on) it's difficult to report on how many posts everyone has got in a single report. I will put together a lookup tool shortly on a user by user basis.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by The Realist

Well I have this problem and I cant even find the code $helpful_answers in my templates?

It's not in your templates unless you use manual placement mode and add it.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by The Realist

Are there any template edits?

Reason I ask is I've uploaded the files and the product and the box is ticked no for template placements but nothing shows.

What are the edits?

Regards

PS,

It does show up but the yes/no options dont as well as the thumbs dont show.

All I see is the rate thread as 12345 etc etc.

Regardless if I tick the option for the thumbs they still dont show up.

Also, its dropped some of my icons down a line, how can I get them back?

I'm not following your question. If nothing is showing up then how is something showing up wrong? What exactly is your issue?

[cooltechie]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Unfortunately I'm not having any luck duplicating your issue. How extensive was your ratings before you performed the upgrade? Also have you modified the postbit template?

The only thing I can think of is that it might have something to do with the different ha_import that was available for testing. First you said the file was for 1.7 and then you ask me to try another version that you uploaded, which had a bug, and then used the one for 1.9 which at the time, I was still on 1.8. Since if I disable "ha", no duplicates are shown so I can only guess it's either "ha" or the ha_import. No one else having this problem? I'll use the latest version and see if the problem still exist.

edit: downloaded latest ha and ha_import, upgraded and ran the import. enabled plugin and now see triple post for only the ones that were thanked. those without thanks show single post.

[The Realist]

Thank you, problem resolved.

Originally Posted by Ted S

It's not in your templates unless you use manual placement mode and add it.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by cooltechie

The only thing I can think of is that it might have something to do with the different ha_import that was available for testing. First you said the file was for 1.7 and then you ask me to try another version that you uploaded, which had a bug, and then used the one for 1.9 which at the time, I was still on 1.8. Since if I disable "ha", no duplicates are shown so I can only guess it's either "ha" or the ha_import. No one else having this problem? I'll use the latest version and see if the problem still exist.

edit: downloaded latest ha and ha_import, upgraded and ran the import. enabled plugin and now see triple post for only the ones that were thanked. those without thanks show single post.

Well that's not good at all.

Let's start by having you remove the addon which will delete all the votes and should set you back to just one post. I will clearly need to rebuild the import script.

[tpearl5]

Originally Posted by Ted S

With the way data is stored (we capture the ID of the person who did the rating, not the ID of who the rating was on) it's difficult to report on how many posts everyone has got in a single report. I will put together a lookup tool shortly on a user by user basis.

Okay - that'll work!

I just installed 1.9.1. I can't seem to get the Most Helpful Post Block to display after the first post even though the option is enabled. I'm seeing that "helpful_answers_mosthelp_post" isn't loading. Am I missing something?