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.

[cooltechie]

This is the error I get when using the ha_import.php

Database error in vBulletin 3.8.3:

Invalid SQL:

		SELECT userid,postid,threadid
		FROM post_thanks as post_thanks;

MySQL Error   : Unknown column 'threadid' in 'field list'
Error Number  : 1054
Request Date  : Thursday, July 23rd 2009 @ 06:55:26 PM
Error Date    : Thursday, July 23rd 2009 @ 06:55:26 PM
Script        : http://www.example.com/forum/admincp/ha_import.php
Referrer      : 
IP Address    : xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Classname     : vB_Database
MySQL Version : 5.0.81-community

[cooltechie]

Ouch, this one hurts the most when viewing posts.

Database error in vBulletin 3.8.3:

Invalid SQL:

		SELECT
			post.*, post.username AS postusername, post.ipaddress AS ip, IF(post.visible = 2, 1, 0) AS isdeleted,
			user.*, userfield.*, usertextfield.*,
			icon.title as icontitle, icon.iconpath,
			avatar.avatarpath, NOT ISNULL(customavatar.userid) AS hascustomavatar, customavatar.dateline AS avatardateline,customavatar.width AS avwidth,customavatar.height AS avheight,
			spamlog.postid AS spamlog_postid,
			deletionlog.userid AS del_userid, deletionlog.username AS del_username, deletionlog.reason AS del_reason,
			editlog.userid AS edit_userid, editlog.username AS edit_username, editlog.dateline AS edit_dateline,
			editlog.reason AS edit_reason, editlog.hashistory,
			postparsed.pagetext_html, postparsed.hasimages,
			sigparsed.signatureparsed, sigparsed.hasimages AS sighasimages,
			sigpic.userid AS sigpic, sigpic.dateline AS sigpicdateline, sigpic.width AS sigpicwidth, sigpic.height AS sigpicheight,
			IF(displaygroupid=0, user.usergroupid, displaygroupid) AS displaygroupid, infractiongroupid
			
			,helpfulpost.goodrank,helpfulpost.totalrank,helpfulanswer.helpfulanswerid,helpfulanswer.yesno
		FROM post AS post
		LEFT JOIN user AS user ON(user.userid = post.userid)
		LEFT JOIN userfield AS userfield ON(userfield.userid = user.userid)
		LEFT JOIN usertextfield AS usertextfield ON(usertextfield.userid = user.userid)
		LEFT JOIN icon AS icon ON(icon.iconid = post.iconid)
		LEFT JOIN avatar AS avatar ON(avatar.avatarid = user.avatarid) LEFT JOIN customavatar AS customavatar ON(customavatar.userid = user.userid)
		LEFT JOIN spamlog AS spamlog ON(spamlog.postid = post.postid)
			LEFT JOIN deletionlog AS deletionlog ON(post.postid = deletionlog.primaryid AND deletionlog.type = 'post')
		LEFT JOIN editlog AS editlog ON(editlog.postid = post.postid)
		LEFT JOIN postparsed AS postparsed ON(postparsed.postid = post.postid AND postparsed.styleid = 8 AND postparsed.languageid = 1)
		LEFT JOIN sigparsed AS sigparsed ON(sigparsed.userid = user.userid AND sigparsed.styleid = 8 AND sigparsed.languageid = 1)
		LEFT JOIN sigpic AS sigpic ON(sigpic.userid = post.userid)
			LEFT JOIN helpfulpost AS helpfulpost ON(helpfulpost.postid = post.postid)LEFT JOIN helpfulanswer AS helpfulanswer ON(helpfulanswer.postid = post.postid and helpfulanswer.userid = 1)
		WHERE post.postid IN (0,13272,15596,15597,15611,15613)
		ORDER BY post.dateline;

MySQL Error   : Table 'example_vb.helpfulpost' doesn't exist
Error Number  : 1146
Request Date  : Thursday, July 23rd 2009 @ 06:52:51 PM
Error Date    : Thursday, July 23rd 2009 @ 06:52:51 PM
Script        : http://www.example.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2292
Referrer      : http://www.example.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=12
IP Address    : xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Classname     : vB_Database
MySQL Version : 5.0.81-community

[Ted S]

Looks like the fresh install did not fully initialize. I will be reworking the install code over the weekend to distribute to understand what went wrong.

Please remove 1.9 if you still have it installed and are getting errors. Most users of 1.9 who upgraded to it will not have issues.

[furst]

Is it possible to make it so that someone gets a helpful rating whenever they get regular reputation? Is that feature available yet?

[tpearl5]

Originally Posted by furst

Is it possible to make it so that someone gets a helpful rating whenever they get regular reputation? Is that feature available yet?

I completely eliminated the reputation links, and hooked up the helpful answer system to reputation. There's really no reason to have both.

[furst]

Originally Posted by tpearl5

I completely eliminated the reputation links, and hooked up the helpful answer system to reputation. There's really no reason to have both.

I welcome it when members want to leave a comment in the reputation they give to another. They should have the option to do so if they want to.

[Ted S]

Reputation extends well beyond just rating posts so while votes can influence it, I have not seen much demand for the other way.

[reddyink]

Does this integrate with points system such as vbExperience? Does the ratings of replies get points?

thanks -

[Ted S]

This does not contribute to the points system although I'm open to suggestions.

[tpearl5]

FYI, I have 1.9 working with vbplaza (with one small code addition) without a problem...