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.

[Chicago_VLNU_4s]

interesting.. might give it a try

[apokphp]

As it stands right now, the post creator is alerted (via notification) whenever one of their posts have been rated. Is there a way to turn this off? I prefer that the system be completely anonymous (to the public).

Love the hack btw, been waiting for a working version of this feature for a couple years now. Thank you!

[apokphp]

Also, I don't understand how to "Identify the top rated post". I got it to highlight successfully, but when it comes to putting a statement of identification or image to identify it, it isn't working correctly.

These instructions:

dentify the top rated post.

Step 1 - Enable the top rated post feature from your Helpful Answers Settings.
Step 2 - Add the code:

Code:

<if condition="$thread[toppost] == $post[postid] AND THIS_SCRIPT == 'showthread'">This is the top rated post!</code>

To your postbit or postbig_legacy template

This can be changed around to add colors, an icon or anything else you want.

Don't seem to be working for me. Is it because I have similar code already highlighting the post? If so, what specifically and where, should the changes be?

[Ted S]

When you say it doesn't work what do you mean? Does it do nothing... does it do something else?

When you say similar code what does that mean? What other code do you have?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by apokphp

As it stands right now, the post creator is alerted (via notification) whenever one of their posts have been rated. Is there a way to turn this off? I prefer that the system be completely anonymous (to the public).

Love the hack btw, been waiting for a working version of this feature for a couple years now. Thank you!

This is built in to the beta and will be an option in the final release.

[apokphp]

Originally Posted by Ted S

When you say it doesn't work what do you mean? Does it do nothing... does it do something else?

No. I guess I'm not sure where to put it.

When you say similar code what does that mean? What other code do you have?

Just your highlight code.

How do I use both the call out and highlight code?

Also, the notification system...it gives my users a 404 page not found most of the time. Sometimes it works...most of the time it doesn't. It's weird.

http://www.onlinedebate.net/profile.php?do=helpfulans

[Ted S]

Are the URLs always getting truncated like that or did you only copy part of it?

[apokphp]

Now that you say that, it made me realize, that it does that when someone uses the notification for this mod, from our site's main page...which is a portal. When someone uses it from w/i the /forums/ directory, it probably appears just fine.

How can I fix that url so that it is static (will always include the /forums/ directory)?

Also, any idea on how to use both the call out and highlight code for the most helpful post in a thread?

[Ted S]

I can get the url fixed in the next beta update.

Need to look in to your template issue more before I can give a response but try both independantly and let me know if both work.

[cooltechie]

Just curious to know what the status is for the ha_import script.

Also, if I install the non beta and members vote, what will happen when ha_import is released? Will it overwrite the existing vote or add to it?