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.

[aspecialthing]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Few people use that option so I'm not sure they would have reported it. I will take a look at the code and assume it's a bug.

Thanks. If you know of a way to simply remove the minus button/link, I'd be happy to just edit the code to do that.

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Fantastic! I will be sure to update the link in the main post of this addon.

Great, thanks.

[KarateStory]

This mod is now installed. It does just what you said it would do.

A way to convert post ratings to post rankings would be an awesome upgrade. (Hijacking and replacing the vB function "if new reply, bump thread to the top of the forum.")

Possible ranking schemes:
Rank based on total votes.
Plus vote bumps thread (acts just like "post new reply" does now: just bumps the thread to the top of the page)
Plus vote moves thread up X (configurable) places up the page & minus vote moves thread down X places.

I hope you add that someday. In the meantime, I'm looking for a coder who can hack that in for me.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by KarateStory

This mod is now installed. It does just what you said it would do.

A way to convert post ratings to post rankings would be an awesome upgrade. (Hijacking and replacing the vB function "if new reply, bump thread to the top of the forum.")

Possible ranking schemes:
Rank based on total votes.
Plus vote bumps thread (acts just like "post new reply" does now: just bumps the thread to the top of the page)
Plus vote moves thread up X (configurable) places up the page & minus vote moves thread down X places.

I hope you add that someday. In the meantime, I'm looking for a coder who can hack that in for me.

Not entirely following but a week on planes does that to me...

Shoot me a PM with more detail and I can let you know if it makes sense for this mod.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by aspecialthing

Thanks. If you know of a way to simply remove the minus button/link, I'd be happy to just edit the code to do that.

The link is in the template helpful_answers_roll. Look for the tab with the else statement.

[Megatr0n]

Ted, does this new update fix the phrase issues?

[Ted S]

If you're referring to the phrase issue with admin options, no. I need to dig into that later.

There have been no updates since the stable release but some users had download issues so I had to repost the file which unfortunately makes vbulletin.org show it as updated.

[aspecialthing]

Originally Posted by Ted S

The link is in the template helpful_answers_roll. Look for the tab with the else statement.

I tried editing that a few different ways: taking out all references to "helpfulanswer_no" and "ha_thumbsdn.gif"/"ha_thumbsdn_gray.gif" and taking out just the "no" and "thumbsdn" references (respectively) after "else /" but it didn't work.

Does it matter that my actual vote icons are "ha_plus.png" and "ha_minus.png" maybe? Is there a different template that references those image/links? I tried to do a search for "ha_minus.png" but didn't find anything...

Thanks again for all the help.

[schmidt123a]

Where is usergroup permission ? only admin can see this mod

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by schmidt123a

Where is usergroup permission ? only admin can see this mod

There is none. It's a voting system for all users.