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.

[Ted S]

I don't use the rep system much... can you explain the power system (i.e. can one site have rep powers of 5,000 while another has 10 or are they always the same?) and how it's assigned?

[Quantnet]

Originally Posted by Ted S

If you have any additional suggestions or wish to comment on how you would like these features to work now is the time.

The line where members see Did you find this post helpful? Yes | No
should be centered or with some customizable background color that makes it easier to see, and thus use.

As is, it's a bit difficult for new members to see if they are not told. The current position is right under the Quote, Edit, Reply, etc buttons so it's a bit crowded.

[The3rdNipple]

Hmm.. I'll give this a shot when the version is stable. One suggestion is that maybe make it like the AJAX Post Thanks and have it included in your postbit or is that already done?

[Razasharp]

Originally Posted by Ted S

I don't use the rep system much... can you explain the power system (i.e. can one site have rep powers of 5,000 while another has 10 or are they always the same?) and how it's assigned?

Ok....

The rep system in vB allows members to give rep points (positive, or negative if admin enables it for their usergroup) to posters if they make a good/bad post.

As people are given more rep points, their own rep power increases - so when they give positive or negative rep, the number of points they give depend on their own 'power'. There are also other ways which increases members rep power, such as number of posts made, time registered etc (all set in admin cp).

This is great because it gives people the incentive to post good posts, because not only do they get more points but it makes them more influential in rewarding others. This is also a good incentive not to make bad posts - cos they get minus points that subtract from their total.

The rep system can have limits set by admin, eg, you can only give X amount of rep points in a day, or can only give member a member points once per 15 other points you give out. This is to prevent abuse.

However it is also it's downside, as it doesn't tell you whether you can 'not' give someone a rep point until you click on the button to give them one, then a pop up appears to say why (so people get fed up with giving them). Incorporating it into your hack is MUCH better, because it will allow them to give as many as they want, however, to keep from it being abused _and_ to retain value of the rep system, I think it would be wise to make sure that rep points given with your hack are not as much as rep points given through the rep system. So I would suggest that value is halved, or better still let us put a percentage to it. Eg, when a post is rated it only gets 10% of that persons rep power as points. So if I had a rep power of 100 when I rate a post with your hack they only get 10 points (10%) (in contrast if I give someone normal rep they get 100, ie my full power rating).

Does that make it clearer? If not just let me know which points you want me to elaborate on. The rep system is great, but has some flaws in the stock set-up, your hack would make it fifty times better!

[Ted S]

Great explination... thanks.

My idea was to make the rep tie in an option (obviously) with an admin defined option to set the rep given per a positive rating (and the rep taken away for a negative one, or 0 to not do this).

This is fairly straight forward and basic and doesn't worry about power but it sounds like power is something important so how about a manual option to set the rep points OR the ability to set the % of a user's rep power?

Of course this can be evolved more down the road -- I'm a believer in getting something out there that people like and that works but not trying to build every feature possible at once as it's just too hard to know what you'll want until you're really "in the weeds" using it.

[Quantnet]

I don't use the rep system and don't plan to so the #1 priority for me is for new members to quickly and easily find out the most useful answers in a thread/forum.
We are sure tired of questions being asked over and over again so if members find out the most useful answer for the kind of questions they have, it'll save everyone time.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Quantnet.org

I don't use the rep system and don't plan to so the #1 priority for me is for new members to quickly and easily find out the most useful answers in a thread/forum.
We are sure tired of questions being asked over and over again so if members find out the most useful answer for the kind of questions they have, it'll save everyone time.

Nothing will ever stop question repeats but version 1.4 will help as it will offer reordering of posts by rank. And of course using conditional you can already highlight or color code good or bad posts.

[Razasharp]

Originally Posted by Ted S

OR the ability to set the % of a user's rep power?

If by that you mean we can set a % so that when a member rates a post the amount of rep points given are a % of their rep power, then that's perfect :up:

[dvbusuario]

Is compatible with vBulletin 3.7.5?

Thank You!

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by dvbusuario

Is compatible with vBulletin 3.7.5?

Thank You!

Please read the hack description for compatibility information.