Major Additions - iTrader v2.0.1

iTrader - A user feedback add-on for vBulletin 3.5.x
Copyright ?2004-2005 Jason Rabel, All Rights Reserved.
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Latest iTrader Verson: 2.0.1
vB Versions Supported: 3.5.x & 3.6.x
Author: Jason Rabel
Contact: PM me here.
Site: EXTREME Overclocking
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Description:
iTrader for vB 3.5.x & 3.6.x has evolved from Trader Ratings for vB 3.0.x which evolved from Buy/Sell/Trade User Rating System for vB 2.x. This is a rating system for when members buy / sell / trade items from each other (presumably on a FS section of your forum). It is somewhat based on the honor system since there is no automatic way to truly tell if they did engage in a transaction. iTrader came about because it was a pain to try and maintain a single thread listing good / bad traders and so far has worked out quite well.

Features:

• Rate another member: Positive / Negative / Neutral
• Specify in each transaction: Buyer, Seller, or Trade
• Leave multiple comments about the deal
• Dates & IPs are all recorded to prevent abuse
• Specify a thread URL to the deal
• Advanced URL checking
• Display ratings over time
• Filter based on Buyer/Seller/Trade/or feedback they left for others
• Users can edit/delete ratings left for others (time based limitation)
• iTrader Admins can edit/delete anyone's ratings (just incase)
• PM notification when new rating or comment is left
• Per-usergroup permissions
• Lots of admin controllable options

Installation / Upgrade Info:
Read the included readme file, it explains everything.

Standard Disclaimer:
BACKUP YOUR DATABASE & FILES BEFORE IMPLEMENTING THIS HACK!!!

Donations:
This add-on will always be free, however your donations are kindly accepted and will help towards further development. The link is on the right under "The Developer" info.

Future Additions:

• AdminCP & ModCP Menus for searching IPs, stats, mass-prune, etc
• Better navigation across pages
• Better error descriptions
• Adjust action icons some
• Page to link two ratings manually
• AdminCP Option to choose how ratings are ordered (asc or desc by time)
• AJAX editing

Release History:
2.0.1 - December 18, 2005
2.0.0 - December 14, 2005

Detailed template edits : (Link)

[dsotmoon]

thats a bug i brought up a few pages back, Jason is aware of it, it happens to my users who have PMs turned off

[OttawaGolf]

I have granted permissin for registered users to access iTrader

Some are presented with "iTrader is closed" logged in or not.

Some have said "but in the upper right it had the log in box that was empty I put in my username and password and everything has been fine since. Not sure why it does not work for. At the time I was already logged into the regular section of the site."

Others have said "I only see a Log Out option. If I select this and re-enter my info I get logged back in but nothing changes, Itrader is still not available. Have tried using both IE and Firefox browsers."

and others "Worked ok for me. I just clicked on the numbers in the profile, and I didn't have to log in."

Any thoughts?

[eoc_Jason]

fiber cut - Yes you can rate anyone, to a certain extent. Because of the generic nature of the forum / threads, there is no "true" automated way to know if the person did engage in the deal with the other. That issue is somewhat overcome if you require a thread URL to the deal. Then a person viewing the deal can go and see if indeed they did as said.

Areku - If you think this is "useless", then by all means, DO NOT USE IT! Nobody is forcing this down your throat. If you want to overcome most problems, you can require the thread url, and turn on strict url checking, and set specific forum sections. When those are enabled then the thread in question must: 1. Be a valid thread on your forum, 2. One of the two people involved in the deal must be the thread creator, and 3. Must be in one of the forumid's specificed.

About 1 member with 2 accounts. Yes he can sign up on your forum and attempt to start rating himself, however he will run into an issue that his IPs will more than likely not change during that time frame, and thus an admin email will be sent to warn about the fruad. Also he can not rate the same person but once per day (or change it longer if you like in the admincp), so it would take a while, not to mention that several feedbacks all coming from the same inital person just throws up a red flag right there.

007 - I did have an idea like that initially, and even started to expand upon it more. However the one thing I found out is when you are working with threads and trying to integrate bits of code here and there, it gets ugly quick. vBulletin is designed to be a forum, not a classified / auction package. Trying to alter a thread to do as such causes too many headaches, and every time there is a big change in vB it pretty much makes author's like myself have to start back from square one and re-evaluate everything. Having to enter a name really accomplishes little if you really think deeply about it.

agiacosa - <if condition="$post[itrader_total]">$post[itrader_pcnt]%</if>

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Guys, as it is stated in the description, this add-on at the core relies mostly on the honor system, as does any rating system. I find members are very cautious and know when something doesn't look right, they do report suspicious ratings to a staff member (and now it's even easier with the "report rating" button). Also if someone gives them a bogus rating, they notice that too extremely quickly. Yes, more could be done to try and integrate stuff with threads, however IMO I do not think it will actually change the nature of anything. Anything that could be faked currently could be faked after making those changes. I don't care to go mucking around with thread/post code trying to alter how that works and having to edit a dozen vB templates, create a bunch of hooks, and god knows what else. The effort / complexity involved is not worth the minimal return in value. Issues arrise where say, one thread a person lists various items, and sells them to several people. Then what would you do if you only had 1 box to enter who bought stuff? If your thought about it is trying to prevent abuse, it still does nothing to stop a person with 2 accounts from rating himself.

Everyone runs their forum differently, and I'm not out to try and change how they do it, this system is meant to be as flexible as possible to try and accomidate everyone's needs and differences. If your goal or needs are so different than what is offered here, then either 1. Code your own, or 2. modify this code to suite your own forum's needs. But do NOT by any means complain about something that is offered free to the community out of my own (and other authors') kindness.

If you wanted to have something like a "rate this deal" link in a thread, you can accomplish it with a little fancy work using template conditionals. There's actually a lot you can do with the template conditionals and not have to code things in a file or use any hooks.

In the several years (since the original conception in vB 2.x) I have had *very* few reports of abuse / fradulent activity, and overall the system has worked out extremely excellent, especially to weed out the bad traders. Seeing a user with a good score & positive rating (just about everyone on my forum has 100% positive) gives other members a piece of mind & confidence in the deal they are engaging. The system gives a quick historical view of their past transactions, and if you force URLs & don't delete the threads, then they can go and visit each of those transactions should they wish. But seeing a person rated 20, 50, or even over 100 times from different members is usually evidence enough that they are legit.

There are a bunch of new anti-abuse / anti-fraud features (and I'm planning on adding more soon) in this version. I've seen cases in the past where a newbie decides to go bezerk and rate a person negative 100 times, or rate dozens and dozens of members negative. Now they simply can't do that with current limitations. In the past, catching a user registering multiple times had to be done looking at IPs of posts they made, now the iTrader system tracks all that so admins can (when I finish the admin pages) cross-check deal/comment IPs. Also new traders automatically get their IP dupe-checked and a warning email is sent to admins if they match. Yes, that does not prevent a person from using a proxy to access your forum, but if they are that hell-bent on ripping people off you have a bigger problem.

I could code things to make users jump through dozens of hoops before they can rate each other, but the BIGGEST problem isn't the code, it's the forum members. The more work / steps that a member has to do to rate someone, the less inclined they are to use the system, especially once they have established a decent rating. Making it overy-complex turns away people (especially who are unfamilliar with how it works) faster than you can say apple pie.

[eoc_Jason]

iTrader Closed only comes up if there is a version mismatch, or you have the iTrader system set to not active in your vBulletin Options.

Logging in / out issues might be related to people that do not use cookies, and you did not include the $session[sessionurl] in your URL strings that you created linking to iTrader pages.

Originally Posted by OttawaGolf

I have granted permissin for registered users to access iTrader

Some are presented with "iTrader is closed" logged in or not.

Some have said "but in the upper right it had the log in box that was empty I put in my username and password and everything has been fine since. Not sure why it does not work for. At the time I was already logged into the regular section of the site."

Others have said "I only see a Log Out option. If I select this and re-enter my info I get logged back in but nothing changes, Itrader is still not available. Have tried using both IE and Firefox browsers."

and others "Worked ok for me. I just clicked on the numbers in the profile, and I didn't have to log in."

Any thoughts?

[OttawaGolf]

Thanks Jason. It was not active. It is now working. As an admin I could see it and so could the mods. As for the login, that just added to the confusion. I duno but they are happy now.

My compliments to the chef. This is a great hack.

[ChrisBaktis]

Any chance we can get a quick code change to make the Additonal Comments optional? I dont want to release the hack on the site with this as a required field.

[VBUsers]

great hack ! working great! thanks

[Areku]

Originally Posted by eoc_Jason

Areku - If you think this is "useless", then by all means, DO NOT USE IT! Nobody is forcing this down your throat.

My apologies if i sounded too rude! I've been waiting for your hack anxiously like many more and will definetly use it, but i was thinking it would be more strict...

I just tested it and i could leave several times a + fb to the same user more than once every 24h...

What I'll do is try to hack it a bit more so:

1) user A opens a new deal thread
2) users B, C, D "bid" or offer a trade on A
3) A chooses who to close deal with and then

a) thread closes, no1 else can reply
b) A and C recieve a PM stating they now finish to close the deal
c) A and C have now the option to rate each other wisely
d) once rated, it's over! No other can rate any other if they actually didnt engage on a deal, nor rerate more than once.

Much like ebay works.

On top of that

4) URL for the deal will be REQUIRED and will only be ACCEPTED if:

a) it is in the form of showthread (no more showpost URLs accepted)
b) has not been used before for other deals (aka u cant put the same URL deal to get several ratings from different users)
c) it belongs to desired irating enabled forums

5) Additional Notes made optional.


Once we test this out, we can share if you (or any1) need to!

[zlos]

Unfortunately I cannot upgrade, still getting some mysql erorrs:

Originally Posted by error

Database error in vBulletin 3.5.1:

Invalid SQL:
UPDATE user
SET itrader_total = 1,
itrader_pcnt = 100,0
WHERE userid = 29466
LIMIT 1;

MySQL Error : You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '0
WHERE userid = 29466
LIMIT 1' at line 3

???

[Areku]

In your advanced language settings, try to switch decimal and thousands punctuation...