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]

You can edit the text through the phrase manager.

[compuminus]

In a future version it would also be helpful to have an option to also enable thread level thumbs up/down ratings, in addition to having them available for posts. This information could then be factored in when prioritizing threads in the sitemap, or for adding to an archive/library section on the forum.

[tpearl5]

Originally Posted by Ted S

I could look at making something to work with the notifications box I suppose.

Yeh, that would be even better than the PM's!

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by compuminus

In a future version it would also be helpful to have an option to also enable thread level thumbs up/down ratings, in addition to having them available for posts. This information could then be factored in when prioritizing threads in the sitemap, or for adding to an archive/library section on the forum.

Not a bad idea but as it would require different tables I may make this as a second addon.

[cheesegrits]

Re 'helpful threads' ...

Originally Posted by Ted S

Not a bad idea but as it would require different tables I may make this as a second addon.

For the moment, rather than a separate addon, could you look at adding an option to 'Display Threads On Top Answers Page?' and just derive the helpfulness of threads from the number/score of the rated posts?

Personally I'm not interested in adding a 'was this thread helpful?' button. Some folk may feel differently, but I think marking helpful posts is already doing that job. Seems like having both is somewhat redundant, and potentially confusing.

But ... I am very interested in being able to show both Post and Thread helpfulness on the Top Answers page.

As a slightly related request ... how about some hooks in 'topanswers'? Before I saw the post I'm responding to, I had just started looking in to adding Top Threads myself, and for this (and other) issues it'd be nice to have a few hooks - the usual vB stuff, with start/prequery/postquery/end.

BTW, great mod.

-- hugh

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by cheesegrits

Re 'helpful threads' ...
For the moment, rather than a separate addon, could you look at adding an option to 'Display Threads On Top Answers Page?' and just derive the helpfulness of threads from the number/score of the rated posts?

I don't think that would accomplish the goal. You're not interested in the helpful thread button but some people are. Hence a different mod... similar code but different.

But ... I am very interested in being able to show both Post and Thread helpfulness on the Top Answers page.

I could do another chart of top threads I suppose.

As a slightly related request ... how about some hooks in 'topanswers'? Before I saw the post I'm responding to, I had just started looking in to adding Top Threads myself, and for this (and other) issues it'd be nice to have a few hooks - the usual vB stuff, with start/prequery/postquery/end.

Sure. I can get that in the next release

[dancue]

Does anyone have any icons that look better with darker skins?

[Theater]

Originally Posted by dancue

Does anyone have any icons that look better with darker skins?

See if these work for ya...

[dancue]

Any plans to integrate with vbcredits?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by dancue

Any plans to integrate with vbcredits?

No....

What did you have in mind?