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.

[columbusgeek]

As I read it there really is no reward other then a user getting higher rep. A few people have suggested it in this thread but with a less then exuberant replies from you Ted. Hooking into vbCredits, vbExperience, vBPlaza, etc would push this mod into a even more useful realm.

examples being users who contribute good answers get "x" amount of points they can cash in towards <cool item>.

Just my 2 cents worth. I understand I can pay somebody to do this, I am just pointing out something I see that could be beneficial.

Thanks for this modification.

[Ted S]

I'm always open to extending my modifications but I can't code things into systems outside my knowledgebase nor can I make this support everything. But this modification is made extendable for that very reason so while I tend to focus on extending the native functions others can add integrations... cheesegrits for example added vBcredits support which is fantastic.

But don't feel like there's no solution for the others...

I added the rep system based on request.

If someone wants to define the needs of more I'm open to making it happen if the code isn't going to require insane updating. It's not where what my product roadmap is focused on but after 8 years of doing vB mods I realize it's just as much about what you want as what I think makes sense.

So whether it's credits, experience (never heard of this one, yikes!) or some other system let me know how you see the two working together for you and ideally for others. What should be an option, what should just happen. I'll let you know if I can support it.

[Ted S]

I should also mention that this mod wasn't ever intended to give a "reward" for good rated posts... That people are doing this is a great incentive and something I do like a lot. It gives a lot more reason for people to adopt the feature but it's also working with stuff I just don't know. Hence why it wasn't done on day one.

Just some context for ya...

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by trotskid

When it doesn?t have no voting appears like this: This post has been ranked 0.00 out of 10 with 0.00 votes, and always with decimal instead of integers numbers when it ?s not necessary.

How about...

$post[avgrank] = number_format($post[avgrank], 2);
$post[totalrank] = number_format($post[totalrank], 2);

[scabbed]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Use the attached version.

thanks Ted, working perfect now

[columbusgeek]

Hi Ted. Thanks for the great response. Everything made perfect sense.

I was under the impression none of the "rewards for doing good things" type systems where able to be used with this mod. If vBCredits can thanks to CheeseGrits, well then I have egg on my face. I dug for a few hours and dint see that. I'll look some more now that I have some direction.

As for vBExperience.
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=199556
It was actually mod of the month in 08. I think it has some legs and is really giving the other systems a run.

Thanks for the mod and letting me know your thoughts.

[columbusgeek]

I just found CheeseGrits plugin.
http://www.vbcredits.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2556

I don't have time to test it right now, but looking forward to digging into it in the next few days.

[tpearl5]

Originally Posted by columbusgeek

As I read it there really is no reward other then a user getting higher rep. A few people have suggested it in this thread but with a less then exuberant replies from you Ted. Hooking into vbCredits, vbExperience, vBPlaza, etc would push this mod into a even more useful realm.

Here's how to get it to work with vbPlaza:
http://www.vbplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?p=6359

I'm currently using this one of my sites with great success so far.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by columbusgeek

I just found CheeseGrits plugin.
http://www.vbcredits.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2556

I don't have time to test it right now, but looking forward to digging into it in the next few days.

Just realized this isn't in the main post... I will be updating to make this more findable.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by tpearl5

Ted - any word on adding a notification for users that have posts chosen as helpful answers?

Give the attached plugin a shot.

Note... This is code is NOT FULLY TESTED. Please use on a dev server or prepare to uninstall.

Note... This will update your existing user table structure to add a field to track unread helpfulanswer notices. Installing may take a minute.