Add-On Releases - [AJAX] Helpful Answers - Allow users to rate individual posts

Helpful Answers has been used to record over 6 MILLION times on more than 2,000 forums. If you're not using HA your users are looking for it!

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 to rate individual posts as either helpful or not allowing future visitors to understand the value of each post.

Designed to be flexible, HA has over 30 configurable settings:

• Use image or text ratings AJAX or traditional links.
• Offer yes/no or scaled 1-10 point ranking.
• Turn off negative ratings for a positive only system.
• Decide which forums are open for helpful answer ratings.
• Audit the system and identify top users and potential abusers.
• Ban specific members from using the system.
• Customize the message shown after a post is rated.
• Show a page with the top helpful posts.
• Show rating stats on a user's profile.
• Hide posts that rate "too low"
• Template driven so you can customize it all for 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.

Modification Installation [Must Read]:

Step 1: Upload the addon files found in the upload/ folder to your forum directory
Step 2: Install the plugin through your vB Administration area
Step 3: Configure settings & enable the mod in individual forums

You must configure settings & enable forums before voting will show up.
Anonymous Stats Tracking (optional):

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. You can disable this through the admin.

Mod Philosophy -- Drive Your Own Success:

All of my mods are inspired by my work in digital marketing and are designed to drive registrations, interaction or other engagement activities the core platform does not address.

Each is designed to fit a general need by providing a starting point but it's on you to decide how to make things work to their best possible outcome. Feel free to suggest what you'd like to see next but don't wait to have what everyone else has; figure out what your forum needs and customize away.

[penmai.com]

Thank you for your immediate reply.

Can you tell me, whats the exact code i have to change, to get the feature?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by penmai.com

Thank you for your immediate reply.

Can you tell me, whats the exact code i have to change, to get the feature?

In the xml file there's an existing set of functions that check for a user's rights to vote in the hook postbit_display_complete. A very similar routine exists in the rate function of helpfulanswers.php. You'll want to change both so only approved users see the option to vote on the frontend and so that no one can trick a vote in on the backend.

Beyond that I can't teach you how to code but there are many great resources out there that will... Start hacking and searching, that's the best way to learn.

[Impromptu]

Originally Posted by Eole

Hi,

When someone vote on a post, the thread appears as many time as there are posts that have been voted (+ or -). Who to avoid this duplicates ?

Thanks.

First of all thanks for the Mod.

I have the same problem as Eole in that while it works fine, it replicates the thread like three times. If I switch disable Helpful Answers the replicated threads are deleted.

I read the suggestions but really dont get it.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Impromptu

First of all thanks for the Mod.

I have the same problem as Eole in that while it works fine, it replicates the thread like three times. If I switch disable Helpful Answers the replicated threads are deleted.

I read the suggestions but really dont get it.

He stopped responding [can't say I blame him] so we never sorted out the issue for his forum... Back to square one.

Take a look at the table helpfulpost and a post that shows up multiple times. There should be just one entry per postid.

I.E. SELECT COUNT(*) FROM helpfulpost WHERE postid = '12345';

[Impromptu]

Originally Posted by Ted S

He stopped responding [can't say I blame him] so we never sorted out the issue for his forum... Back to square one.

Take a look at the table helpfulpost and a post that shows up multiple times. There should be just one entry per postid.

I.E. SELECT COUNT(*) FROM helpfulpost WHERE postid = '12345';

Hey Ted,

First of all thanks for the response.

Unfortunately, I'm a layman in I.T and have no idea what you mean in terms of table?

I might just try to find an easier Mod, which is ashame as I 'liked' this one

But thanks again for responding

[Ted S]

Gotcha... Well best of luck with your site!

[Eole]

Originally Posted by Ted S

And when you disable just this mod that goes away, correct?

Hi Ted S,

Yes, when disabling the mod, everything looks right.

I found the options that generate duplicate entries in the forum page :
On your forum, when activating "Order By Helpful Answers Votes?" (set to yes), every thread that have multiple post with a note, the thraed appears multiple times in the thread page of the forum.

I have disable this option at this time (not useful for my forum).

I have an other question : did you think about sorting posts in a thread depending on the number of positive/negative vote. this could give users show rapidly the bests answers (when multiple) just below the question. I'm just working on it, but maybe not with the best way than you.

Bye.

[faisaly.com]

Hello all .
There is a nasty bug with this hack .
If someone tries to copy the link of a yes/no button which is used for rating while he is logged in , and then logs out and enters it in a browser, the rate gets accepted!!
(suppose the link to the yest button is like this : http://forum.ustmb.ir/helpfulanswers...id=5662&rank=1 , if you copy this to your address bar and press enter, the rate will be accepted! while you are not logged in at all!)
This causes mischievous users to abuse the system for giving positive or negative rates as they wish!
would someone please think about it ?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by faisaly.com

Hello all .
There is a nasty bug with this hack .
If someone tries to copy the link of a yes/no button which is used for rating while he is logged in , and then logs out and enters it in a browser, the rate gets accepted!!
(suppose the link to the yest button is like this : http://forum.ustmb.ir/helpfulanswers...id=5662&rank=1 , if you copy this to your address bar and press enter, the rate will be accepted! while you are not logged in at all!)
This causes mischievous users to abuse the system for giving positive or negative rates as they wish!
would someone please think about it ?

Interesting.... There's 5 of 6 different options that would stop this from happening like if you had a post minimum, votes per day, etc. but in the absence of those it looks like you are correct. And it's gone unnoticed for years too

Simple fix with the attached xml and voting script.

I'll test around more this evening and clean it up for a release.

[Ted S]

HA version 2.4.2 has been released this evening to fix two small but important bugs.

The first resolves issues where selected voting types should show strange characters in the ajax posted votes [i.e. %1$s voted...]. This changes phrases only.

The second and more devious issue was spotted by faisaly.com in which users could copy a vote link, logout and use it multiple times to game the system. Forums with minimum post counts and voting limits were not impacted but given the potential impact it's suggested all forums update.

Changes are made to the XML file and /upload/helpfulanswers.php only.

No templates were modified.