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.

[kawe]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Having a query on every post of a thread is a terrible idea that would add huge load to servers.

In 2.0 I will address this issue with some additional updates to the data structure but won't be releasing that version until I get enough new features to warrant it.

i have forum using Post Thank You Hack
and is okay not make my forum slowly


Teds U the best

[hubie]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Yes but it will require a code edit to product-helpful_answers.xml as follows:

Find:

if($this->registry->options['helpans_hidefirst'] AND $this->post['postid'] == $this->thread['firstpostid']){
      $show['helpfulanswer'] = false;
      $show['rate_helpfulanswer'] = false;
     }

Change to:

if($this->post['postid'] != $this->thread['firstpostid']){
      $show['helpfulanswer'] = false;
      $show['rate_helpfulanswer'] = false;
     }

I will try that. Thanks for the fast reply and support :up:

[sockwater]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Having a query on every post of a thread is a terrible idea that would add huge load to servers.

Should be able to do it with one query per page view. Once you have all the postids for the posts that will be displayed on the page, then pull all votes for all posts at once and sort them out in php. (If you're interested in implementing it )

Something along these lines. (Code untested, likely has typos)

PHP Code:

// an array of postids for all posts shown on this page of thread
$postids;

$votes = $db->query_read("
    SELECT pv_vote.*, user.username
    FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "pv_vote AS pv_vote
    LEFT JOIN " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user AS user ON (user.userid = pv_vote.userid)
    WHERE pv_vote.postid IN (" . implode(',', $postids) . ")
");
$postvotes = array();
while ($vote = $db->fetch_array($votes))
{
    if (!isset($postvotes["$vote[postid]"]))
    {
        $postvotes["$vote[postid]"] = array(
            'totalscore' => 0,
            'votecount'  => 0,
            'votes'      => array(),
        );
    }
    $postvotes["$vote[postid]"]['totalscore'] += $vote['vote'];
    ++$postvotes["$vote[postid]"]['votecount'];
    $postvotes["$vote[postid]"]['votes'][] = array(
        'username' => $vote['username'],
        'userid'   => $vote['userid'],
        'vote'     => $vote['vote'],
    );
} 


[Ted S]

Thanks sockwater however I don't need the IDs of the posts in the thread but rather of each post from each user who has posted. There is a pretty simple query for this but it involves restructing the vote data which is why I am holding off on it until a bigger update.

But I am very amped about adding this... think it will be a great data point for people's postbit block.

[kawe]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Thanks sockwater however I don't need the IDs of the posts in the thread but rather of each post from each user who has posted. There is a pretty simple query for this but it involves restructing the vote data which is why I am holding off on it until a bigger update.

But I am very amped about adding this... think it will be a great data point for people's postbit block.

yeah this is a good feature
coz, people can see how many have GOOD REP and BAD REP on all their post
thanks teds for next update ... i cant wait hehehehe

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by kawe

yeah this is a good feature
coz, people can see how many have GOOD REP and BAD REP on all their post
thanks teds for next update ... i cant wait hehehehe

It's on the to do list.

[SnakeV]

Originally Posted by kawe

yeah this is a good feature
coz, people can see how many have GOOD REP and BAD REP on all their post
thanks teds for next update ... i cant wait hehehehe

The idea of kawe is really very good, would be great if is possible to put it in the postbit below post count the total of points that the user have.

This option will be great especially with the scaled 1-10 point ranking, for example if a user send 10 points and other 5 points the points can be counted and display it in the postbit with:
Points: 15.

Thank you Ted your plugins are great

Question:
It is possible to put the possibility for the users to rating the thread (first post).

(I use this hack for an especial use, not for an answer forum).

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by SnakeV

The idea of kawe is really very good, would be great if is possible to put it in the postbit below post count the total of points that the user have.

This option will be great especially with the scaled 1-10 point ranking, for example if a user send 10 points and other 5 points the points can be counted and display it in the postbit with:
Points: 15.

Thank you Ted your plugins are great

This feature will just be a variable that you can stick anywhere in the postbit you like.

Originally Posted by SnakeV

It is possible to put the possibility for the users to rating the thread (first post).

(I use this hack for an especial use, not for an answer forum).

That's a different mod as the ratings are entirely different BUT I was alpha testing it last night.

[Megatr0n]

Ted, I have installed this plugin but I can't find where you rate them inside a thread?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Megatr0n

Ted, I have installed this plugin but I can't find where you rate them inside a thread?

You don't... This is all post rating.

Thread ratings will be soon and a different mod.