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.

[Simon Lloyd]

Well Ted, it's great of you to offer to do that, here's my list
1. The possibility to display a league table of members that have had their posts marked as helpful (say top 10 or 20).

2. Search facility in HA, as there are a lot of quality posts it would be great to be able to narrow them down to the particular help you are looking for.

3. View all HA by member - some folk like answers by a certain member, it would be great if they could pick their name (say from the league table) and see all their helpful answers (in the mod "Post Thanks" in the users public profile you have a link to find all posts the user has thanked and all posts they have been thanked in)

4. Perhaps have a thread marked, highlighted or displayed that has had the most HA's within it as a "Hot thread"...etc

5. Provide Admin/Mod ability to modify HA's rating in the post (some do not deserve the rating they get either because it is mallicious or the user doesn't understand it's use properly.

[Spinball]

Thanks for your eply to my question.

Originally Posted by Ted S

Helpful Answers Users -

It's been a long time since this mod had a major update and I want to see what, if any, features would make it better for you. Is there a different way you'd like to see HA work? Another voting or reporting option? More controls? More interactions?

Share your thoughts for the next update!

Firstly kudos for appreciating that there is value in developing vB3 mods. Lots of sites are still with vb3, as are we at 3.8.2 (and we're never upgrading to vb4).

Please forgive me if my suggestions are already included but I haven't tried this mod, so I'm not familiar with all its features.
The name of this mod implies that it's designed primarily to help readers locate the best answer to a question. The best answer indicated by the number of positive votes it gets.
But what if the thread isn't one asking a question? But sharing advice or just chatting?
If people then vote to indicate they like posts generally, there is some overlap with the Thanks mod.
So how about having some kind of tick box in the New Thread form for the OP to indicate that he is asking for advice or help, which when ticked, enables this mod for the thread.
Maybe 'If you would like the community to vote for the best answer, tick this box'.
Otherwise, threads would then appear as they do normally.

I like the idea of displaying the best answer directly below the question (like Yahoo Answers), as that is the most useful for people reading threads later. Or at least a link to it.
But how does the system (or who) decides which is the best or most definitive answer?
What happens if one reply gets lots of votes but someone then posts a better answer? Can people change their votes? Do you restrict plus votes to one post per thread? If someone votes for a second post in a thread, does their previous post get deleted?

[Simon Lloyd]

Spinball, i'm kinda with you, i have many many threads where the OP has thanked almost every post so i guess what would be great is:

If a user has already rated a members post (Post "A") as helpful then that member subsequently posts an updated more helpful post (Post "B") and the user clicks that as helpful then the previous helpful mark should move from post "A" to post "B".

In the OPs eyes i guess every post is helpful if its positive but for those searching, the best solution is more helpful.

[Spinball]

Thanks, Simon.
With regard to choosing the best answer, should it be done automatically when the number of votes reaches a certain threshold?
On Yahoo answers I saw that a best answer was picked by someone. Do Yahoo allow certain special people to select the best answer?
If that functionality works, is it maybe worth thinking about allowing moderators to officially close the voting process and select a post as being the most useful?
One assumes that moderators will know the subject of the forum they moderate and are therefore qualified to decide when the best post has been made. Just a thought.

[Simon Lloyd]

Well i guess the "Best" answer is subjective, what may seem like the best answer to one may not be to another, don't you think moderators have enough to do without vetting every post that has a helpful answer rated?

For me, if the OP chooses his/her best answer (most helpful answer) then all is well, subsequent visitors to the post can choose which they feel is the best answer and there on in lies the rub, the best answer will be the one with the highest number of votes (HA clicks), getting a "Best" answer this way has to be the one with true value as it will have been rated by a wide and varied cross section of the voting public.

So, i guess if (hope Ted is watching ) a link appeared in the first post or next to the thread title to the post with the most HA clicks that would be good, although i think it would probably be prohibitive due to the number of queries.

[Spinball]

All good points. Though I'd speculate that in most circumstances the OP will not be qualified to pick which is the best answer, but instead trust in the community voters.

[TheLastSuperman]

More icons not just thumbs or arrows but a few more with a variety of colors... I'll do those!

Ted PM me w/ a "guesstimate" on when your planning for the update and I'll have them done beforehand .

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Simon Lloyd

Well i guess the "Best" answer is subjective, what may seem like the best answer to one may not be to another, don't you think moderators have enough to do without vetting every post that has a helpful answer rated?

For me, if the OP chooses his/her best answer (most helpful answer) then all is well, subsequent visitors to the post can choose which they feel is the best answer and there on in lies the rub, the best answer will be the one with the highest number of votes (HA clicks), getting a "Best" answer this way has to be the one with true value as it will have been rated by a wide and varied cross section of the voting public.

So, i guess if (hope Ted is watching ) a link appeared in the first post or next to the thread title to the post with the most HA clicks that would be good, although i think it would probably be prohibitive due to the number of queries.

Thinking of adding a master record per thread with the total votes, top voted post, etc. This will let you easily call out the "best" post.

Without this master it's just one query per thread view which isn't terrible if it's a useful feature for that forum.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by TheLastSuperman

More icons not just thumbs or arrows but a few more with a variety of colors... I'll do those!

Ted PM me w/ a "guesstimate" on when your planning for the update and I'll have them done beforehand .

Will do sir!

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Spinball

Thanks, Simon.
With regard to choosing the best answer, should it be done automatically when the number of votes reaches a certain threshold?
On Yahoo answers I saw that a best answer was picked by someone. Do Yahoo allow certain special people to select the best answer?
If that functionality works, is it maybe worth thinking about allowing moderators to officially close the voting process and select a post as being the most useful?
One assumes that moderators will know the subject of the forum they moderate and are therefore qualified to decide when the best post has been made. Just a thought.

Last I checked Yahoo Answers had a few options to close out an answer. The original poster can pick but votes kick in after so much time. Basicallty make up your mind quickly or we go to the crowd.

Forums are different as posts come in down the road so allowing it to always be votes has a nice benefit.

Any desire to close the thread after X votes or Y time to give more of an answer forum type feature?