Trader Ratings v1.2.0

Trader Ratings - A user feedback hack
Copyright ?2004 Jason Rabel, All Rights Reserved.
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Latest TR Verson: 1.2.0
vB Versions: 3.0.0 - 3.0.9
Author: Jason Rabel
Contact: PM me here, I'll respond.
Site: EXTREME Overclocking
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Updates:
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1.2.0 - September 4, 2004
- Added Trader Ratings Stats Page (finally!)
- Added PM notification when someone receives feedback
- Changed how positive feedback percentage score is calculated (bugfix)
- Ability to "close" the Trader Ratings pages (for maintainence or whatever) - TRATING_CLOSED
- Ability to set the URL field when submitting feedback to required or optional - TRATING_REQ_URL

1.1.0 - June 7, 2004
- Added time-based user edit/delete abilities, set via TRATING_UEDIT constant in traderratings.php file
- Userdate field is now an int field to be consistent with vBulletin
- Userrating field changed to tinyint to save space
- Fixed timeframes for showing historical ratings
- Made some various code consolidation
- Added missing ".TABLE_PREFIX." statement
- Templates.txt file shows code for postbit & MEMBERINFO, with conditional examples
- All 3 templates changed heavily
- Added some more phrases & fixed missing phrases

1.0.1 - June 2, 2004
- Fixed a "divide by zero" display error
- Postbit template fixed so guests do not have a trader rating

1.0.0 - June 1, 2004
- Initial Public Release

Description:
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Trader Ratings has evolved from my vB2 Buy/Sell/Trade User Rating System. This is a rating system for when members buy / sell / trade items from each other (presumably on a FS section of your forum). It is based on the honor system since there is no way to truly tell if they did engage in a transaction. (But I'm working on a way to fix that.) Trader Ratings came about because it was a pain to try and maintain a single thread listing good / bad traders and so far has worked out quite well.

Features:
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? Rate another member: Positive / Negative / Neutral
? Specify Buyer, Seller, or Trade
? Leave comments about the deal
? Records date when rating created
? Specify a URL to the deal
? Display ratings over time
? Filter based on Buyer/Seller/Trade/or feedback they left for others
? Users can edit/delete ratings left for others (time based limitation)
? Admins & Mods can edit/delete anyone's ratings (just incase)
? Stats page showing best & worst rated members, and recent ratings
? PM notification when a person is rated

Basic Info:
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I haven't written a FAQ or any real documentation yet, but the way the system works is very simple. The only part that might confuse someone is that the Feedback Score is based only on UNIQUE members. Also, there are simple checks in place to make sure they actually do select proper info and enter a comment. A user is not able to rate themself (obviously). Permissions for viewing / rating are similar to standard forum viewing / posting permissions. Also it checks to make sure users exist and all that good stuff.

Installation Info:
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This hack is very simply to implement requiring only:
? 1 new file
? 5 new templates / 2-3 template changes (navbar, posbit/postbit_legacy, MEMBERINFO, memberlist_resultsbit)
? 52 new phrases
? 1 new DB table / 1 table DB change & index

An install/upgrade PHP file is included to do all the template/phrase/DB stuff, so basically you run that, upload the file, and edit your postbit template. BAM!

Screen Shots / Demos:
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See Screenshots below, or you can view them on my forums: My Trader Rating Page

Standard Disclaimer:
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BACKUP YOUR DATABASE & FILES BEFORE IMPLEMENTING THIS HACK!!!

Forums Using This Hack:
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EXTREME Overclocking Forums
i-Club -- Forums
Accord Tuner
NSX Prime
Honda-Acura.net
Guns Network
PimpRig

(PM me your forum if you want me to add you to the list)

Donations:
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This hack will always be free, however your donations are kindly accepted and will help towards further development. If you donate, please leave me some info (either your forum site or username at vB.org) so that I can thank you.


Plans For Future Releases:
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? rebuttal / followup comments
? item description (possibly instead of thread url)
? button on thread that buyer/seller clicks to tie the transaction to two people

[Ted S]

Jason, thanks for the hard work. Has any headway been made to verrifying or at least preventing abuse (i.e. the ability to restrict users to leaving feedback only if they have X posts or have been registered for X time)? Thanks again!

[eoc_Jason]

oldfan - There has been some debate on the actual usefulness of a "bad traders" list on the stats page. Generally after a person reaches -1 (on their first deal) they are no longer seen or heard from.

Ted S - You can modify the templates & PHP file quite easily to restrict based on whatever criteria you want. For instance, my FS/WTB forum is only visible by a certain user group, which that user group is auto-promoted when a person reaches 100 posts. So basically I modified my templates and files to only show ratings for people in that group, and only that group is allowed to rate people. I believe I included some basic instructions in one of the text files.

Anyhow, I'm going to be out of town tomorrow. Hopefully I can button things up and get it packaged together on Wednesday. There's not as many features as I would have liked to incorporate, but it's better than nothing right now...

[Freezerator]

Looks great. This stats are also perfect, maybe an option to view all members, page per page.

[Ted S]

eoc_Jason,
Good point! I've been using some simple template mods to require a min post count which seems to have improved the quality of the system. I actually just integrated photopost classifieds so now I get to figure out how to add this to that

[the wiz]

So no one knows why my board is doning this?

[eoc_Jason]

Well, that's kind of why there is the memberlist built into vB, and also the member search function. Just listing people with ratings wouldn't bee too helpful, for instance, my forum has over 400 people rated... at 20 per page that's over 20 pages (and growing)...

Originally Posted by Freezerator

Looks great. This stats are also perfect, maybe an option to view all members, page per page.

[eoc_Jason]

If you installed it without modifying anything then it should work perfectly... Did you make any template changes, or modifications to the php file?

Originally Posted by the wiz

So no one knows why my board is doning this?

[the wiz]

Originally Posted by eoc_Jason

If you installed it without modifying anything then it should work perfectly... Did you make any template changes, or modifications to the php file?

I installed an extra style since i first installed the hack. I ran the upgrade thing after I found out about the problem (when me and another user went to exchange feedback) but it didn't fix the problem.

[eoc_Jason]

Ran what upgrade thing? You will have to be more specific. If you don't have any real data in the system, you might want to consider manually removing the templates/tables/phrases and re-installing the hack from scratch. It's really hard to diagnose these kind of problems without being able to see how everything is configured.

On another note, I was thinking about adding little stars, reflecting certain groups of positive scores (like eBay does). It really doesn't serve much of a purpose though.

Anyhow, I'm still working on the stats page, I still don't have it how I like it. That's basically the holdup for v1.2.0

[Polo]

Will install this later on