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

[Spinball]

One point Jason. If the person given a rating is now deleted, there are empty brackets in the rating screen. Perhaps you could put 'Guest' in there instead? Or whatever the default is for deleted users?

[Beermonster]

unbelievable easy to install

[high]* Beermonster clicks install[/high]

[eoc_Jason]

Spinball - It would probably be wiser to edit your postbit and add an <if condition=> for a guest to not display a trader rating link.

I'll make that correction in the code, and also I need to fix a divide by zero that someone posted above. So 1.01 should be released within the next hour or so.

Originally Posted by Spinball

One point Jason. If the person given a rating is now deleted, there are empty brackets in the rating screen. Perhaps you could put 'Guest' in there instead? Or whatever the default is for deleted users?

[eoc_Jason]

Okay, v1.01 has been posted. I sent out an email to the list. There are also all the intructions in the readme for upgrading from 1.0->1.01

Anyone who still can't get their TR to work, please PM me or post again with your specific problem, I'm not sure who has fixed their issues and who hasn't in this thread.

[Odoin]

This might have been asked... Also this might be simple or hard but I do not understand VB enough to know what it will take.... I want to display the user rating only in the forums that have items for sale or wanted.... Right now it displays in every forum... (postbit). Any ideas?

Thank you for your time.

[Spinball]

Hi Jason,
can I bring the other issue we were discussing by PM into the public arena incase there are other people in the same position?
Basically before we installed Jason's excellent hack for vB2, we manually kept records of trader ratings.
Our users naturally want to keep these points.
In the vB2 system, I just incremented their points in the user table the once and that was all that was needed.
Now, however, with the groovy list of ratings, I think an explanation as to where the extra points are from is neccessary.
To test this I have created a dummy entry in the rating table assigning 20 points to myself with the explanation that they were carried over from the manual system.
These points are shown in the posts for users - (excellent!) but not, however, in the ratings page for that user.
Now I appreciate that this might be difficult to achieve with the extra data like 'members who left a positive' and 'members whi left a negative' type statistics.
But would it be possible to make the feedback score at the top be

SELECT sum(userrating) FROM user_rate_trade WHERE rateduser = the_user_id

[eoc_Jason]

One issue that comes up when you manually changed it is, you don't know how many were postitive, and how many were negative (or even neutral), nor do you know how many were from unique members. You just have an arbitrary number that sums up to something. Your solution is to simply take the difference of what is stored in the trade table and the rating you created, and create only all pos/neg entries to balance them out.

In all honesty I think it would just be better to drop what numbers you manually changed, and allow users to either re-rate whatever they can truly remember, or just let them live with their new (err, old) score and it can build up if they buy or sell more stuff. I don't consider it a life-altering event if a few points were lost.

However, since you seem intent on keeping their new numbers, your first SQL query that you PMed me will give you the score difference between the new and old. Then for each rating you will need to create the corresponding amount of rating rows in the trade table, which you can use either userid 0 (it should display a blank username) or 1 (which should be yours).

The whole point of the new ratings system is to display mostly by unique members, as to not over inflate a users rating (eBay, among many other sites and software packages do the same). I think it is more correct to see that X person has had X postitive feedback from unique people, rather than the same number from a single person. Changing the feedback score to not count by unique members is not difficult, however in the long run I don't think it should be done just for the sake of the few ratings that had to be manually inserted.

But, to answer your question, with v1.01 you will need to edit the traderratings.php file in two places to adjust the counting method. First at the very bottom in the tratings_user function, this is what recalculates and updates the rating score in the user tabel whenever a rating is added or deleted. Second is in the do=view section near the top, it's similar to the code in the function (In v1.02 I've actually changed it some so that it uses the same function.) But you can basically remove the "DISTINCT" clause out and that will count all entried, not members. But then you should probably change the text on the page accordingly since the pos/neg totals will no longer be by members either. (and the All positive feedback received part will be redudant).

Like I said before, I think it would probably be best just to drop the manual edits and let people gripe and moan for a while until they get over it, so that your ratings will be consistent with everyone elses and you won't have to always hack up code every time I post a new release (since I'm planning on adding a lot more features, I don't know how many will interfere with your plans for how you want it to function).

[eoc_Jason]

Oh yeah, I forgot to ask you guys, but would you be interested in me adding the ability for users to rate based on usergroups? It's not terribly hard. I actually use it on my site currently because new users can't use/see the FS/WTB section so it only makes sense for them not to be able to rate people.

[lifesourcerec]

For those with the

PHP Code:

Trader Ratings: () 


issue, try logging out of the forum and re-signing in. Usually works for oue users.

[lifesourcerec]

Dunno if this is already a feature or not, but how can you make:

Specific URL mandatory and somehow make it where that a link a\can only be used twice (one time for each involved).