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.

[Raptor]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Thanks for providing these. As an alternative to template changes they can simply be renamed to match the existing thumb icons.

no - it was the sizes that were changed as the image sizes were specified in the template.

[Ted S]

Actually there's a better way to reduce server load with this...

Open up the XML file and find:

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

Change that to:

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

Now only the first post will show ratings.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Raptor

no - it was the sizes that were changed as the image sizes were specified in the template.

My mistake! I'll have to make those variable defined if people continue adding images.

[Milez]

I love this mod but I would just like to echo these 3 suggestions as they are my only real problems:

1. For the layout, remove the "Post xxxxxin thread *threadtitle* and change it to "*threadtitle by *username*" linking to the post of course. I know this is possible with a few edits, but I think it gives a more friendly look to the page for users that you might want to consider.

2. Add a filter to the helpfulanswers.php page to allow users to either see the most helpfulanswers by either a time measure (last 24 hours, week, etc) or by a threshold of votes (only answers with 5 +'s or whatever.)

3. Right now the helpfulanswers.php page does not consider usergroup permissions. And while if someone clicks on a thread they can't access and that won't change, they do see the thread title, obviously if there is a private forum with sensitive info, this could be a problem. And I do realize that you can enable/disable on a per forum basis, but I really would like this enabled through out my forum.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Milez

1. For the layout, remove the "Post xxxxxin thread *threadtitle* and change it to "*threadtitle by *username*" linking to the post of course. I know this is possible with a few edits, but I think it gives a more friendly look to the page for users that you might want to consider.

Suggestion noted. Thanks (seriously)

Originally Posted by Milez

2. Add a filter to the helpfulanswers.php page to allow users to either see the most helpfulanswers by either a time measure (last 24 hours, week, etc) or by a threshold of votes (only answers with 5 +'s or whatever.)

Good ideas as well. I will have to look at the impact on load of each. I did play with the time limit before and stopped. Something to revist.

Originally Posted by Milez

3. Right now the helpfulanswers.php page does not consider usergroup permissions. And while if someone clicks on a thread they can't access and that won't change, they do see the thread title, obviously if there is a private forum with sensitive info, this could be a problem. And I do realize that you can enable/disable on a per forum basis, but I really would like this enabled through out my forum.

Absolutely. Never thought of this issue but it's very important. I'll see if I can get permissions built in smoothly.

[tpearl5]

FYI, anyone wanting this to work with vbplaza: http://www.vbplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?p=6359

[kawe]

how to make thumbs appear like this https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/attachmen...3&d=1235590687

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by kawe

how to make thumbs appear like this https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/attachmen...3&d=1235590687

Use the option you want from the vbulletin options page.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by tpearl5

FYI, anyone wanting this to work with vbplaza: http://www.vbplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?p=6359

Awesome. I'll see if I can get this integrated without breaking things for users without vbPlaza

[kawe]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Use the option you want from the vbulletin options page.

not work sir