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.

[EagleNick]

It doesn't seem to be awarding reputation points for marking a post as "helpful". I have ensured my settings are set correctly.
Is there a way to check and see if is indeed working properly?

Related but different: Does rebuilding reputation via the Maintenance manager also factor in 'helpful' posts? Also, with the Post Thanks mod, I can see in the Reputation Comments manager when a post has been thanked, and users can see it in their UserCP as well in the reputation section; does this mod include similar functionality?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by EagleNick

It doesn't seem to be awarding reputation points for marking a post as "helpful". I have ensured my settings are set correctly.
Is there a way to check and see if is indeed working properly?

Are you using any rep related mods?

Originally Posted by EagleNick

Related but different: Does rebuilding reputation via the Maintenance manager also factor in 'helpful' posts?

No. Reputation does not seed back into helpful answer ratings.

Originally Posted by EagleNick

Also, with the Post Thanks mod, I can see in the Reputation Comments manager when a post has been thanked, and users can see it in their UserCP as well in the reputation section; does this mod include similar functionality?

There is an admin log for all helpful answer ratings. There is not a user log to see who has rated their post.

[EagleNick]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Are you using any rep related mods?

Nope.

Originally Posted by Ted S

No. Reputation does not seed back into helpful answer ratings.

So if I were to rebuild reputation, all of the points accrued by posts marked as helpful would be essentially lost - permanently?

Originally Posted by Ted S

There is an admin log for all helpful answer ratings. There is not a user log to see who has rated their post.

Can this be turned into a feature suggestion, to work just like the Post Thanks hack?


And thank you for the prompt response; it's something that not too many coders offer anymore.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by EagleNick

So if I were to rebuild reputation, all of the points accrued by posts marked as helpful would be essentially lost - permanently?

Not sure why you would think that would happen. The two systems do not overlap so rebuilding one will not reset the other.

Originally Posted by EagleNick

Can this be turned into a feature suggestion, to work just like the Post Thanks hack?

Please send me a link or image of what you're thinking of so I can see how this mod would produce something similar.

Originally Posted by EagleNick

And thank you for the prompt response; it's something that not too many coders offer anymore.

I do my best as do many coders but you have to forgive us, there's a lot of demand and the pay stinks.

[Ted S]

And for the rep system, I'll post an updated script that lets you debug.

[EagleNick]

Ted, to follow up, this definitely isn't working properly.

- I checked my profile and have had my posts marked as helpful 14 times:

Nick's Posts have been rated good 14 out of 14 times.

- I checked my UserCP and have 46 reputation points.

- I checked the Reputation Comments log in the AdminCP for all reputation given to me. On three occasions, I have been reputed earning me 2, 15, and 19 points. Adding in the fact that all users start out with 10 points, this equates to 46. Therefore, I am not earning any reputation points by having my posts marked as helpful.

- So maybe my settings aren't configured properly. You tell me:
1- http://i475.photobucket.com/albums/r.../screen1-1.png
2- http://i475.photobucket.com/albums/r.../screen2-1.png

I am baffled as to why this isn't working properly.

Another issue we're having is that post authors cannot see the rating on their posts. I have self-rating disabled, but shouldn't I be able to see, "2 of 2 users found this post helpful" on my own posts? Or is that not a feature?

[Ted S]

EagleNick,

I'm not sure what's going wrong so let's try debugging.

Please install the attached version and try repping a post. You should see some new text with debug messages.

Copy this and revert to your current version of the addon.

We can go from there.

[EagleNick]

This is the only text that came up (in addition to the "thank you for rating" etc.): no reuptation...

[Ted S]

Ok. That means the code was not activated. I'm on the road but will provide next steps asap

[EagleNick]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Ok. That means the code was not activated. I'm on the road but will provide next steps asap

Great, Ted - I really appreciate your assistance.