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.

[Quantnet]

Some feedback after installing 1.3.4

Reading the installation instruction for the template edit,

In the search box enter "$template_hook[postbit_controls]".
Add the code $helpful_answers directly above this line.

This should be below instead of above

When I use above, it will split the Thanks button from Post Thank You mod which I reported a few pages back.

Now, using below, it is fine.

Also, when i set it up not to allow poster to rate their own posts, beneath those own posts, there is a line without the rate part.

[Razasharp]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Thanks for the comments Razasharp.

A few members have asked about impact on the Rep. system so I will be updating the addon early next week to include an optional tie-in. I like your ideas but they may be a bit server intensive... how about a positive point (or points, you'd set the scale) for each vote they get [negative for a negative vote].

Could you do it so that it uses the givers 'rep power' ? And so gives the person receiving the points what they would have got had the person used the rep system instead?

Or how about a simple 'halving' or the givers rep power - so there is still value in the rep system too?

Thanks for considering these ideas Ted! Always interested in stuff you do/say. (You know me from Taz under a different handle - hint, I always used to tell you to start a blog!) :up:

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Quantnet.org

Some feedback after installing 1.3.4

Reading the installation instruction for the template edit,

In the search box enter "$template_hook[postbit_controls]".
Add the code $helpful_answers directly above this line.

This should be below instead of above

When I use above, it will split the Thanks button from Post Thank You mod which I reported a few pages back.

Now, using below, it is fine.

Also, when i set it up not to allow poster to rate their own posts, beneath those own posts, there is a line without the rate part.

Thanks for the install feedback, I'll change the guide!

As for the blank link; that's caused because there is no data to show in the box as no one else has rated the thread. Rather than adding yet another conditional I've left the line showing.... once someone rates a thread this will look better. Of course the number of posts a user has made is fairly small compared to those of a whole site so this will rarely show.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Razasharp

Could you do it so that it uses the givers 'rep power' ? And so gives the person receiving the points what they would have got had the person used the rep system instead?

Or how about a simple 'halving' or the givers rep power - so there is still value in the rep system too?

Thanks for considering these ideas Ted! Always interested in stuff you do/say. (You know me from Taz under a different handle - hint, I always used to tell you to start a blog!) :up:

Interesting ideas, I'll gather some more feedback and work off of what everyone wants.

And hello.

[Razasharp]

Thanks Ted, I'm sure whatever you decide on will be kick ass

Also, something a little related, have you thought about thread rating in a similar manner? (Based on people's rep power) - perfect way to highlight really useful threads, and because it uses the rep system's rep power, you know it can't get 'spammed' (so multiple accounts are not anything to worry about). Would compliment this hack perfectly - and further promotes the value (like this hack+rep-tie-in) of being a 'good' member in our communities; so good behaviour/interaction is rewarded by more say and influence.

[Ryuk]

great mod, I hope in a future time, one doesnt needs to do the template edits :3 ill save bookmark this mod for future updates

[Ted S]

Thank you for the comments.

The variable modification is intentional as not every user wants the options to appear at the same place.

[mad@Max]

Ted S, can you make some variable calculated the difference between number of good post and bad post, like

PHP Code:

$post['overallrank'] = $post['goodrank'] - $post['badrank']; 


?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by mad@Max

Ted S, can you make some variable calculated the difference between number of good post and bad post, like

PHP Code:

$post['overallrank'] = $post['goodrank'] - $post['badrank']; 


?

Definitely. I've added this to my source code so when 1.3.5 comes out it will be there. It may be a few days before I release that however as I just put out a big launch this morning and don't have any other minor updates to necessitate a release.

In the meantime you can hardcode this to the plugin file as you know or just use the 3 existing variables, goodrank, badrank and total rank for display purposes.

[mad@Max]

I better wait the new version