hugapitbull said:

I'm really surprised the forum software developers haven't jumped on the 'like' bandwagon.

Ahh, but they have! And they've been doing it longer than FaceBorg. At least the aewsome team behind SimplePress has.

Like I said, we can like enable post rating for these forums with either a thumbs up/down or five-star system. The former would act like a Facebook Like, with the added capability to dislike a post, affecting the aggregate total of likes for any given posts. You like?

Read on for complete details* or give it a try by visiting this topic in our test site Tech Support forum.  NOTE: Newer Tripawds members may not be users of that site and may need to register to use the rating system. Older members who may have changed their password may need to retrieve their old password to log-in the test site forums. (Use the forgot password link! Multiple failed log-in attempts can block block you from the server.)

Another thing to note: Check out the test site Tech Support forum topic view and notice the aggregate like totals we have the option of displaying – useful perhaps, if people use the feature, but yet additional db queries every time the page loads.

So… like, we like tried this long ago and nobody liked it. Or if they did, they didn't like, use it. If enough members like, like this whole like idea, we may like, enable likes and see what it's like. BTW: We have the option to enable rating permissions only on specific forums, or for specific user groups.

All feedback is, like, welcome.

*Post Ratings Support

Simple:Press supports the ability to allow users to rate posts. The posts can be rated by users with proper permissions. The ratings engine does record the IP for guests and USER ID for members when a rating is made in an effort to prevent multiple ratings by the same person. It should be noted that this is not a fail safe method for guests as many ISPs assign users different IPs at different times.

To enable post ratings, check the "Enable Post Ratins" box. Permission for members/guests to rate posts is provided with the "Can rate posts" permission that can be applied to permissions set and then user groups.

Please Note: Once post ratings are enabled on the option panel you will need to visit each forum you wish ratings to be applied to and turn on post ratings there. This is not globally turned on by enabling this option. Go to the Forums admin menu, and edit each forum you wish to allow ratings for.

When enabling post ratings, you have two methods of ratings that may be used to rate posts.

Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down

When utilizing the Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down rating method, a forum visitor with post rating permission can either vote up (Thumbs Up) or vote down (Thumbs Down) the post. A Thumbs Up vote adds +1 to the post rating score displayed. A Thumbs Down vote adds -1 to the post rating score displayed. This rating system is consistent with the reddit voting system.

Stars

When utilizing the Stars rating method, a forum visitor with post rating permission can rate a post with a score of 1 – 5 stars. Each star rating is added to the current star sum. The post rating score displaye is then the star sum divided by the number of votes. The number of stars displayed for a score is displayed in integer stars rounded down, but the score itself is shown to 1 decimal place.

*** WARNING ***

The desired rating system is selected via the "Select Post Rating Style" radio button. However, once you select a rating system and you have started accumlating votes, you cannot change post ratings style without a complete reset of the post rating data system. When attempting to change the post ratings style, you will be prompted to confirm the changed setting and your database will be purged of post rating data. This is because of the inherent difference in post rating score between the two systems.

Thanks for the feedback. Anypawdy else?

I can see where this is headed… if we implement the 1 we'll be getting monkeydogs hitting -1 on every post!