Helpful Posts

#1: Post by HB » May 25th, 2018, 10:09 pm

Check it out! As announced in Summer of Code projects, HB has a summer intern, Nico:

He's finished his first project, the "Helpful posts" feature, based on the discussion in Time to revisit the "Like" button?:

Mark post as helpful, click the thumbs up. If you've accidentally marked a post as helpful, click it again.

The button is only shown for others' posts, i.e., you can't vote for your own post.

Once a post has accumulated a few helpful votes, a banner is shown along the bottom of the post. You can see the top 50 helpful posts here; click the "Show only mine" to filter out everyone else's topics (pro tip: It works as kind of a fast "bookmark" list).

See the banner below on this post. Initially it shows 1 star and "Helpful". With enough votes, it shows 2, 3, or 4 stars for "Quite Helpful", "Very Helpful", and "Extremely Helpful".

#2: Post by **sweaner** » May 26th, 2018, 11:51 am

Dan, this looks great. Is there a way to eliminate the need for the "you found this post helpful" page? Just change the plus to a minus without going to a new screen?

May 27th, 2018, 10:57 am

Nico said the same thing and we agreed it's kind of clunky. It required learning some JavaScript, but it's working now as you suggested.

#4: Post by **jbviau** » May 30th, 2018, 8:10 am

Thanks, guys. Very helpful.

May 30th, 2018, 10:32 am

You're welcome!

Nico pointed out a site that he frequents, 17th Shard. I really like some of the features in their forum. It has an upvoting system too. You can upvote a post and if it accumulates enough votes, it's "favorited" with a distinct marker in the upper-right of the post (looks like a bookmark... nice touch). They also have recognition of those who get upvoted -- your profile indicates if you "won the day" in votes. I don't want to encourage a contest, but it is nice to know who's earned community recognition. Ideas worth considering!

FYI, Nico has moved onto the newsletter feature. After that is a "wiki-fication" feature, which is much more involved that the prior two projects. That may not be finished before his internship runs out. We'll see. But if time allows, I'll ask him to create a way of displaying the helpful posts in a list. If anything, it would let you see what others thought was helpful without having to scan the forums.

#6: Post by HB (original poster) » June 3rd, 2018, 9:21 am

To enhance the helpfulness of the helpful posts, I've added a new listing: Helpful posts. It shows the posts garnering the most votes for being helpful; as an added bonus, you can filter the list to show only those you've voted on. With this option, your votes also act as a handy personal "bookmark list".

#7: Post by **robin416** » June 3rd, 2018, 9:50 am

High five on the new addition. Now it will be much easier to find those posts again that gave me ideas/information that I found useful.

#8: Post by **jbviau** » June 4th, 2018, 7:08 am

HB wrote:To enhance the helpfulness of the helpful posts, I've added a new listing: Helpful posts. It shows the posts garnering the most votes for being helpful; as an added bonus, you can filter the list to show only those you've voted on. With this option, your votes also act as a handy personal "bookmark list".

This is great. I'd like to be able to see who voted a given topic helpful somehow, if possible, since I value some opinions more highly than others. I know you don't want this to devolve into a popularity contest--just throwing it out there.

#9: Post by **BaristaBob** » June 4th, 2018, 7:21 am

HB wrote:Check it out! As announced in Summer of Code projects, HB has a summer intern, Nico:

I see he works in crayon. Couldn't tell from the pic whether he draws inside or outside the lines.

Is he old enough to drink coffee?

Seriously, well done so far...keep up the good work Nico!

June 4th, 2018, 8:32 am

jbviau wrote:I'd like to be able to see who voted a given topic helpful somehow...

If you're not logged in, it only shows how many people voted. If you're logged in, it shows the login name of the last 3 people who voted. That seems like a reasonable compromise (according to Nico, his favorite site doesn't show who "upvoted" at all).