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Combined Ratings & Reviews added to Detail page

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Combined Ratings & Reviews added to Detail page
Awhile ago, we talked about a ratings/review system, but I put it on hold pending the (at that time) new reviews system.

I did go ahead, and make an upgraded ratings program that counted votes, votes scores, and tracked who made the vote (oddly, it works similar to the ratings system, but without the graph <G>

What I'm doing now, on one of my sites, is trying to get an integrated ratings/review system, since I need people to comment and add to the listings. Let me explain my situtation and if it matches yours (like a documentation project) maybe this can help.

I am setting up a database for "alternative" properties of rocks, minerals, crystals, etc. The databases out there are maintained mostly on personal sites (or commercial sites trying to get you to buy thier currently in stock stuff) and they go up and down. There are already some great mineralogical databases out there, like Webmineral, so duplicating the "scientific" stuff is pointless <G.

But, since each material has so many "potential" interpretations, I wanted users to be able to add both a "rating" value with a comment, but also a "review" comment, and potentially a "helpfullness" rating. This dual rating starts to blur (but it goes back to another plugin I'm toying with, similar to a poll, but where you can select what criteria you want to rate a link on, (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=240182)).

I wanted their "reviews" to be additional data for the link, corrections, etc. (Maybe a flag for posting a REVIEW, CORRECTION, COMMENT, etc ???)

Anyway, the key here is that I want to merge the review and ratings system into one script, one concept.

The caveats of my programs are the same -- users must be logged in, and it will work with dynamic pages in perl. Whether it will work with php, non-logged in users or static pages is questionable (though static pages should work in *most* cases).

I'm willing to take suggestions at this point, 70% of this is written (either by me, or in the Reviews.pm already).

I need to hack this out in the next few days, before the site goes live.

Features:

1) combined rating (numerical) and reviews (textual) system
2) ability to list reviews on the detailed page
3) text of the review can be listed, or can be linked to.
4) users able to see their review up top, and edit/alter it (if allowed) (I hated digging for my post on another system)
5) _potential_ to allow users to add another review after x-days, or to append to their previous. (this goes back to an earlier system, almost a year ago). ie: ONE review, or HISTORICAL reviews.
6) graphical representation of ratings
7) _potential_ multiple criteria to rate on (numerically), ONE overall REVIEW. (multiple reviews would start to beg for multiple tables, and data normalization, etc.... I'm not going there yet... I have to do this in the next 2-3 days!)


If you think about the open source documentation project, as it was on perl.com (?) where people can add "tidbits" to the end of a listing, and eventually those tidbits get incorporated, bug fixed, or whatever (left alone? <G>).


PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.
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Re: [pugdog] Combined Ratings & Reviews added to Detail page In reply to
Ok,

Asked to generalize it a bit to latch on to both Links and Users tables. This will ad a few days, as there is some logic that needs to take care of, and as soon as User ratings are allowed, someone is going to ask for Hot/Not functionality, so I will build that in from the git go. Hot/Not will use 1/10 and I might change the ratings system to allow '0' (11 marks on the scale). Too complicated to allow variable rating scale at least in this first release (the install questions and routines get out of hand <sigh>).

So, the plugin will potentially allow two sorts of ratings -- one based on Username the other on ID. This _should_ generalize to Gforum as well, if someone wanted to tweak it and the install, since I'll be careful to use configuration settings rather than hard-coding the Username field (in case you want to use an Alias or Handle).

Anything else ??? <G>


PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.
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Re: [pugdog] Combined Ratings & Reviews added to Detail page In reply to
Just bumping this up in case there are any ideas or suggestions. Getting closer to a beta-type release.


PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.