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Automatic Award and more detailed Rating

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Automatic Award and more detailed Rating
I was doing some work on my site and figured these might be ideas that others might like -maybe a future feature or mod.

I give awards on my site. Currently I manually check out submissions and award based on if they meet certain minimum requirements. This is pretty labor intensive so I thought it would be a good thing to automate and lots of people offer awards. Here are my general thoughts....the award could be based on some formula of user clickthroughs, rating and votes. To make it more functional this would require a more detailed rating option. Say allow rating based on a few parameters. Some type of form with option buttons allowing rating of up to say 5 key items (which the administrator could choose)

1.Site Easy to Navigate
2.Original Code Items
3.Cool Downloads
4.Updated Frequently
5.Original Tutorials

Then allow the administrator to set an 'importance' value for each that would total up to 100% i.e.
Item1=10
Item2=25
Item3=25
Item4=25
Item5=15

This would allow for a more realistic rating system configurable by the Links adminstrator. Then this rating system could be used factoring in clickthroughs, votes etc to come up with some value. The 'award' script could then automatically qualify sites for the award based on the numbers i.e

Site1 award_total=96 Gold Award
Site2 award_total=67 Silver Award

The ideal thing -I'm dreaming a little- would be for this to
1)add an award icon next to the sites link and/or or place them on an award winners or 'must see' page.
2)email the winner with a link to the page where they can pick up their award and instructions on how to add it to their page.

This not only automates a tiresome process of reviewing sites but also is a great way to generate traffic as the awards would be linked to your site.

It might be a good idea to also have a 'nominate' button and require that a certain amount of nominations be recieved. This way you can only allow one nomination per IP per x amount of days or whatever to put one more road block up for sites that would try to stuff the ballot box.

The more detailed rating would allow a 'significant' award. An award just based on traffic is not really a good indicator in itself of site excellence. I guess this might also allow displaying of a more detailed rating showing the different scores making up the total.


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[This message has been edited by Burt (edited May 12, 2000).]
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Re: Automatic Award and more detailed Rating In reply to
Nice puzzle you have posed...

Wink

(BTW: This type of question should be posted in the Modification Forum since you are asking about taking LINKS to the next level and code hacks.)

Based on your specs, you could do the following:

1) Adding Admin Rating Fields:

Add the five new fields to your %db_def hash in the links.def file. Read the FAQ about adding new fields to your links.db file. Remember to add one field at a time and then update your database after adding each field.

I would also add another field called Total. This would be the total of the five other fields that you have added.

I would also add an additional field called Award that should be a drop-down field defined in the %db_select_field array, like the following:

Code:
%db_select_fields = (
Award => 'Gold,Silver,Bronze'
);

2) Calculating the Total Field

Add the following codes in your sub modify_record and sub add_record routines in the db.pl file:

Code:
$total = $rec{'Total'};
$total = $in{'Ease'} + $in{'Orig'} + $in{'Cool'} + $in{'Updated'} + $in{'Tutorials'};
if ($total => 68) {
$rec{'Award'} = Gold;
}
if (($total => 47) && ($total < 68)) {
$rec{'Award'} = Silver;
}
if (($total => 32) && ($total < 47)) {
$rec{'Award'} = Bronze;
}

AFTER the following codes:

Code:
$status = &validate_record (%in);
}

This should add the total values of the five fields into the Total fields...codes may need to be hacked further to pull in the total value.

3) Printing Award Image

Add the following variables at the top of your site_html_templates.pl file above the %globals section:

Code:
$gold .= qq|<img src="/path/image.gif" alt="Gold Award">|;
$silver .= qq|<img src="/path/image.gif" alt="Silver Award">|;
$bronze .= qq|<img src="/path/image.gif" alt="Bronze Award">|;

Then define these variables as global tags:

Code:
gold => $gold,
silver => $silver,
bronze => $bronze,

Then in your link.html template file, add the following codes and tags:

Code:
<%if Award eq 'Gold'%>
<%gold%>
<%endif%>
<%if Award eq 'Silver'%>
<%silver%>
<%endif%>
<%if Award eq 'Bronze'%>
<%bronze%>
<%endif%>

You will need to Enhanced Template.pm codes in the Resource Center to use these codes.

4) Then for emailing award recipients, you can do this through the Links Owner Email Option. You can send out targetting email messages by selecting the Award field.

There are some other minute details that I am probably forgetting, but this will give you some ideas...that should provide you enough information to weigh the advantages/disadvantages of automating your award system.

Best of luck!

Regards,

------------------
Eliot Lee....
Former Handle: Eliot
Anthro TECH, L.L.C
anthrotech.com
* Check Resource Center
* Search Forums
* Thinking out of the box (codes) is not only fun, but effective.


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Re: Automatic Award and more detailed Rating In reply to
Hi Anthro. Thanks for the detailed response and analysis. I'm working on the remote ranking mod right now and may give this a try in the next few days. I just moved to a new server and will have my old server for a few more days so I can experiment with the copy still on that server -don't want to 'blow up' my script since me an Perl haven't been formally introduced. Thanks again. Smile
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Re: Automatic Award and more detailed Rating In reply to
 
Quote:
I'm working on the remote ranking mod right now and may give this a try in the next few days.

There is already an external Rate It! Mod in the Resource Center as I have stated before. Why duplicate efforts?

You're welcome.

Regards,

------------------
Eliot Lee....
Former Handle: Eliot
Anthro TECH, L.L.C
anthrotech.com
* Check Resource Center
* Search Forums
* Thinking out of the box (codes) is not only fun, but effective.


Quote Reply
Re: Automatic Award and more detailed Rating In reply to
You're welcome.

Regards,

------------------
Eliot Lee....
Former Handle: Eliot
Anthro TECH, L.L.C
anthrotech.com
* Check Resource Center
* Search Forums
* Thinking out of the box (codes) is not only fun, but effective.


Quote Reply
Re: Automatic Award and more detailed Rating In reply to
Actually that's what I meant -I'm preparing the instruction pages and graphics that go along with it. Slower than usual because I am also moving to a new server and having the usual small problems to fix...Thanks again.