[ABD] Voting-based Moderation

[mackstaples]

MOD Title: Voting-based Moderation
MOD Description: When you read this, you'll probably think "digg system". Close enough. This mod adds "plus" and "minus" buttons to every post, as well as the posts's score. Each user has one vote they can cast on each post, adjusting the score up or down by one point. If a post reaches the "low" threshold, it is hidden. The hiding is the same style hiding used to hide posts by "foes". Voting on posts is allowed if the user has permissions to post to that thread. By implementing this voting system, forum communities can gain some control over board content without admin or moderator help. This mod is written such that it will live peacefully with styles that do not support it.
MOD Version: 0.0.0 (code coming very soon)

MOD Download: soon
Last Stable version: soon

Demo coming soon

This mod affects the following files:
(core - change)
•viewtopic.php
(core - add)
•plusvote.php
•minusvote.php
(style - change)
•theme/buttons.css
•theme/colours.css
•template/viewtopic_body.html
(styles - add)
•theme/images/plus.png
•theme/images/minus.png

This mod affects the database:
(tables - add)
•digg_votes:
— index - bigint(20) auto_increment
— post_id - mediumint(8)
— user_id - mediumint(8)
— adjust - tinyint(1)
— vote_time - int(11)
— voter_ip - varchar(40)
•digg_score:
— post_id - mediumint(8)
— curr_score - mediumint(9) Default: 0

[moustafamin]

that is wat i was dreaming of

great mod
waiting its release

[mackstaples]

Here's a screen of the mod in action. Screenshot
- Mack

[ecwpa]

this is a great idea for a mod

i was wondering why digg_score didtn store the amount of minus and plus votes, digg do that (with a little greasemonkey script), you can know how many positive votes vs negative votes have every post, like

+4 ( +10 -6)

anyway this is going to be really complicated, there are tons of ways to cheat this, still i like it a lot

[mackstaples]

I could do that, sure. Fairly easily, too. I'll think about it. The reason it is as it is now is just to conserve space. I'm already adding two buttons and a number. Maybe I'll make the number a link so that, when clicked, you can see who voted it up, who voted it down.

- Mack

[notsa]

great mod mate and i love he that it only hides the post but could you make it so that the admin can set it so that the post just becomes unapproaved incase the member has good reason for the "crappy" post ( ) a moderator can just approve the topic. And could it be turned off too like in a forum you don't want it in but you want the members to be able to postin eg. introductions Forum.

[notsa]

could we please get some news on this post this would bwe really good if it could just set the post to invisible instead of deleting it.

[Twill]

Curious how you plan on stopping clans, guilds or groups of friends ganging up on a smaller one and burying all of their posts.

You would have to somehow limit the amount someone can neg a post forum-wide. in other words, you can vote only once on a post to a total of 5 on the forum in one week. That way you could limit the amount of warring that could happen between guilds/groups of friends.

Alternatively, you could have a system which limits points but awards extra points to someone who negs a post which is later "approved" by a mod and takes them away if it is rejected. This would make people think much harder about neging a post which might not be approved for moderation. (of course, you could have guilds create a blank user, spam forum, have whole guild hop on and neg it so that they can boost their points)

3rd system you could consider: combine with a reputation system so that the higher someone's rep, the more weight they have on your mod system. Again, very open to abuse by a large guild against a small one.

I'd love the idea and have been considering how something like this might work for several years now (been a mod/community manager for 5 years ish) but the problem keeps coming up that the most vocal and agressive on your forum will run it and the rest of your community (your bread and butter, but not always the most aggressive) will be cut out if that vocal group doesnt like what they say.

You will also run into the problem that you could have one person create 20 accounts and destroy your board (you need a minimum post count - which could of course lead to spam) and lead to more work cleaning up than you originally were doing without this mod.

I love the idea, it's got lots of potential abuse, but TONS of promise if you can make it work. I'd be happy to help you work them out as the mod progresses (but you might be attacking it from the wrong angle - PM me and I'll explain).

Best of luck mate.
Twill

[notsa]

Thats why he could make the topics be unapproved instead of being deleted (configurable via ACP) and if a mod sees the topic as ok he can approve the topic and post an "Approved" or something like that lol. And for the clan thing you could set it so that the members of only certain groups can use this system (configurable via ACP). So if members are grouping up against other members you just change their group to a group that is not allowed to use the system.

Well these are all just suggestions. I have no idea how feasible these ideas are so we'll just have to wait for some word from the mod author or any other programmer lol

[Twill]

Thats why he could make the topics be unapproved instead of being deleted (configurable via ACP) and if a mod sees the topic as ok he can approve the topic and post an "Approved" or something like that lol.

But then your mod team has to check up on each one anyway - how does this make it any different than the "report this post" button except that the mod is no longer in control but always playing catch-up with abuse?

And for the clan thing you could set it so that the members of only certain groups can use this system (configurable via ACP). So if members are grouping up against other members you just change their group to a group that is not allowed to use the system.

You would be creating essentially a team of shadow-psudo-mods who have the power to collectively shout down posts - now this idea I like. Approve a small team of overseer mods and lots of "collective mods" but ones who are pre-screened....hmmmmm I like. Again a bit of set-up work, but lets you add and remove people if they abuse the system. Would need a way to track people who abuse the system though.

[moustafamin]

where is that?
i can't wait

[Omarvelous]

Great MOD. I too thought of something like this. I of course lack the skill to do it... but I got the idea from another forum software that I was entertaining before choosing phpBB. That forum was Blursoft's Metaforum (http://www.planetblur.org/beta/).

The only difference is that Metaforum uses a threshold slider... and it works on the Topic level, allowing you to show topics from the ones rated from below the cutoff ( the negative, etc -4, -7 topics) all the way up to the higher favored ones (the positive, +4 +7 topics). Pretty nifty, and probably more subtle depending on the content/purpose of the forum...

But long story short, do you plan on implementing the ability to set the threshold that one can see... So if i'd like to see all the post, regardless how bad, i set it to the lowest setting...? And can do it on the fly? or on a per topic basis? Just curious!

[Speets]

Any ETA on this?

[ukrob12]

Want this!

[mackstaples]

Wow. I hadn't realized this was still getting attention. I just got an email about it, and I'm going to resurrect this and actually finish it.

Here's the current state: I have a working, um, "alpha". It does not use the database abstraction layer — it currently only works on MySQL. There is no installer (I don't know how to do modx, if anyone does, contact me!). I suspect it also does not play well with other mods, but I have not yet tested this.

If you want a copy of the current version, please contact me through my site: www.securityandcaffeine.com. Eventually I'll set up a Google Code project for it, but for now, do contact me if you want it.

Peace,
- Mack