History of StarsPackage
Version 1
StarsPackage
a generic rating package
Stars is a simple rating package that allows you to rate content.
despite the complex css involved in getting the stars working (based on CSS Stars Rating) the rating results are displayed in text browsers. if i make stars available without ajax, i will make sure that content can be rated using such text browsers.
Stars is the first service that allows content based use. By this i mean that you can specify what content types can be rated and which ones can't.
When you change any of these settings, you have the option to recalculate all the ratings on your site to make the changes fair.
all values are normalised to 100 regardless of your settings. this means that all of the above calculations can be done on the fly using the history and returning an accurate value.
the current calculation is as follows:
$activity will probably be changed to take the history into account as well.
What can it do?
The package is still very young and undergoing some major development. Currently it allows you to rate content that fully support LibertyServices. most packages in the development branch support services fully. Rating is done using an AJAX based system. perhaps i'll make that optional at some point, but currently it's a requirement for the browser advanced Javascript.despite the complex css involved in getting the stars working (based on CSS Stars Rating) the rating results are displayed in text browsers. if i make stars available without ajax, i will make sure that content can be rated using such text browsers.
Stars is the first service that allows content based use. By this i mean that you can specify what content types can be rated and which ones can't.
Possible settings
Several settings are already available in the Stars package which include:- Specify the number of stars that you want to use for ratings. can be as many as 100 if you wish to do so.
- Specify number of ratings required before the results are shown.
- You need to be logged in to be able to rate. This is needed to keep a log of all the ratings in the past (see below).
- Icon dimensions can be set, making it ridiculously easy to use your own icon without having to adjust a singe value in the css.
- Rating calculations can be weighted according to user importance. You can specify how important the following are to you:
- User age: How long a user has been a member of your site - relative to the age of your site.
- Permission weight: This calculation takes the number of permissions a user has into account.
- Activity weight: Activity is calculated by the number of content a user has created or contributed to.
When you change any of these settings, you have the option to recalculate all the ratings on your site to make the changes fair.
all values are normalised to 100 regardless of your settings. this means that all of the above calculations can be done on the fly using the history and returning an accurate value.
ToDo
After some time and testing of the weighting (karma) calculations, we can add a feature by which badly rated content can be hidden or even removed from the site. This is done quite easily using our setup, but we first need to get the package tested for a while to evaluate the weighting algorithm.the current calculation is as follows:
<?php
round( log( $age * $permission * $activity, 2 ) )
// where
$age = ( age of user ) / ( age of site ) * ( age weight preference )
$permission = ( number of user permissions ) / ( total number of permissions ) * ( permission weight preference )
$activity = ( number of content created by user ) / ( total content count ) * ( activity weight preference )
?>
$activity will probably be changed to take the history into account as well.