Feature #599
openConsider adding rating plugins for BuddyPress/BBPress
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Description
This ProfHacker post mentions a number of BuddyPress plugins that we should consider for the Commons (text below from the article):
CubePoints with CubePoints BuddyPress Integration — In many ways, CubePoints makes use of information that’s already available in the system: who is checking the site regularly? Replying to questions on the forum? Adding links to interesting new content? CubePoints rewards users with points for all these actions and can keep a leader board with ranks unlocked. It’s all highly customizable: you can set the number of points for each action and add names and images to ranks.
Achievements — The Achievements plug-in lets you set rewards for particular actions. These can be automated, like a reward for posting a certain number of times to a class forum, or triggered by you. Achievements that require you to moderate their success can be more difficult to manage, but they give you a chance to reward behaviors that go above and beyond class requirements. (This can also work as a points system, though it does not yet integrate with CubePoints—the next version of both might fix that.)
BuddyPress Rate Forum Posts — The ability to rate posts acts as an extension of peer review and a check on excessive but meaningless contribution. If you’re rewarding high “scorers” in the class game in structural ways, such as with first choice of presentation dates or the ability to propose extra credit “missions” (two rewards I’m trying this semester), the voting system also asks as a way to encourage students to be their own community moderators.
BuddyPress Links — A plug-in for sharing links that is already integrated with CubePoints. If you have a class that involves a lot of current content, this is one way to build a space for the sharing of links to relevant material. There’s also a voting system on links that will help in tracking down dead or useless links.
I would like to bring these plugins up for discussion at the 2/25/11 SubCat meeting. Boone, if you have thoughts about these plugins and their possible integration into our system, please let me know.
Related issues
Updated by Matt Gold over 13 years ago
Posted this before seeing Boone's most recent update to ticket 157 , which points to some considerations that should be taken into account with BuddyPress plugins.
Updated by Boone Gorges over 13 years ago
BuddyPress Links is not a ratings plugin. It's a way to share web content, sort of how many people use Twitter to share links.
BuddyPress Rate Forum Posts is fine for what it does, but I would be wary of considering it for the Commons for a few reasons. One, it's a one-trick pony: ratings for forum posts but for nothing else on the site. Two, forum posts are arguably the site content that least needs "rating", since it's largely used for internal communication by group members. Three, BPRFM's thumbs-up/thumbs-down might work well for a Q&A site or something like that, but generally it strikes me as a somewhat vapid means of assessment for the more robust content we encourage on the Commons.
My general thought on the idea of rating ("like"-ing, reviewing) on the Commons is that it introduces a sort of competitive marketplace feel to something that is very much not a competitive marketplace.
CubePoints and Achievements do similar things. Of the two, Achievements seems like a better choice, as it is developed by Paul Gibbs of the BP core team and thus has a more certain future and higher likelihood of being kept up in the future. Unlike content rating, the earning of badges and achievements is about participation and engagement, and much more appropriate for the Commons. There is no technical reason why this plugin can't be installed, but there is a huge amount of planning and conceptualization that must be done before I would feel comfortable doing so:
- Why do we want the plugin?
- What are the kinds of behavior we want to reward?
- How (and how prominently) do we want to display people's achievements on the site?
I'm particularly interested in Brian's take on these questions, as he has the most intimate knowledge of usage patterns, and will probably have some interesting thoughts on the ways in which it might make sense to prod users to greater participation.
Updated by Michael Smith over 13 years ago
I spent a little time looking at the features of the Achievements plugin. It might be an interesting tool for groups to use to measure member activity and create a method to figure out who the real group leaders are.
I wasn't sure if achievements could be attached to specific blog posts or forum posts, rather than any blog post or forum post. If it's the latter, than it might limit the usefulness.