A user of Comment Rating, Quicoto asked a question:

Instead of having a TOP commentors (comment number) for the “likes / dislikes”Example: If somebody voted me with 3 likes, next time I post a comment it will say “quicoto has 3 likes” or something like that.

Is it posible to go one step further and save the rating. I mean for the user (even not logged) “Jim” save his ratings and show them whereever he post a comment.
So it will be a “like / dislike” of the commenter and not the comment (like a forum Karma system).
Is it posible ?

Basically this is for the commentors to carry their rating around, even between sites.  And the ratings are aggregated to something meaningful and displayed with all his/her comments.

This serves as a commentor credit showing his/her reputation.  Also a summary of all the comments of the commentor can be displayed.

I’d think this is doable with some AJAX and a hosting site.

What do you think?  Will this be valuable to start more conversations on your blog?  Would you like to use it too?

Many of you asked for features for better, more flexible presentation.  So you shall get them, in version 2.6.

I’ve substantially improved the Comment Rating’s look and feel.  These features include:

• Mouseover effect on images to entice voting
• Choice of images and image size.
• Configurable display of two vote numbers, a combined one or three numbers.
• Styling of the vote numbers differently.

I now have a framework to add more images of choice.  If you have some good GPL-distributable icons, please send them my way.  The icons need to be in set of 4: thumb-up/down and grayed out ones, ideally in 14/16/20px.

The changes in version 2.6 are pretty extensive. I’ve touched every file of the plugin.   Although it’s well tested and many were squashed, potentially bugs may still survive and are at large. I’d appreciate some beta testing and early feedback.  The beta release (2.6.0B) can be downloaded from Wordpress.org.

Do let me know what you think.

Looking at the long list of comments, I know that Comment Rating has hit something that some of us are passionate about. I’m really glad this little plugin can be useful, in the Web 2.0 user generated content arena.

As always, the design principle of the plugin is to be simple, efficient and widely applicable. A little flexibility doesn’t hurt.

Many of you, Jean-Paul, Jim and Tricky in particular, had made excellent suggestions.  However, many issues are rather complex and we need to think them through to design right.  Here’s a list of features that I’m convinced to be necessary.

• Flexibility of showing, 2, or 1 Like/Dislike counters. Done
• Styling highly-rated comments. Done
• Styling poorly-rated comments. Done
• Styling controversial comments. Done
• Option to turn off built-in styling. Done
• Wording changes based on rating. Done
• Tracking cookie to prevent voting fraud
• Add functions to retrieve rating number for theme customization.
• Choice of icon/images. Done
• Option to turn off styling the whole comment box.  To avoid messy styling of nested comments . Done
• Option to change mouseover effect. Done
• Localization. Done.
• Widget to display comments with ratings. Done (v. 2.9.0).
• Sort the best comments to the top, so that the typical viewer will certainly not read all 150 comments on a popular blog, and everyone will benefit from the community ranking if they can simply view the “cream of the crop” right away. Done in the Pro version
• Allow vote types of: positive only, negative only votes or both. Done.
• Voting by registered member/comment contributor only. Done in the Pro version
• Add voting images to comments of a certain post only, posts are identified by PostID or category.
• Add option to customize the ‘thumb up’ – ‘thumb down’ ALT and TITLE text. Done (v. 2.9.7)
• Allow customizing the CSS tags around the voting image/ratings. Done in the Pro version
• Display the best voted comment in post or except in front page. Done in the Comment Rating Widget Pro
• Shows percentages instead of numbers. Or the ability to exclude the numbers all together
• WP short code to display selected comments in anywhere in a page

Discussion Sept. 9, 2009.

Hiding the entire comment box of poorly-rated comment wouldn’t be wise.  This is a freedom of speech issue, rather philosophical.  If some comments are really out of line, the admin can always remove it.  Allowing a majority of readers doing so means suppressing the minority.  It’s not good building online communities.

Now regarding “Styling highly-rated comments”, I’m now convinced that (Likes – Dislikes) is a better indicator. Many suggested multi-level of styling.  More flexibility, Great idea.  So here’s my plan:

• Good:   (Likes – Dislikes) >= A
• Great: (Likes – Dislikes) >= B
• Superb: (Likes – Dislikes) >= C

Styling and wording can be changed at different levels.

Now, I’m also thinking about the hotly-debated issues.  Often time, the most controversial issue is the most interesting and draws the most attention.  Here’s another grading system.

• Hot: (Likes + Dislikes) >= A
• Heated: (Likes + Dislikes) >= B
• Outrageous: (Likes + Dislikes) >= C

What do you think?  Are 3 levels too much?  Shall we use 2 instead? Please comment.

Update Sept. 25. 2009: I think 3 level of different styling on all 3 type of comments will make your blog  comment section a colorful rainbow.  This will no longer serve the purpose of highlighting the important or interesting comments.  So I’ll leave it to one-level of style per type only.