WordPress.org

Author: Bob King

If you're tired of moderating readers' comments on your blog, stop doing that and let your readers decide which comment deserves to be shown. If you're getting outrageous comments on your blog, don't get too angry yet. Let's see how many readers feel the same. You can do these tasks (and more) with the Comment Rating plugin.

Comment Rating makes "user moderated content" possible. This plugin automatically embeds clickable images in comments using simple AJAX javascript (no heavy jQuery) to allow visitors rate comments in Like vs. Dislike fashion. The votes are displayed along with the comments in either two numbers, one combined, or both.

Once the user ratings are in place, the comments can be displayed and styled accordingly. Poorly rated comments (too many Dislikes, not enough Likes) can be hidden in a click-to-see link, just like those on Digg. Highly-rated comments (a lot Likes and few Dislikes) can be highlighted. Hotly-debated comments (many Likes and Dislikes) can also be highlighted to draw more attention, to encourage more votes and comments.

The thresholds for all three types of comments are configurable. So are the styling. Styling can be done with background color, opacity,fonts, etc. on the comment as well as the entire comment box.

This plugin allows using Wordpress as a general CMS in a Web 2.0 fashion. User generated content can be rated and their display influnced by other users. An example website is Caption Wit.

Summary of key features;

• Auto-insert to comments AJAX based clickable images
• Configurable display of two vote numbers, a combined one or both
• Preventing voting fraud with one vote per IP address. This is less subject to manipulation than cookie based approaches. The author of a comment cannot rate his/her own comment.
• Styling of popular and mostly debated comments based on on the votes
• Poorly rated comments can be hidden in a click-to-see fashion. There's no point of silencing your own voice on your blog. When readers mark a comment by the blog author or admin as poorly rated, the comment will not be hidden, but only marked as poorly rated.
• Styling of the vote numbers differently.
• Mouseover effect on images to entice voting
• Choice of images and image size
• Localization for multi-lingual support
• Functions are provide for theme customization.
• Allow vote types of: positive only, negative only votes or both.
• Store votes in wp_comments table comment_karma field. Stored votes can be: positive only, negative only or combined.
• A widget is provided as Comment Rating Widget to display the ratings along with recent comments.
• Simple and light-weight (i.e. high performance). It's also wp-cache and wp-super-cache friendly.

There's also a Pro version which has all the functionality of the standard version, and the following features.

• Styling comment image and text with a CSS class
• Disabling voting restrictions, i.e. disabling one-vote-per-IP-address and allow unrestricted voting
• Additional functions to retrieve comments ordered by their ratings

More details about the Comment Rating Pro and how to obtain it can be found here.

Comment Rating plugin is built on top of Alex Bailey's discontinued Comment Karma. Thanks to Jean-Paul Horn and many other users for ideas and suggestions.