Consensus_Forums_Instructions

Contents of this page:

Users created

This demo profile creates two users (user1 y user2, with passwords user1 and user2 respectively) for you in your site to help you test the feature from the point of view of different users:

• One single user can not rate his/her own posts (not even the admin), and that's why you need a second user, at least, to rate the thread or posts of another user.
• If you try this profile in a production system, remember to remove these 2 users if you don't want to keep them in your site.

1.2. Forum details

Details of the forum created by this profile (named "Discussion forum")

• It allows rating forum threads
• The current rating that a user (let's say, user2) maintains on the initial forum thread (made by another user, let's say user1) will be displayed in all the header of the replies by that user2.
• This way, you can provide more attention and further details or clarifications to those users which agree less with the contents of the initial discussion thread (idea, proposal, action, ...).
• When the user (user2) changes the rating on the starting message of the thread made by user1, the user2 choice shown in his/her reply headers will be updated to reflect the user2 last rating on that starting message of the thread made by user1.

1.3. Example

Example of the thread list in a forum, showing results for the first message of every thread (thread topic), with detailed results and rating smileys both enabled.



If we visit one of those threads of that forum, we can see that the rating shown in the threads list corresponds to the rating of the thread topic (first message of the thread). Replies to that topic can also be rated by users.



Since Tiki12.2, there is a new forum setting to allow the optional display of the Rating by each user to that forum thread topic in each reply.

As stated earlier, this is useful to ease the task to reach consensus on deliberations (in forum threads) by identifying in a more clear way the position (topic rating) of each person on that topic at each moment on the discussion.

Let's see for instance, an example of discussion thread started by user admin, and replied (and rated) bu user1 and user2, providing different rating values each one of those users to the main topic of the discussion thread.

User1 would see this page displaying his/her choice in the form to rate the main topic of the forum thread:



Notice that user 1 has the option to rate also the replies made by others users, but not his own post.

Similarly, user2 sees his/her choice in the form to rate the main topic of the forum thread, and has the option to rate also the replies made by others users (user1), but not his own post:

1.4. Reproduce it in your forum

1.4.1. As user admin

Start a forum discussion thread in your newly created forum:
You can do so as user admin, if you wish.

As user admin you can not see the form to rate your own thread, but other users (with enough permissions) will. This profile grants permission to all registered users to rate forum posts, and to anonymous and registered users to view the ratings.

1.4.2. As user1

1. Log in as user1
2. Rate that thread created by admin, with a maximum value (greenest icon, value 5)
3. Write a reply to that thread

1.4.3. As user2

1. Log in as user2
2. Rate that thread created by admin (with a different value than user 1). For instance, you can use the grey icon with the question mark (value 0, which is not counted for the averages), to indicate that you are unsure about the rating, because you lack information on the topic, or not all options are indicated, etc.
3. Rate that reply created by user1, to indicate the agreement degree on the reply by that user to the starting post of the discussion thread.
4. Write a reply to that thread, with your own opinion on the topic, which should indicate also why you rated the forum thread with that value.

You can see the rating results on the view of the forum thread discussion, or in the forum view.

More information

For more information, see:

• Documentation:
  http://doc.tiki.org/Rating#Users_ratings_in_Forums

• Profile definition:
  http://profiles.tiki.org/Consensus+Forums