User Trade & Review System

[Bill]

What would you like done?

My forum revolves around trading a niche product by mail. I would like a plugin that allows users to trade with each other. After a trade, users are given the option to review/rate each other. I would like to keep it as simple as possible without a ton of features. I haven’t really put a lot of thought into exactly how it would work.

The trade/transactions don’t have to involve money changing hands. Two users simply agree to mail each other something. I think an input field for a USPS tracking number would be a nice feature.

The way that I’m currently doing it, I use the Discourse plugin that allows users to rate a thread. Users use the thread as their trade listing with all of their available items, and other users rate their thread. I need something that allows the user to be rated, not the thread.

I wonder if I should keep the trade listings as they are (discourse posts), or create some type of portal system for trades. I wonder if I should keep it as a classifieds type of system, or veer off more towards a “vendor” system.

Has anyone ever created something like this one their own Discourse sites? Please PM the link to your site, I’m trying to get more inspiration for planning this out.

When do you need it done?

doesn’t matter

What is your budget, in $ USD that you can offer for this task?

I cannot really afford to get this done right now, but I wanted to get an idea of how much it would cost me so I can try to plan out my idea better. What would maintenance on something like this be?

As someone who loves tech, would it be worth learning to code this myself? Is it worth learning the programming languages that Discourse uses? I already know HTML and CSS. Is there some type of open source template for something like this that I could build on?

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

@Bill

I would like a plugin that allows users to trade with each other. After a trade, users are given the option to review/rate each other. I would like to keep it as simple as possible without a ton of features. I haven’t really put a lot of thought into exactly how it would work.

We have at least one customer site with a legacy buy/trade system, and this is what they do.

First, have a Seller Feedback category.

Upon transaction with a user, either find the existing topic for that user in the Seller Feedback category, or create a new one if it does not yet exist. Search by the username in that category:

After a transaction, post your feedback on the transaction as a reply to the seller’s feedback topic, like so:

To make it easier to find, the seller attaches that topic to their user card via their user preferences, under User → Preferences → Profile → Featured Topic near the bottom

At that point, you can now easily find the seller’s feedback topic on their user card, like so:

There could certainly be more sophisticated ways to do this, but this simple method leverages the built in functionality in Discourse and it is relatively easy to understand… it’s just another reply in a standard topic.

[Joshua_Kogan]

Thanks @codinghorror. What site is that? I’d like to have a look, if possible.

[RGJ (Richard - Communiteq)]

Google is your friend (as always )

Traders Feedback

[Joshua_Kogan]

This is a pretty cool way to manage a market and customer feedback. Thanks for the share!

[soraiden]

Oooh. Thank you for these ideas! In our previous SMF life, we had created a custom swap feedback system and I had yet to fully wrap my mind around how to integrate similar into our new life. I’ve experimented with a few ideas and didn’t love any of them so far.

Has anyone seen a site that hosts mail swaps, but then there is also an integration into the profile of each participant? For example, if they get a negative feedback, there is an automated red light image on their profile or avatar perhaps.