HeadStand

Long ago, back in the dark ages, forums used the number of posts a member made and how long ago they joined to demonstrate trust and experience.
Is simply posting a lot and being a member for a long time the best way to know which community members are experts?
And is there a better way?
We think so.
 
 
What makes an expert, and why are they important?
Community experts are the keystones to any thriving community. You probably recognise a handful in your community. They tend to be active regularly, are often the first to try and help others with their questions and help set a positive example within the community.
Wouldn't it be great if newer community members could discover who these super users were a little easier? These members trying to find their feet in a new community could follow trustworthy individuals, absorb the positive tone of the community, and even get help a little quicker.
In the past, forums have shown trust and experience through basic metrics like post count and the years since they joined. However, these metrics only show that the individual has been around a long time and posts a lot. It doesn't show that they are potential role models or helpful and trustworthy.
Community Experts with Invision Community 5
Invision Community 5 identifies these experts through metrics such as the number of solutions they have, the volume of 'helpful' votes on their replies, the speed of answers and more.
Each forum will have its own experts, so if you have a very broad community, someone who is very helpful in a particular area will show as an expert in that area only.
When a member has been picked as an expert, they'll receive an email thanking them, and they can then opt-in to be shown as an expert along with a regular notification or email with any unanswered questions in forums they are experts in.

I'm absolutely killing it in the Test Forum
Every few months, the experts are recalculated to reflect the organic way communities grow and change. After all, there's little point in showing that a non-active member is an expert. It might even encourage new community experts to keep up the great work and remain active longer.

Community experts have a badge shown with their posts, along with the option to follow them. Encouraging new members to follow trusted community members should be a core part of any community strategy.
Settings and control
Of course, not everyone should be labelled as a community expert, and perhaps, in very rare circumstances, an existing community expert could have a bad day and not represent the community well.
Invision Community 5 gives you the ability to set which groups experts can be picked from and offers you the opportunity to block existing experts, ensuring they won't be selected again in the future.

Over to you
All communities have to be purposeful and provide value. That value may be in close friendships, or it may be in getting answers for problems you have. Either way, locating the most helpful members will help develop trust, provide guidance and increase knowledge within your community.
For transactional communities such as support-based communities, experts are vital in providing timely answers and demonstrating credibility and expertise to others.
As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Please let us know in the comments.
 

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Personally I would love to have some helper methods like in Laravel.
We‘ve been talking about this and Matt wasn’t that annoyed by the idea. 😂

We do get notified, with (almost always) plenty of time to update. It's just that some of us have a large number of marketplace resources and so those resources may not be updated the very second that a release is available. Additionally, each update has to go through a review before it's available.
In most cases, the monthly releases don't break the marketplace resources. You should only (potentially) have issues when upgrading to a bigger release (e.g. 4.6 -> 4.7), at which point you should reach out to the plugin developer to check compatibility.

A fix has been pushed to the Marketplace and is pending approval. 

Based on the exception above, it seems like you had data already in that column that was longer than whatever IPS decides to set it to. The field generation itself is controlled entirely by IPS. My code does not actually create or modify the database columns.
I love how I have to get into my personal life on these topics..... I had covid in January, followed by my kids. Fell massively behind with work. My private clients take precedence over marketplace support.
In general, if you have something urgent, feel free to PM me. I usually respond to PMs much quicker than these topics.

A new version has been pushed to the Marketplace and is pending approval. Changes include:
Allow Admins to view a list of users who have unsubscribed from the Newsletter (ACP -> Newsletters -> Subscribers -> Unsubscribed Members ) Allow Admins to export a list of users subscribed to a newsletter Multiple improvements to distribution tracking to prevent loops and users receiving multiple instances of the newsletter Moved population of the distribution list to a background task to prevent timeouts on large sites

A new version has been pushed to the Marketplace and is pending approval. Changes include:
Allow Admins to view a list of users who have unsubscribed from the Newsletter (ACP -> Newsletters -> Subscribers -> Unsubscribed Members ) Allow Admins to export a list of users subscribed to a newsletter Multiple improvements to distribution tracking to prevent loops and users receiving multiple instances of the newsletter Moved population of the distribution list to a background task to prevent timeouts on large sites

The file referenced in the screenshot does not exist. You may need to manually delete it from your server... but it's definitely not part of the distribution, not for quite some time.

Just pushed a new version to the Marketplace, it fixes this issue.
Possibly, but not any time in the next couple of weeks. I'm swamped.

A new version has been uploaded to the Marketplace and is pending approval.
This version includes integration with Clubs.

I've removed the offending file completely and submitted a new version to the marketplace.
That said, the original point still stands. If a hook is extending a non-existent file, it still should not be flagged.

I agree and we'll improve this in a future release.

OR..... that it was done to be compatible with another one of my custom apps, which is Sparkpost integration. 😉 
I'd argue that this should be allowed, since we very often have to integrate with other 3rd party apps.

Update pushed to marketplace and pending approval.

4.7.2 compatibility update has been pushed to the marketplace and is pending approval.

Update has been pushed to the marketplace and is pending approval.

4.7.2 compatibility update has been pushed to the marketplace and is pending approval.

We have released 4.7.2.1 with an update to the PHP8 compatibility scanner to make it less sensitive to issues that PHP8 is not concerned at this time, such as the following:
Parameter variable names being different in the extended class, eg:
Base: function foo( $node )
Extended: function foo( $forum )
Protected methods becoming public methods in the extended class, eg:

Base: protected function foo()
Extended: public function foo()

Extended methods returning a type when the base class does not have any type, eg:

Base: function foo():
Extended: function foo(): \IPS\Member

This will reduce the number of third party code flagged and thus fewer plugins and applications being disabled.
Posted edited to reflect that 4.7.2.1 has been released.

Update pushed to marketplace and pending approval.

Update pushed to marketplace and pending approval.

A new version has been uploaded to the Marketplace and is pending approval.
This version includes integration with Clubs.

A new version has been uploaded to the Marketplace and is pending approval.
This version includes integration with Clubs.

I actually have not been around. 😬 Took my kids on a trip and got back yesterday. School starts today and I'll be back at work. I'll put you on the list for today. Hang tight. 

Sorry it took so long... been a crazy couple of weeks.

Thank you, much appreciated!