BuddyPress.org

Update: I took the approach of using my own db tables. and so far very smooth sailing. Once I got the hang of setting up db tables and handled db schema updates, everything is crystal clear and easy to work with. I’m glad I took both routes. and for any future custom content I will definitely use custom post types and taxonomies, but for this kind of specialized functionality that is not really content, custom db tables is much cleaner in my opinion. (Perhaps a hybrid approach is sometimes the best approach, it all depends.)

@imjscn the plugin will probably only handle activity comments as a whole. You will be able to like, rate or vote on them (or all three at the same time!). I’ll add hooks and filters in the plugin so you could probably limit rating for activity comments on your special custom post type.

I think the plugin will be called Rate Vote Like Anything. And I’m building it with those three systems in mind:
Rate: you can rate things 1 to 5 (or whatever scale)
Vote: you can vote thumbs up or down (1 or -1)
Like: you can like something

So it probably will work to replace other voting systems. I’m going to take your advice and do my best to include an API so that others can use the plugin for any type of content. I’m going to replace my other BuddyPress Rate Forum Posts plugin. Tens of twenties of people (!) have asked me to extend my other plugin to rate blog posts and comments, so this new system will do it.

And as far as group rating is concerned, I’ve already built the star rating aspect for another site. you can see it in action here http://www.fashionsalade.com/2011/02/street-people/my-icons/rebeca/ (you need to login via facebook first).

The major benefit of this new plugin is that it will have shared ‘karma’ from all the items you create. Some people will want this, others might not. But it’s a cool feature that I really like. Site admins can also decide which items will be karmable (i think i just made a word up).

I’m also not making it BP dependant, Although I’m guessing it will mainly be used on BP sites, as wordpress already has things like GD post ratings – but that plugin is a beast.

After suffering most of yesterday while stretching custom post types to do my bidding, I’ve decided to create new tables today. and now i’m at peace However it was a great exercise to do, and I got to dig into wordpress core much more than I normally do, which is always fruitful. Thanks so much for your encouragement.

Thanks for the advice – have used the plugin and it seems to work very well.

I have run into a different problem and have posted about that separate here:

https://buddypress.org/community/groups/how-to-and-troubleshooting/forum/topic/child-theme-displays-incorrectly-on-public-pages/

Ok, I did this again and it’s worked!! hooray!
This time round I activated a wordpress (non-buddypress) theme before deactivating, which seemed to do the trick.
I’m now on WP 3.1.2 BP and 2.8, finally

Update:
@r-a-y thanks again, I’m looking into it more. I’ve found this plugin https://buddypress.org/community/groups/buddypress-activity-tags/home/ but unfortunately I haven’t been able to get that plugin to work so I will dig in more to see how to add tags to blog post activity items.