Is it possible/advisable to alter the UGC database to track who voted for a specific comment?

Question

We am using Tridion 2011 SP1 HR2. We have implemented UGC for our blogging page. There are a couple of concerns that were raised when we held the demo.

1. Voting on a comment is calculated as number of (up votes - down votes). In case a comment gets equal number of votes, the vote this comment gets is 0. Is there a way to get n no of up votes and m no of down votes separately instead of the common Score.

2. Is it possible to alter the UGC tables, because we would like to track who voted for a comment. Even if we can't use the UGC API, we can write procedures to update these altered tables at day end.

Answer 1

I would strongly advise against modifying the UGC database.

As well as invalidating your support agreement, the UGC database is no longer separate in Tridion 2013, and the upgrade script may fail to work, or you may lose your custom data.

If you need additional information, then I would suggest you store this in a separate database (or similar)

With regards to modifying the UGC behaviour, please check out Neil's question (and in particular Eric's answer) here: Extending UGC in the CME and here: UGC rating stars

If have not looked in to the UGC database structure, but you may be able to calculate the number of up and down votes based on some of the other info (e.g, total number of votes, maximum, minimum and average).