jaread83 - Found two errors in your query . 

<#assign kudosCount = rest(apiVersion,"/search?q=" + "SELECT * FROM kudos where message.id = messageId limit kudosCountFirst"?url).data.items![] />

messageId and kudosCountFirst are treated as string as you must need to wrap freemaker variable with ${}. Second you need to wrap messageId in quotes.  

Updated Query : 

<#assign kudosCount = rest(apiVersion,"/search?q=" + "SELECT * FROM kudos where message.id = '${messageId}' limit ${kudosCountFirst}"?url).data.items![] />

PS : I don't drink beer :smileyvery-happy:

Give kudos if you find my posts helpful or mark solution if it answers your query.

Tariq

darrenSP - You can easily update the confirmation message from a text editor. 

Below is the text key used for show Thanks for your feedback message. 

page.RatingEnumerationDisplay.feedback.success.title

Studio -> Text Editor -> Community Text 

Lithium uses the text key for each string appearing in the community.  You can search for the string you want to update from there. 

https://community.lithium.com/t5/FAQs-email-templates-and-text/About-text-keys/ta-p/109029

https://community.lithium.com/t5/FAQs-email-templates-and-text/Find-text-keys/ta-p/109027

Regarding the custom component for this, there is no POST API call available for helpfulness, you can only perform GET action. 

https://community.lithium.com/t5/Developer-Documentation/bd-p/dev-doc-portal?section=commv2&collection=tkb_helpfulness_ratings#constraints-message.id

This is the page you're looking for:

http://community.lithium.com/t5/Community-API/bd-p/developers-rest-api?leaf-id=Community.metrics#Community.metrics

For all posts, you want something like this:

http://community.lithium.com/restapi/vc/metrics/name/posts