I've enjoyed building the date pages for the past year on Mahalo, I think for as long as Mahalo serps link to date pages the visitors are guaranteed to be served up a quality link.

The date pages are so broad that the only niche they really serve are the curios people who are perhaps interested in history, which it appears are few and far between on the web. So the pages don't serve as the greatest draws of traffic, which is a frustrating struggle as the manager of these pages, building them was a noble service, and now that they are built there is little more that can be done to them, unless for some reason I decide to go more in depth with the daily timeline.

I got to thinking tonight about doing similar pages except for only 1 particular niche? Daily pages, just like the dates, except for only 1 topic, I tried it for hockey just to see how it would turn out. I thought it turned out pretty good.

September 21 In Hockey

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It makes me wonder what the traffic possibilities are for this throughout the season, perhaps with a blog and a twitter account to promote these archives, they could reach a large daily audience among hockey fans - Who tend to be a larger and more profitable demographic than history fans. Maybe I'll try it for a couple more days, but certainly something I'll try to decide on before October 1st, when the regular season begins.

When I posted the ~today in history question~, I did not expect to be made aware of the death of Isadora Duncan.

@bunnhyphuphu explains

On September 14, 1927, Isadora Duncan Dies in a freak automobile accident in Nice, France.

She was the pioneer of modern dance. A 'revolutionist' and feminist who brought new ideas to movement without a corset or restrictive clothing. She created a new and modern way of dancing by incorporating the ancient styles of Greece in both movement and clothing. She was also known for famously dancing barefoot!

I would have nominated it to the Answer of the Day contest, but I already used up my nomination.

September 14

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Currently the Answer of the Day Contest, in its current format, has been operating daily since the middle of summer. We are pleased to announce that the thread is consistently one of the most viewed threads on Mahalo every day.

Without a doubt, it is the best thread to read daily on Mahalo Answers because it directs you to the best answers on the most interesting questions. Daily. You really do get to see the best answers, the answers that some Mahaloians deliver are like multimedia works of art. The mix of informative, well sourced, text, videos and images really make some answers appear good enough to be photographed and hung up in a museum.

In the contests current form, the contest features M$10 in daily prize money. The top three nominators split that M$5-M$3-M$2. The authors that the nominators nominated, the actual people who wrote "the answer of the day" don't get anything.

I have spoken with many senior members of the community, ones who love the daily contest just as much as I do but they all agree more needs to be done to highlight and reward the authors of the best answer, a 50/50 was the most popular. There is no way make this happen without making significant changes to the contest. The goal is to keep the same budget, award the top authors, continue to award the top nominator, and keep it fun at the same time.

Participation is key, so the winning nominator will definitely get a prize. The current AOTD justifies rewarding 3 nominators because they put a lot of effort into explaining the gem they find. No more of that - in AOTD 2.0 nominators will only be asked to write brief intro, then the permalink. Just like the current format the nominator earns for M$5 finding the answer that earns them the most "helpful votes." - No more prize more for 2nd and 3rd place nominations. The point system (learderboard) will work the same, for the top 3 finishers.


So the contest is much more simple. You nominate an answer, if you get the most votes you and the author of your nomination each win M$5.

The wild card is now the team tips. I'd love create an elaborate system that would encourage the AOTD fans to click the "interesting" button. I might be on the right track towards making their votes worth more, that could turn the contest into an elaborate bidding war? That might not be a bad thing? Regardless, changes are coming, and I can't wait.

Mahalo Answer Of The Day Contest

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Winter is coming up, are you prepared? Mahalo has a new "How To" offering different ideas on how to fix your home so that it's as cozy as it can get during the winter.

How To Winterize Your Home

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For the past year I have been working hard at Mahalo to build in depth date pages for all 365 days on the calendar, previous versions of Mahalo all linked to date pages but nobody had ever build out the date pages. In September 2008 I began to the long daily process of building these pages out. Now in 2009 I have come full circle.

Because of the Mahalo 2.0 transition that happened in June 2009 many of the date pages lost a lot of their padding and need to be fixed, so around the horn I go again, updating and fixing anything that was lost in the transition.

This time around, I will be taking the content and branching it out into Timelines. For example, I'll take stories from each day and move them into the appropriate timeline. It will be lots of fun and I think Timeline pages will look really great on Mahalo, it might take another full year to complete each one, but the end result will be great. I won't claim many of the timeline pages, so hopefully there will be some Mahaloians eager to help out. We'll see how it goes!

Mahalo Timelines

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Biggest event: Germany invades Poland.

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September 1

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