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.
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.
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!
Biggest event: Germany invades Poland.
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Ever since Mahalo introduced Page Management last June there seems users have mostly stuck to toe dipping and feeling it out. As the months have gone by and users have started to really earn some hard cash, (in some cases more then I make as an hourly worker,)
Users have starting to become more innovative to achieve two things.
A)Traffic
B)Search Engine Rank
One trend I noticed this weekend from two of our two greatest users @robbrown and @philipy have decided to start some contests to drive traffic and a few SEO points to their Mahalo Pages.
First @Robbrown started a contest to get users to Tweet out his Mahalo page, he's looking for 50 Tweets and promises Mahalo Dollars to those who help him out.
@philipy took it to another level by asking users to blog about his iPhone and related pages. He's also offering Mahalo Dollars to the users who help him out. @Philipy's iphone page has already earned him over 3,000 views and over 15 Mahalo Dollars.
Great ideas, the jury is still on how they will develop.
Good things are happening on Mahalo, we are seeing a lot of new users and I wanted to make sure that the new Mahaloians are getting the best possible advice on how to become successful within Mahalo. The Welcome Wednesday thread worked well last week, let's do it again even if it's a day late. That's just how we roll.
I put together this page, [[Advice For New Mahalo Users]], it's a collection of advice given from members on Mahalo who we have recognized as being the best on site.
I find it helpful when our veteran users engage new users with helpful advice, even by just sharing the page [[How Mahalo Answers Works]] could be the difference between a ugly yellow belt deserter and a potential black belt pro.
In my past experiences, a lot of communities that are built from the ground up tend to stress during periods of rapid growth. Considering Mahalo is poised to have continuous rapid growth, we should all agree not to get super stressed when newer users jump right on into Mahalo. As long as a user isn't spamming we should encourage them to answer questions in whatever manner they wish, and not judge their potential.
We were all new once, no matter how much of a lost cause you think a user is, offering advice and links to helpful pages and explanations for unhelpful votes means a world of difference. When you think your advice is a lost cause, consider the lurkers and new visitors who read your words, they might become the next black belts.
I've been the Community Manager over at Mahalo Answers for most of it's existence now and I've noticed over time one the main problems is users don't know "how it works" I actually get a few emails a day from new users telling me how confusing it is. Which is a shame because of the simple Q&A concept, but in their defense Mahalo has a lot going on. So I spend some time to build some helpful "How To's" like this one, How Mahalo Answers works.
We've had a good summer, seems like traffic is on the up and up, I hope with more helpful pages the new users will stick around and really get into the opportunity Mahalo presents.
The widget below is small version of the page, for the full thing check it out here, I hope it helps users get started.
