BARNRAISING #2 RESULTS! Check out who won!
Barnraising Competition #3 begins on Monday, July 27. The topic will be "Coupons and Deals."
And now, here are the winners!
First Place (M$100): @Redgold, 76 Tasks
Second Place (M$75): @Kerryk, 68 Tasks
Third Place (M$50): @Mithrandir, 63 Tasks
Fourth Place (M$40): @Harmonydawn, 34 Tasks
Fifth Place (M$30): @Pawsalmighty, 26 Tasks
Sixth Place (M$20): @Santhoshd, 21 Tasks
Seventh and Eighth Places (M$10 each): @Demanda and @Thebandit, 18 Tasks
Ninth Place (M$10): @Wook, 17 Tasks
Tenth Place (M$10): @Jkepler, 14 Tasks
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M$13 Answers
I rocked out an excel sheet when I was busting out the tasks for the last contest. I modified it a bit and punched in the top 10 from this contest.
It's not completely accurate because it doesn't account for the actual time it takes to complete a page (I tossed in 20 min per page) and the real dollars / rate per hour are also a bit high because it doesn't account for paypal fees.
Based on my performance in the last contest (43 pages), I wouldn't have even placed in the top 3. You guys really did an awesome job!!!!! Congratulations.
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M$
I really enjoyed this, it gave me a sense of self-worth, as I don't work outside of the home due to disability. It makes me feel good to earn some money.
Congratulations to everyone!
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M$
lol - how many times can I say really in one thought?
Silly edit button :)
Well, obviously, this is a very gratifying thing for us to hear, and hits on exactly our vision for Mahalo...Giving people a place to hang out, have discussions, learn things, help others and participate, with the added benefit of being able to earn some extra for themselves here and there.
Thanks, @pawsalmighty, and congratulations!
Rob... really!!
Reading everything I've ever read about Mahalo, this is really seems to be the spirit that Mahalo is trying to convey in the community. This isn't an alternative employment website, it's really a community that rewards folks with a little bit of extra scratch (aka money) that they wouldn't have had otherwise.
I really like it and these contests are great. I'm really hoping to participate in the next one!
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M$Now for my third place speech:
Special thanks go to my Mahalo for making this contest possible, the QC team who have supported us all by providing excellent feedback on our sometimes imperfect submissions, and still found room to be complimentary and encouraging. I want to thank my family who had to endure me spending all this time behind my PC looking up old, strange Japanese movies, and apologies for my neglect, I'll make it up to you. I love you all. Thank you!
Ok, serious now:
If you followed this competition, you might know I have some gripes with how the competition is currently set up. I'll post them here. If Lon, or any of the Mahalo staff is interested in discussing them in more detail, I am more than willing to do so.
1. I found that I was severely slowed down by the belt level limit, in combination with the time difference between me (Netherlands) and the Mahalo offices (USA). Effectively, this meant I could do at the most ten tasks a day (two sets), where I could easily have done 25 a day, and possibly more. This was especially true in the first days of the competition, when I was still a green belt, which limited me to four concurrent tasks. As I experienced things, the competition was more defined by the speed at which the QC team could check our results, than our actual working speed.
2. This second contest well over twice as long, and ranged twice as much tasks. However, first prize was only half of that from the first round. This is balanced by the fact that #4 - #10 now also got a prize, but still, the award for doing as much as Redgold did, is relatively low.
3. There is no real, apparent 'how-to' on performing the tasks. This caused me to do a lot of trial an error, which must have been a burden on the QC team too. Only today I found a mahalo page that described how to use the wikitext codes. It would have been very helpful if this was posted somewhere in the task itself.
4. Technical errors: I've experienced quite some of these. At some point, a task was 'stuck' for a couple of days. I couldn't see it, couldn't complete it, nor abandon it. Especially with the belt level limits, this limits your progress even further. Also some of my tasks weren't properly approved/credited, something which was only detected because I carefully keep track of my earnings, and because I never received a 'task completed' email. Lon and his tech team were able to fix most of the problems within a few days or even faster, but still...
That's it for now. Quite a list, but I want to emphasize that I freely joined in the competition, and I still liked it a lot, even though I sometimes I was fighting the system, instead of the competition. I am happy with my earnings, 63 x M$2 plus M$50 is quite a sum.
You might see me again in one of the future contests (depending on the conditions), and I'll definitely be around the site...
Thanks for enduring my rants, now lets go to the after-party! I heard there are some great looking chicks there!
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M$
Easy, lift or raise the cap on the number of tasks 'in the works'. I wouldn't have cared if the QC team took a week to check my entries, as long as I could have continued to work.
I can imagine this leads to another issue: QC feedback cannot be incorporated in future tasks, but there must be a way around that (like a 'request an increase' button for tasks, similar to the page management level.
Oh, and Meg is in the VVIP room with me. Very interested in what a wizard like me is doing in a place like that :)
(I was going to say "with a staff like that", but there are kids on this site...)
Contest #1 was about websites, right? That leaves you with this person. Lucky you!
All great suggestion. This is the second time we've done this, and they're going to continue over time, so any and all feedback is welcome and appreciated.
We're working on ways to minimize the gap between completing a task and accepting a new one. In fact, we'll be debuting one improvement to the system that will help with this in contest #3. (Announcement to come on Monday).
My other suggestion would be that this becomes less of an issue with higher belt levels. The longer you have been at Mahalo Answers, completing tasks and answering questions, the higher belt you will earn, and the more competitive you will be in future barnraisings. We want everyone to be able to contribute, but we also want to make earning a black belt a genuine achievement of significance that brings with it certain privileges.
As for just raising the limits on various belt levels, it's something I will discuss with the rest of the team, as I think it's a pretty good idea. There's no reason not to let trusted users like yourself get access to more tasks at once.
I would advise you to check out How Mahalo Tasks Works, How to Build a Mahalo Page, Mahalo Barnraising Contest and How Mahalo Works for some in-depth "how to" guides to building pages on Mahalo. If there is more information you'd like that you found difficult to access, please do let me know. It is my responsibility to make sure everyone has the information they need to do a great job on these tasks.
As for technical errors, Mahalo Tasks is a complex system, and it's still relatively new, so we do have to ask everyone to bear with us despite some occasional glitches. I try to get them smoothed out as quickly as we can, and every time we solve a problem like this, that's one more bug we've squished that will never return again.
Thanks again for your feedback, @mithrandir, and congratulations!
Hu.... and here I thought I my lawyer C&D'd all of my highschool photos off of the web :)
Please note that I'm not only complaining here. I think the Mahalo team has done a marvellous job, supporting us, checking our work, and fixing bugs. The responsiveness has been great, WAY better than I've experienced before.
The things I mentioned here are to make the contest even better than they are now. See you all in one of the new contests!
Mithrandir, if you're partying with Megan Fox at the after party for this contest... then I participated in the wrong contest :)
I've noticed your complaints about the time zone / approval time in other questions. I'm interested ... how do you think that this problem could be solved?
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You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
To @Redgold, @Kerryk, and @Mithrandir - outstanding!
Well done, everyone!
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
Anyone can win, so all you newbies out there or your 'old' guys - give it a try!
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
Great work!!
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
Welcome to Mahalo!
Here's what's going on in a nutshell:
Mahalo users can help us build pages we need for the site in Mahalo Tasks.
http://www.mahalo.com/tasks/
To encourage people to build a lot of Tasks about topics we really want to cover, we hold weekly contests...The people who build the most tasks during a pre-set amount of time win prizes. This thread is announcing the winners of the most recent competition. The next one starts on Monday.
All you have to do to participate is start claiming Tasks on Monday and getting them accepted. (It helps to follow all the given instructions, and to check out How Mahalo Tasks Works and How to Build a Mahalo Page for other important tips and guidelines. You can also feel free to tune in to our weekly Mahalo Tutorials, held live each Monday and Wednesday at noon, or to ask me any questions you might have personally by visiting my profile: @lons.
We're happy to have you here! I hope this has been helpful to you.
It is not really a question. This is the way Mahalo Staff can communicate with the rest of us.
There has been a competition here to perform as many 'tasks' as possible, in a limited time, which helped Mahalo to build new pages about 'movies'. you can read all about that at Mahalo Barnraising Contest.
Hope this helps!
Wow! I'm really impressed with everyone in this contest!
Keep in mind that if you keep each one of your pages and they have the ads clicked once a month for the next two years (24 clicks or so) you would make another M$2-8 per page. :-)
... and some pages in the system get 50 to 3,000 clicks a month on the ads. So, it can be much more. That really the upside in my mind.
Next week barn raising will make that MEGA clear. My guess is that people will make 2-20x the amount of money in that barn raising from the revenue share than the tasks. :-)
Rob, thanks for that very informative sheet. I think the 20 mins is quite accurate towards the end of the competition, but the first 10-20 were definitely slower, as for the learning effect. All in all, not bad (but not minimal wage, which is $7.25!)
Don't forget that your 43 tasks were completed in way less time, and the contest was only 250 tasks in total. (plus your bonus was twice as high)