BREAKING NEWS!! New rating system for Mahalo pages!
Going forward, Mahalo Staff will start implementing a ranking system on every page!!!!
We are very excited about this, because it will simplify our feedback system—and give a clear, visual indication of how your page is doing! Also, this system will go a long way toward standardizing Mahalo pages. As @Lon so aptly pointed out on the Mahalo Tutorial today, a single, visual rating system is MUCH easier to digest than long-winded, personal messages!
At first, these ratings will be given out by Mahalo Staff only, and will be done "behind the scenes" (we will just contact you directly with your rating). Eventually, the rating system will appear as a visual icon on all pages—so readers can see instantly how the page rates!
The rating will be done on a scale of 0—10. Points will be docked for the following:
SPELLING ERRORS: -0.25 to -0.5 per error, depending on severity.
Very minor spelling errors or typos will not impact your overall score. This is only for significant spelling errors that will impact the page's readability.
GRAMMATICAL ERRORS: -0.5
Again, very minor grammatical mistakes - such as misused commas, apostrophes or semi-colons - will not impact your final score. This is only for grammatical "stop errors" that render the page difficult to read for an English speaker.
FACTUAL ERRORS: -2
Mahalo pages should have NO inaccurate or incorrect information. All dates, data, statistics and other specific information should be backed up by citations.
BIAS OR NPOV issues: -1
Mahalo pages should not take a perspective on an issue or a side in a discussion. All information presented on a Mahalo page should be fact-based, rooted in supportable research from external sources rather than anecdotal information. This includes political pages or pages about controversies, but also general interest pages. Remember that even positive statements of opinion (such as "schnauzers are great dogs for kids!" or "cinnamon buns are the best way to wake up in the morning") count as biased and should not be included. (NOTE: How To pages may occasionally include a bit more "anecdotal evidence" and "personal opinion" than standard Mahalo pages).
NOT UPDATED TO REFLECT NEW INFO: -1
Obviously, no page can be rigorously updated every minute while breaking news is happening. But if more than 12-24 hours has passed after a significant event that changes important aspects of a topic, and the page is not updated, that page will lose 1 point.
''LACK OF CONTENT''
Under 100 words of original content: -2
Under 200 words of original content: -1
Under 300 words of original content: -0.5
300 or more original words on each Mahalo page should be considered the new "standard." This includes all original writing on the page, such as the top section, Fast Facts and written sub-sections. (NOTE: How To pages all should have more than 300 words of original content, and thus have their own internal standards.)
''NO INTERNAL LINKS'': -1
''NOT ENOUGH INTERNAL LINKS'': -0.5
A full point will be lost if NO links to other Mahalo pages appear in any of the original written sections of the page. If important words that could link to a worthwhile Mahalo page are not double-bracketed, the page will lose half of a point.
NO CATEGORIES'': -1
Eventually, categories will be integrated into Mahalo Tasks. As of now, they should be added to pages after the Task is accepted and the finished page appears on Mahalo.com.
NO RELATED MAHALO PAGES'': -1
A writer should include at least 3-5 "related pages on Mahalo" to every topic page. Failure to include at least 3 related pages will result in the loss of a point.
NO IMAGE SECTION: -1
Every page on Mahalo should include an image search, and should have an appropriate image selected in the first available spot.
GENERAL FORMATTING ERROR: -0.5
This can include any basic formatting problem on the page. Common examples include sub-sections in the written content that do not have "headlines" or titles, Featured Videos that do not have descriptions or sections that are misplaced on the page.
NO CITATIONS: -1
If a page contains specific, factual information that is not cited, that page will lose 1 point. Not ALL factual information needs to be cited. A good rule of thumb is whether or not that fact is "common knowledge." That Barack Obama is President of the United States who was elected in 2008 is a commonly-known fact that would not need to be cited. That he was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, is much more specific, less commonly-known info and should be cited.
NO DISCLAIMER (on medical, legal, financial pages): -0.5
These disclaimers appear automatically on all new pages in these three categories. They should remain intact on the page and you will be marked down for not having/including them.
NO FAST FACTS/TIPS: -1
All topic pages require Fast Facts; all How To pages should include Tips sections. Fast Fact sections should include no fewer than 6-8 facts and Tips sections should include at least 3 tips.
This system will be a great way for you to know, right away, what your page needs to be sparkling and awesome!
Contact @Camilla, @Lon, or @Annek with any questions!
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$16 Answers
How come there are no +2 points for great content or +3 for using semicolons correctly. +4 for no dangling participles or ending sentences with prepositions. +5 points for a really interesting and accurate video. Always punitive.
I think someone wanted to be an English teacher but lost his or her red pen somewhere along the way. Funny how everyone's happy to take mysterious points away but not add any.
Awww, mom, I only got a C- on my web page. Can I still go to the school dance?
I'm assuming we will get a full detailed report on our pages, the score break down, and ways of disputing scores if a dispute exists?
Do people people with negative scores on their pages have to pay mahalo?
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M$
Once it's rated and you make changes how is it reviewed?
What process is in place if you disagree with a rating?
Who is the overall contact for these questions?
Who rates the 'not enough links' type points and what if you disagree, what process is in place for a review?
More information on the back end process would probably reassure new page managers...and everyone else of course :)
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$
I am in favor of the rating idea and mirror the questions about the process.
I have a suggestion. Can tip Jars be added to pages? I feel that this will help encourage quality management.
What if there's only "so much" information that can be added and it's under 300? Are we to be penalized because of that? Such is the case at times with some coupon and gift card pages.
I have the same questions...
Exactly the questions I though after reading this thread. :)
I hope to see the answers soon !
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$
Mahalo.com
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M$
Victoria,
I have one tip for you about the dragging and reorganizing. A lot of times when the tasks are approved (and some of the old pages from Mahalo 2) they are not formatted correctly. On a typical page, the Guide Note is supposed to be in the "Content" section, and all of the steps and featured objects are supposed to be in the "Links" section.
What has been happening is that the first step or two are being placed into the content section with the Guide Note. This means that if your Featured Video is in the links section, you cannot drag it about Step 1 because Step 1 is in the Content section and not Links. Make sense?
The fix is kind of a pain, which is why the QC Team tries to do this for you guys so you don't have to. Occasionally a few might slip through though. What you need to do is make a new text section in Links and copy your Step 1 (or any other steps that are in the wrong place) into the box. Delete the Step 1 in the Content section and you should be good to drag your Video about your newly created Step 1.
If this doesn't make sense, feel free to ping me for more information. :) It's hard to explain here!
Yes, it makes perfect sense. Just as soon as I finish my umpteen other things I need to get done to rate a perfect 10 on all my pages, I will give it a shot. I'm going to archive this in Word for reference. Thanks so much!
Featured objects are appearing on the left side of all my pages. I think, that is the place for content. There is nothing we can do to the right side of the page. It is just the way it is.
Are you saying that I can move things in the right side as well?????
Looking forward to more change. Keep on rolling!
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$
The main reason people will visit Mahalo is the quality of the content, this refinement will help us to improve our site further. It's my belief we have to pursue excellence and provide pages, which are consistently 25% better than the competition and as a minimum at least as good.
A new rating system can only help with SEO in my opinion too. If we address some of the challenges of the rating system the pages will naturally be more warm and welcoming to visitors.
I think one of the bigger issues could be the "lack of content" on some existing pages. I visit many Mahalo pages which contain minimal content and to reverse engineer some of these pages will take considerable time and effort. Again though if we can apply ourselves to this, we will enjoy a heightened customer experience and SEO benefits. The Search Engines will undoubtedly pick up on the extra content and keywords.
I would hope not to get low rated pages but if I did I would respond with a commitment to improve the page(s) to the required standard. It's like medicine, it might taste bad (the thought of it) but it's good for you really!
I thought the acid test though was to try the new system out with one of my managed pages. A favorite of mine is:
http://www.mahalo.com/los-angeles-zoo-coupons - How did this honestly fare?
Observations:
#I updated an August reference to now read December
#There were 210 words of content, i've revised and this is now 437. It was quite easy tbh to double the amount of content, I added:
1. More content to the guide note, promotion of the seasonal ''Reindeer Romp'' activity and also content about LA Zoo's work with endangered species
2. I added a section on the Membership Benefits of joining the LA Zoo
3. I added a new section about available Coupons for the LA Zoo (regrettably there are no current offers!)
#There were no categories, so I added Coupon Deals, Los Angeles, Endangered Species and Aquarium
If any Mahalo member of staff wants to now test this page under the new rules i'd be interested to know how it did and would make further improvements.
Overall I think this new rating system is a tremendous improvement. One which we should embrace for everyone's common good (Mahalo, us and perhaps most importantly the end visitors to the website)
Rock on Mahalo!
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$
Respectfully I've got to disagree. While some of these are good rules of thumb in some cases, they will quickly turn what should be a short and informative page into an extremely large and unwieldy morass of verbosity and inlinks that was shoehorned in to an otherwise perfectly workable page in order to satisfy an arbitrary requirement.
For example consider that now many Guide Note sections are suggested to be 200 words. On a page about a given model of mobile phone this size may well be all there is to say about that phone, leaving the rest of the sections to simply repeat what has already been said in a vain attempt to further boost wordcounts. The requirement of 6-8 fast facts is also extremely damaging, at some point there are simply not enough possible things to shoehorn in to fill that requirement.
The emphasis should be on creating a page which accomplishes it's named goal as professionally and efficiently, if not necessarily as largely, as possible. Search engine optimization at the cost of the alienation of a userbase is not going to be worth it in the long run, the realisation of this simple fact is why google is a synonym for searching for something on the internet where nobody ever MSNed or Yahooed before.
I disagree that it will help develop a good page, if all the feedback after submitting a page is a rating, how will this tell me what I have missed or how my page can be better? I find the feedback and suggestions for the reviewers to be extremely helpful, though at time frustrating when different people review your page and contradict one another, i.e. first reviewer says to add or change or enhance in a certain way and then after doing that and submitting, the next review is contradictory and you end up reversing some changes to suit the new review.
But on Rating a page, from the Mahalo side and posting that on the page for the viewers who access the page, I don’t know what this tells them. The question that popped into my mind was, why are some pages rated higher than others? Wouldn’t you think that before they became a page for me to access they would have been reviewed so that they meet a standard? Does it not say that Mahalo accepts pages that are not as good as others? I think the message gets crossed in doing this.
If it was clear that the rating was from the users and viewers of the page then this would be good feedback to the page managers as well in order to improve their pages.
I think the rating comes from a need to ensure that the pages submitted meet certain standards and I agree with that. But what I have personally observed is that there is a need for a standard for reviewing the pages submitted. I have submitted pages only to have remarks made that go against previous remarks made on the same page. I have sen reviews remarks made on one page that are the opposite mkd on another submittedpage.
Case: I have had remarks when I have paraphrased facts in my own words, that Fast facts should be direct facts with citations of where the fact is from. Then when I have done that, had remarks that facts I listed with citation/reference have been taken word for word from the site referenced! This is a little exasperating. What is it, a fact with its reference or do we paraphrase the fact in our own words with a reference to support it?
Also, how much citation is required, again some reviews seem to want everything cited, and others don’t. How much citation is too much citation, before people will just go to those sites for the information, why come to Mahalo if everything “stated” is citied from other sites? Though I must admit that I have yet to have a reviewer tell me I have over used citations!
I certainly agree on the content side of things, as I have seen pages that are so barebones that it was not more than a non-page.
I agree that pages should have standards, but I also think that there should be clear review guidelines. What is considered common knowledge and so a statement that does not require citation versus what is a statement that requires a citation to “support” and or endorse it.
The only other thing that comes to mind is another contradiction. Are the pages and How To’s to be written like a Wikipedia page or encyclopaedia, or as a social and community based information page? My understanding was that Mahalo pages were pages generated by people for people and that they should have a community or social aspect to them. But I have also been told in review that the pages should read like an encyclopaedia. Is there a balance there?
I know my page are not perfect by far, I am still trying to learn teh Mahalo way. Well those are the things that pop to mind in reading this message about Ratings and Pages.
One more think, I do like all the information that was included to explain the rating system as it cleared up other questions I had about the page informaion and requirements. All attempts to improve pages and trafic flow to the pages is a positive, so good to see that Mahalo thinks positive.
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$
If you would like to experience the reality of "visitor ratings," hook up with Newsvine for a stint. It makes for an acrimonious environment, full of hostility, dirty politics, and you know what they say about opinions and A-holes - everyone has one. Keeping this internal is a VERY good idea. Trust me.
Yes, I can see your point, therefore it would have to be a controlled Viewer rating, not a viewer comment or opinion just the star rating on how helpful the page was to the viewer, the user of the page and its information.
I don't see how when I submit a page and get say a three star rating returned that that will help me fix the page and make it acceptable. Without feedback what exactly is it telling me except thes "something or somethings" are not up to snuff. Did I not include enough citations? Did I word something that may be veiwed as a fact and therefore need supporting reference? Is it too encyclopedia or not enough?
Just the thoughts I have when I read this, not critisizing it, will work with it in what ever form it evolves into and as always do my best to create pages that visitors will come back to again and again for the information or help that they afford. Just the wondering mind put down in text!
Will this power eventually be given to the virtual managers as well as some of the higher belts ?
I would also like some user feedback on pages too.
A separate staring system so users coming to the pages can also rate if or not they like the page would be helpful as well.
Thank you mahalo devs for this!
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$
This and other new features brightened my day after yesterdays fiasco =)
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$You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
Keanu has some great page management skills.
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$
I wish to know where you find the clip and how did you insert it. Very interesting one.
Hi @pellrider here is the exact file and it can be inserted into and answer in the same way any other picture would be.
The rest of the .gif and the other files I use for this kind of stuff can be found at the link below.
http://www.globalfailure.com/images/avatars/
Just copy and paste the urls into your answers in the same way you would any other picture. Have fun!
However it works, I like the idea.
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$
Though man I have a little work to do.. lengthening pages and adding categories...
As a suggestion i brought up during the tutorial could we have the disclaimers Mahalo would like used added to a page somewhere for copy pasting perhaps? I think some else suggested they be a an addable insert during tasks...
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$I hope that this rating would help me converting all my managed pages to quality ones atleast for some extent.
Mahalo 3.0 is rocking with the new features !!!
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
I'll just second @fabliaux' sentiment. Why is there no positive points? All the scores are negative points. So if I write a very grammatically correct articles but they are boring and repetitive, with little to no information, I would get better score than let's say, someone who are not an English native speakers but put forth some effort to make the content interesting and new?
shouldn't the QCers the one responsible for the pages before they are accepted? Where do the VM's significance in this?
Not only this, but I think it's also readily apparent that such arbitrary measures will lead to a great many pages losing their end-user appeal by being far more wordy than they ever require, and by going to absurd lengths to meet the requirement for inlinking. Some tasks, by 2nd and 3rd degree black belts no less, have been overall far into the negatives by these very standards.
I urge Mahalo to deliver a short sharp kick of common sense to whoever came up with the idea to take good rules of thumb and turn them into an inflexible, arbitrary, and above all excessive and capricious set of laws. An article made by these rules is an article that will likely drive away more users than it ever attracts.
I totally agree with you about the + points. I was here the last year when we went through this and would have loved to see a +2 for a job well done!