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This is a great idea Jason, I applaud you. It is the commitment of quality that keeps me tied to M.A. Although the cat and mouse game of gaming a site is always an ongoing battle and I see M.A. as a big target with money being involved. However with this commitment to quality I believe gamers will be frustrated and eventually go else where to play. It was first Weblogs Inc. that exposed me to the Jason Calacanis method of building site activity and I thought, wow, here is a guy who is willing to put his money where his mouth is. It is this commitment that has made you successful and I see M.A. as being your greatest success!
The only thing negative I can think of about this move is the possibility of the incentive to tip may be less attractive, as in "why use my money to tip a question if Mahalo will do it for me?" Maybe one way to continue the tips rolling can be a greater incentive to self tip a question vs. the Mahalo tipped question and maybe this incentive can be in the form of more points for a self tipped question vs. a Mahalo tipped question. I am sure you and your staff have a lot of material and insight and have several possibilities already so I will trust your intuition.
Bravo M.A.!!
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I think, that if you can make sure people don't start spamming every single question with short non-useful responses, just for a hope at the tip. Then this will be a good thing overall for the site.
I'm not not sure how much more traffic this will drive to the site, hopefully even more.
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jasoncalac...
I've always responded to interesting questions, tipped or not. My husband, who is a bit more practical than I am, asked me recently why I didn't concentrate on the tipped questions. So this change will make him happy!
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1)It is possible for one person to make two login id from different computer and asking the question in one id and answering it from the second id and getting it as the best answer from the first id.
2)More people getting hurt for not being selected as the best answer.
3)Friend circle operating only voting their friend's answer as the best answer when it is undecided.
Hey, i am just giving an view that these things might happen as the members grow. So what do u think Jason???
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I am a beginner to Mahalo, but after much deliberation, I saw it was a site that I could contribute to, and hopefully make a difference. I hope that the other new people will do the same. If .25 encourages active intelligent participation, then I can only see it as a good thing.
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I know this will make a difference. People will answer the questions more, and go for the tips. Although the tip isn't the main reason to respond, it's certainly something that provides some kind of incentive and loyalty to the system. It's kind of how Listasaurus pays its users 25 cents to list adds. It definitely works.
Keep up the great work!
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A suggestion: if everything goes well, and you decide to rise the Mahalo Default Tip, why not tipping these questions according to how difficult/ demanding they are. A very simple classification system, something like:
- simple facts
- facts + context
- needs a thoughtful answer
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I'm not sure how this will work out long term (in terms of funding), but the next two weeks should be really fun!
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Answered Question
M$5
February 18, 2009 07:32 PM
BIG NEW FEATURE/TEST: Mahalo puts a .25 tip on every question without a tip.
OK folks, this is very big news.
I can't even tell you how excited I am to do this... this is something I've been dreaming about and working on for years with my various companies: helping members of sites get some financial recognition. We did this on Weblogs, Inc. blogs (engadget, autoblog, joytstiq), and I tried it on Netscape.com when I was working for AOL (didn't work out perfectly as I left after four months).
Anyway, we've been blown away by the amount of amazing answers, questions and signups inside of Mahalo Answers over the first 60 days. We're averaging 200+ signups per day along with over 15,000 unique visitors to the Answers portion of Mahalo. In fact, Mahalo Answers is now 10-15% of the traffic to Mahalo.com overall.
Our staff is betting on when Answers will get more traffic than Mahalo.com... most folks think in another two or three months. I think in one month based on this announcement!!! :-)
In recognition of the massive success we've had in the first 60 days, and in order to grow the number of high-quality answers, we've decided to run a very exciting test:
Starting tomorrow (or Friday) we will be putting a quarter on every un-tipped question in the system.
http://img.skitch.com/20090218-ej8bck5cirkf3xaipefm9qg4wj.png
This means that EVERY SINGLE QUESTION in the system will have some value. While a "Mahalo quarter" is not lot of money (obviously) we think this is step in the right direction for consumer based sites.
Imagine if digg gave a quarter to users for every story that made the home page?
Imagine if Flickr gave .25 for every photo that reached 1,000 views?
Imagine if Yahoo! Answers did this for their 30m visitors in the USA?!?!
Well, that's the concept here: reward our users for helping build the site.
Massive disclaimers:
1. This is a two week test.
2. If the test goes well we will continue it.
3. The success criteria for this test is that the quality *and* quantity of answers on un-tipped questions goes up.
4. If this works well it is *possible* that the tip amount could increase to .50 or some day even .75 or a dollar.
5. If the quality of answers is not good we will have to discontinue the program immediately and go back to the standard Q&A format everyone else uses (i.e. Yahoo answers, Askville, Wiki.answers.com, etc).
6. If anyone games the system their accounts will be deleted instantly (i.e. don't go voting against other people and for yourself--trust us, we know who is doing this).
Again, we understand that .25 is NOT a lot of money, however putting .25 on each of 20,000 questions a month is a $5,000 investment for Mahalo. This is not an inconsequential amount money for us. However, we are trying to figure out if there is a model whereby your contributions to the page can be recognized AND we can grow the service.
I'm really looking forward to hearing your feedback on this very exciting test. Again, I know it's a small thing, but it's a million times more than Yahoo Answers, Askville, Wiki.Answers, Wikipedia and digg have ever done for their members. I'm hoping we can inspire a trend.
.... happy hunting, and again the best way you can help is?????
Give great answers and help people!
Much mahalo & respect,
Jason
I can't even tell you how excited I am to do this... this is something I've been dreaming about and working on for years with my various companies: helping members of sites get some financial recognition. We did this on Weblogs, Inc. blogs (engadget, autoblog, joytstiq), and I tried it on Netscape.com when I was working for AOL (didn't work out perfectly as I left after four months).
Anyway, we've been blown away by the amount of amazing answers, questions and signups inside of Mahalo Answers over the first 60 days. We're averaging 200+ signups per day along with over 15,000 unique visitors to the Answers portion of Mahalo. In fact, Mahalo Answers is now 10-15% of the traffic to Mahalo.com overall.
Our staff is betting on when Answers will get more traffic than Mahalo.com... most folks think in another two or three months. I think in one month based on this announcement!!! :-)
In recognition of the massive success we've had in the first 60 days, and in order to grow the number of high-quality answers, we've decided to run a very exciting test:
Starting tomorrow (or Friday) we will be putting a quarter on every un-tipped question in the system.
This means that EVERY SINGLE QUESTION in the system will have some value. While a "Mahalo quarter" is not lot of money (obviously) we think this is step in the right direction for consumer based sites.
Imagine if digg gave a quarter to users for every story that made the home page?
Imagine if Flickr gave .25 for every photo that reached 1,000 views?
Imagine if Yahoo! Answers did this for their 30m visitors in the USA?!?!
Well, that's the concept here: reward our users for helping build the site.
Massive disclaimers:
1. This is a two week test.
2. If the test goes well we will continue it.
3. The success criteria for this test is that the quality *and* quantity of answers on un-tipped questions goes up.
4. If this works well it is *possible* that the tip amount could increase to .50 or some day even .75 or a dollar.
5. If the quality of answers is not good we will have to discontinue the program immediately and go back to the standard Q&A format everyone else uses (i.e. Yahoo answers, Askville, Wiki.answers.com, etc).
6. If anyone games the system their accounts will be deleted instantly (i.e. don't go voting against other people and for yourself--trust us, we know who is doing this).
Again, we understand that .25 is NOT a lot of money, however putting .25 on each of 20,000 questions a month is a $5,000 investment for Mahalo. This is not an inconsequential amount money for us. However, we are trying to figure out if there is a model whereby your contributions to the page can be recognized AND we can grow the service.
I'm really looking forward to hearing your feedback on this very exciting test. Again, I know it's a small thing, but it's a million times more than Yahoo Answers, Askville, Wiki.Answers, Wikipedia and digg have ever done for their members. I'm hoping we can inspire a trend.
.... happy hunting, and again the best way you can help is?????
Give great answers and help people!
Much mahalo & respect,
Jason
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| February 18, 2009 10:42 PM |
The only thing negative I can think of about this move is the possibility of the incentive to tip may be less attractive, as in "why use my money to tip a question if Mahalo will do it for me?" Maybe one way to continue the tips rolling can be a greater incentive to self tip a question vs. the Mahalo tipped question and maybe this incentive can be in the form of more points for a self tipped question vs. a Mahalo tipped question. I am sure you and your staff have a lot of material and insight and have several possibilities already so I will trust your intuition.
Bravo M.A.!!
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Other Answers (14)
February 18, 2009 07:47 PM
This is fantastic Mahalo-- great job giving some early recognition to the community of Mahalo-ites. I think that the long term key for the site is to have a critical mass of questions that have already been answered in a high-quality manner. That way, more and more people will be attracted to the site because they know that this goes beyond any competing site and certainly well beyond Google which is probably what they rely on now. So, the more "eyes" on the site is something that is good for us, as well as Mahalo! Thanks.
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February 18, 2009 07:49 PM
Hmmmm. This seems interesting. I think, that if you can make sure people don't start spamming every single question with short non-useful responses, just for a hope at the tip. Then this will be a good thing overall for the site.
I'm not not sure how much more traffic this will drive to the site, hopefully even more.
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Reply
jasoncalac...
February 18, 2009 08:03 PM
Yes, the spamming is the issue I'm referring to above. If folks start spamming the system we will turn off their accounts and they will start at White belt again (ouch!). I'm sure it will be fine.
Tip jasoncalacanis for this comment
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February 18, 2009 07:59 PM
Cool idea. I hope people will respond in the way you're looking for! People will still have to try if they want the tip. That's not changed! I've always responded to interesting questions, tipped or not. My husband, who is a bit more practical than I am, asked me recently why I didn't concentrate on the tipped questions. So this change will make him happy!
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February 18, 2009 08:03 PM
Happy husband, happy life!
(or is it happy wife, happy life?!?!?!) :-)
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(or is it happy wife, happy life?!?!?!) :-)
February 18, 2009 08:08 PM
hmmm... you are going to give tips for non-tip question It is a good idea but your team must be careful. reasons when more people come it will be difficult to moderate. When that happens likely scenario 1)It is possible for one person to make two login id from different computer and asking the question in one id and answering it from the second id and getting it as the best answer from the first id.
2)More people getting hurt for not being selected as the best answer.
3)Friend circle operating only voting their friend's answer as the best answer when it is undecided.
Hey, i am just giving an view that these things might happen as the members grow. So what do u think Jason???
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Reply
February 18, 2009 08:19 PM
We watch user activity closely. If someone were to create multiple accounts we would know and shut them all down.
Also, if friend voting starts happening it will trigger our gaming alarms and freeze the accounts.
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Also, if friend voting starts happening it will trigger our gaming alarms and freeze the accounts.
February 18, 2009 08:10 PM
I think this is a good way to weed out the people that will just answer questions with stupid answers just to try and raise their points. I am a beginner to Mahalo, but after much deliberation, I saw it was a site that I could contribute to, and hopefully make a difference. I hope that the other new people will do the same. If .25 encourages active intelligent participation, then I can only see it as a good thing.
Permalink | Report
Reply
February 18, 2009 08:21 PM
That is another issue we are wondering about ourselves! The good news is tipped questions will automatically go to the top of the page, so there is value in putting in a tip because you'll get more exposure AND hopefully the fact that your tip is AT LEAST 4x the size of the non-tipped question *should* drive better answers.
We shall see! it's ONLY a test... :-)
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We shall see! it's ONLY a test... :-)
February 18, 2009 08:14 PM
That's fabulous, and brilliant! It levels the playing field, as more people will answer both questions now. Glad Mahalo Answers is thinking outside of the box for the 100th time. I'm just waiting for video responses built into the system. I know this will make a difference. People will answer the questions more, and go for the tips. Although the tip isn't the main reason to respond, it's certainly something that provides some kind of incentive and loyalty to the system. It's kind of how Listasaurus pays its users 25 cents to list adds. It definitely works.
Keep up the great work!
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Reply
February 18, 2009 08:22 PM
Thanks for the feedback! We're playing with video (as you may have seen I put in two videos yesterday). Not sure video is that important right now, but we shall see.
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February 18, 2009 10:02 PM
A way to build the video into the system would be nice, so that you don't have to go another site. I know Viddler offers this feature for comments, or maybe it's a Wordpress plugin. If you could do something like Sims On Stage where the video is built in, then that would be cool.
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February 20, 2009 12:30 AM
As much as I love video (and facebook video comments!), I don't think this is the place for it.
When you want an answer you want a concrete answer that you can skim through and find your answer in a few seconds (and refer back to later on). Besides most people actually don't have webcams.
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When you want an answer you want a concrete answer that you can skim through and find your answer in a few seconds (and refer back to later on). Besides most people actually don't have webcams.
February 18, 2009 08:54 PM
I've heard that you are planning to do something with the interesting/uninteresting questions. I think that this could be the perfect opportunity. You could give people's questions bigger rewards based on how well their questions are rated, and vice-versa.
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February 18, 2009 09:39 PM
This is an excellent initiative, Mahalo! I don't think it will be "spammed" - people are not spamming the current dollar questions, why would they spam the 0.25 ones? It can only fail if it gets ignored by serious folk who care about the integrity of their work. And, we won't let it happen, will we? A suggestion: if everything goes well, and you decide to rise the Mahalo Default Tip, why not tipping these questions according to how difficult/ demanding they are. A very simple classification system, something like:
- simple facts
- facts + context
- needs a thoughtful answer
Permalink | Report
Reply
February 20, 2009 12:58 AM
I think this is a brilliant way to boost the quality and quantity of answres given on this site, as well as creating even more hype, buzz, and publicity for Mahalo Answers! It will also help give money to the users, who are bound to give out tips when they ask questions of their own. I'm not sure how this will work out long term (in terms of funding), but the next two weeks should be really fun!
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