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How do the Mahalo pages about stuff (like William Shatner) get there?
I get the QA part of Mahalo, but not yet the linking, and human-powered search part. Are pages about stuff wikis, or somehow auto-generated?
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Mahalo pages are not auto-created. Whereas conventional search engines (such as Google, Yahoo or MSN) use complex computer algorithms to search the web and provide lists of results that the program thinks are relevant to your query, Mahalo uses "Real" people to construct pages of relevant links on a specific topic.
Usually, the person creating the pages (whether it is a full time Mahalo employee or a part time freelancer) will take a few hours or longer to search the web on a specific topic (such as William Shatner). They will then go through and personally select the best 40 or so links on the subject and then categorize them based on the type of result they are (such as William Shatner videos, photos, biographical information, etc.)
The benefits to this method are:
1. Real people are better equipped to identify "Quality" sites than a computer. Humans can tell by looking at a page whether it has quality information, whether the ads on the page aren't bothersome or overburdening, etc.
2. Humans can help weed out "Spam" sites or ones that don't give good information. Computers can be gamed to have bad sites show up high in search results (which is why search engines often need to tweak their algorithms).
3. Instead of getting 10 million results, Mahalo pages give you the top 40 or so results and put it all on one page. How often do you get to the fourth page of a google result anyways? This saves you the time of having to search for what you're looking for.
4. Mahalo pages are organized based on different categories. If you are looking for videos of William Shatner, just scroll down to that section. Same with photos, bio info, etc. Google and Yahoo give you tons of results and then makes you sort through them to find what you're looking for (or make you re-type your query to find what you're looking for).
While there are definitely drawbacks to this approach (Mahalo doesn't have a result for every search term possible), the benefits outweigh the drawback in my opinion.
Disclosure: I work for Mahalo as a guide, so I guess I'm a little biased.
Usually, the person creating the pages (whether it is a full time Mahalo employee or a part time freelancer) will take a few hours or longer to search the web on a specific topic (such as William Shatner). They will then go through and personally select the best 40 or so links on the subject and then categorize them based on the type of result they are (such as William Shatner videos, photos, biographical information, etc.)
The benefits to this method are:
1. Real people are better equipped to identify "Quality" sites than a computer. Humans can tell by looking at a page whether it has quality information, whether the ads on the page aren't bothersome or overburdening, etc.
2. Humans can help weed out "Spam" sites or ones that don't give good information. Computers can be gamed to have bad sites show up high in search results (which is why search engines often need to tweak their algorithms).
3. Instead of getting 10 million results, Mahalo pages give you the top 40 or so results and put it all on one page. How often do you get to the fourth page of a google result anyways? This saves you the time of having to search for what you're looking for.
4. Mahalo pages are organized based on different categories. If you are looking for videos of William Shatner, just scroll down to that section. Same with photos, bio info, etc. Google and Yahoo give you tons of results and then makes you sort through them to find what you're looking for (or make you re-type your query to find what you're looking for).
While there are definitely drawbacks to this approach (Mahalo doesn't have a result for every search term possible), the benefits outweigh the drawback in my opinion.
Disclosure: I work for Mahalo as a guide, so I guess I'm a little biased.
Users (like you and me) can apply to be guides who enter the information, and editors then approve the page or offer advice to improve it. Plagiarism is not tolerated so copy/paste from Wiki is not acceptable. Generally, people would be guides on their areas of interest. There is a small monetary benefit to filling them out, but I would bet that mostly people do it out of passion for the topic.
Pages are written By Mahalo Staff, as well as part time guides who work in the Mahalo Greenhouse. Current and breaking news pages are generally written by staff, while background pages, and those that are not as time critical are outsourced to part-time guides.
Information about applying to write pages for the greenhouse can be found here: http://greenhouse.mahalo.com/Main_Page
Information about applying to write pages for the greenhouse can be found here: http://greenhouse.mahalo.com/Main_Page
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As with Wikipedia, the "Guide Note" section of our pages can be edited by Mahalo users, although each edit is seen by someone who can check it for accuracy and relevance. While Wikipedia does have editors, there is much less policing of the information that makes it on each page - meaning that there can be (and often is) factual errors.
Basically, Mahalo tries to strike a balance between the best of Google (the links of the right side of the page) and the best of Wikipedia (the condensed article on the left). Mahalo Answers is actually the third piece of the puzzle, allowing users to interact with pages and help make them better. If you don't see a piece of info you are looking for on the page, you can simply ask a question about it right there.