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 M¢25  Funded By Mahalo ? |  July 09, 2009 11:52 PM

This website has a very warming, user-friendly design to it. Why are so many tasks asking people to research adult websites?

My parents are going to freak when parental controls show I was directed to some of these sites!!!
Interesting Question?  Yes (3)   No (3)   

Interesting: krysstel, arjo, christhomson

Uninteresting: krusheasy, demanda, jeffhoard

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July 09, 2009 11:59 PM
I would expect that it's because those terms generate search traffic. The content of the Mahalo pages is limited to ownership/competitors/search rank -- without links to the adult content itself. You're probably better off sticking to doing tasks for websites that you are familiar with until this barnraising is over. (And if you are familiar with those sites, it's prob best you pretend that you are not).


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Helpful: dannyjohnson

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July 10, 2009 12:21 AM - New Source
matthewh: I was hoping Mahalo was set up for a niche market. (family audience) Common sense that if every website is the same, then none of them really serve their audiences. This is the only link I could readily find... http://blog.worldvillage.com/business/dominate_the_competition_with_niche_market_websites.html

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July 10, 2009 01:29 AM
@krysstel - thanks for the useless link, did you really have to use new source here just to get the extra point?
gee I never though matthewh wanted a link about niche websites. doesn't answer his question.

@Matthewh - Mahalo went down the list of top sites, a lot are porn or gambling(despite that being bad- thats what built the internet). A lot of people aren't happy with the topic of websites, but it seems to be an area Mahalo was lacking. Yes, to answer your question this is to "Game the Google". Mahalo seems to rank very highly when the pages are built out properly -example would be "remove basketball hoop pole from ground" not a big topic, but the Mahalo page ranks in the top 3 or 4 on google. Higher on Google means more hits, more hits means more clicks on Adsense. More clicks means more dollars for whoever claimed the page..

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July 10, 2009 02:27 AM
@krysstel. Thanks for the link. That made a lot of sense. I don't think that Mahalo is going for a niche market though. These guys try a lot of things. Sometimes they look brilliant. Sometimes they end up with egg on their faces. All part of this Cloud Cyborg experiment that we are a part of.

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July 10, 2009 12:12 PM
@matthewh... Mahalo just started from a list of the most visited websites. A lot of those sites happen to be "adult". Some also turned out to be non-English language. But those sites shouldn't be a problem for you paternal-control wise unless you actually click through to them.

@krysstel... if you think "family audience" is a niche market, you need to learn a bit more about the meaning of niche! :)

Anyway the "niche market" advice is good for small businesses, individual bloggers and the like. It does not apply the same way to a VC funded startup like Mahalo. If you're a Mahalo (or a Google or Twitter) you may target some group or market segment to get your early traction, but eventually you want to have a very broad reach.

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July 10, 2009 04:26 PM
The goal of this iparticular barnraising is not to get searches from porn, per se, but to make sure Mahalo benefits from the top searches that people are doing on Google. Mahalo is not a non-profit charity; it's a business focused on search. In order to survive it needs traffic. To get traffic, it needs to have a pages for all of the most popular search terms.

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July 10, 2009 12:15 AM
I totally agree and I am a parent. This used to be a safe site.
Yes there is freedom of speech but I was comfortable in the past with having young adults viewing......
Why the need for adult questions.
This also defaulted out at a restricted to adults only ( in a school location).
Which means the adults cannot even visit the site while on breaks at work.

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Helpful: morriss003, philipy, chriswingate

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July 10, 2009 12:14 PM
I would raise this with Mahalo.

I think they may find your argument persuasive.

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July 10, 2009 12:40 PM
@canadamom are you saying that you can no longer visit any pages of Mahalo at work because of these tasks? Mahalo has ALWAYS had pages which discuss adult content (I'm not going to link to some of the older ones) - so it would be interesting to try to figure out why these new pages caused a problem with the site being blocked, while some of the older ones didn't.

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July 10, 2009 12:18 AM
I may be very very new here, but I have to give my opinion point blank: "I do not like beyond g-rated audience." If that is what this site is becoming, I won't use it or recommend it to friends. Actually recommended it to a few friends a few days ago, and now I have to explain to them that "sometimes things are not as they appear".....
Source(s):
lots of other sites on the internet for "Non Family Rated" content. I was hoping this was set up for a niche market .......................


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July 10, 2009 01:49 AM
@mathewh. In my experience, unless you went directly to an adult website, or clicked on the task or any of the Mahalo links to that task, you should not have any cooties in your google search.

@krysstel, please see the terms of service, specifically under general conditions part 4. I have never read where Mahalo is specifically a 'G-rated site'. There can be discussions that do not involve sex, but are not for the faint of heart.
There also is a NSFW category, so I'm sorry to say that it's not a 'niche market' either. It's a community and has the good, and the tastefully bad.

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July 10, 2009 01:25 AM
@matthewh

I think there are 2 reasons:

1. Mahalo users are less willing to claim tasks that involve visiting adult websites. If these tasks are not claimed and there are not enough new tasks they will form a larger percentage of the unclaimed tasks. So that is why there seem to be a lot of tasks that involve researching adult websites.

2. The reason they are there is because Mahalo wants to have a page for each of the most visited websites ( I think they used the Alexa Top 500). And yes adult websites are still really popular on the interwebs. It's an easy way to get pageviews / adsense clicks / revenue.

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July 10, 2009 04:03 AM
It is user driven. Mahalo and Jason are not adding porn to the site. The users are adding the adult related stuff. That is just one of the pros/cons of users driven sites.

And if it is truly user driven, should someone really filter and delete things? An example is when the DVD hack code (or something of the sort) got posted on Digg.com. They *could* have removed it, but they opted not to as to actually be truly user driven.

Tags: driven, adult, site, user

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July 10, 2009 12:18 PM
In this case it's not user driven. The tasks were created my Mahalo.

If anything those tasks have remained more visible as they have not been claimed!

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July 10, 2009 04:42 AM
Are user friendly designs and adult content mutually exclusive ... not sure I understand the question.

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July 10, 2009 12:18 PM
I think the point is it's not so much user friendly as that its "kinda cute". With its bright colors and happy faces this almost looks more like a kids site than a grown up one.

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July 10, 2009 05:48 PM
I fail to see the logic. Your saying grown up sites use dark colors and sad faces. But I am getting really tired of matthewh always deciding my contributions are unhelpful so I'll leave it at that.

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July 10, 2009 10:38 AM
I don't think the character of the site has anything to do with whether or not adult sites are included in tasks. How were you "directed to the sites"? On every task that involves an adult website, there is a very prominent disclaimer in the title and question details. Did you click on one of the adult links without paying attention to the disclaimer?

Above all, you must keep in mind that Mahalo is a business. Therefore the purpose of this particular barnraising is to construct pages for the most popular websites that aren't yet listed on Mahalo. Many of the most popular sites are adult-oriented. However, if you're not interested in completing those tasks, it's easy to pass over them. The "adult content" warning is right in the title.

I think this IS a very friendly site with a great community. However, it's also a site mainly intended for adults. There is even an entire NSFW category that is definitely not G-rated. If you're personally offended, or in your case in risk of getting in trouble, by such content, it is your responsibility to monitor that.

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July 10, 2009 08:29 PM
No, it does not seem wrong to me at all. Someone searching for information about a pornography company, which is all these tasks would entail, hardly poses a threat. The Mahalo search engine needs to include as many possible searches as possible to be successful.

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July 10, 2009 09:00 PM
I agree with @demanda and @arjo. @Matthewh, you surely understand that unlike Wikipedia, Mahalo is not a charity based organization. It needs money to run the site, as well as pay it's employees. My opinion is Mahalo is on the right track. To do something for the greater good, you may have to do bad things. If you believe that Mahalo is using adult-content claims to get better positions in search engines, well, it is. But if you look at it from Mahalo's point of view, it is just getting information about the most visited sites (regardless of which category), and trying to get indexed. It will generate more clicks, and more revenue. Stop looking at it like it's a crime. If Mahalo wants do something for the community, it needs to get more clicks, and the only way of doing it is by optimizing it's content. If it NEEDS to add info on adult-content, it should.

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July 10, 2009 10:22 PM
Mahalo is a search engine, users type things into our search bar and we will automatically create a page for that term. Whether the term is "stuff to bring to church" or "ways to pleasure your woman" the pages are built regardless, end of story.

The key here is, you won't see porn unless you search for porn.

The Barnraising task contest currently has the theme of "Top Searched Websites" as we all have noticed some of those top searched websites so happen to be porn websites, once those tasks are completed the next time a user searches those terms, Mahalo will have a beneficial page on that Topic, complete with guide note, that is our goal for all search terms.

Maybe it was a bad idea to include the adult pages, maybe it wasn't either way I think we have learned from this experience and we are all better because of it. Time will tell.

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