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M$1 June 04, 2009 05:50 AM

How Mahalo Works and How to build a Page?

I know many Answers users are confused about the recent changes to Mahalo Main. I found an couple excellent pages here that will hopefully answer most if not all questions you have about the new Mahalo.

http://www.mahalo.com/how-mahalo-works
http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-build-a-mahalo-page

The most important part I think for all of us will be the Page Management section. This is what you need to know before you claim a page.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33749589@N07/3591698742/

---Quote---
Page managers are given almost complete control over an individual Mahalo page. This includes the ability to pick the best links for the Top 7, to write or edit the Guide Note section, to move sections around on the page, highlighting the best content, and to add new links, categories, related pages and citations. The goal of the page manager is to turn Mahalo's topic page into the very best page on the Internet about that subject.

As compensation, a page manager will earn 50% of the total revenue brought into the page, to be paid out in Mahalo Dollars. The exact totals for how much a page has earned will be updated every 24 hours. The number of pages you can manage on Mahalo is determined by your belt level:

New User: 1
Yellow Belt: 5
Green Belt: 10
Purple Belt: 20
Brown Belt: 50
Black Belt: 100

As page manager, you will be required to make at least 1 significant contribution to your page each week. A significant contribution would include things like adding a new section to the guide note, updating the material that is already there to include recent changes or submitting new and informative links. The page manager is also responsible for reviewing other users' contributions to their pages. Incoming alterations that make the page less informative, accurate or useful should be removed within a few days.
---/quote---
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Interesting: dannyjohnson, williamwaco, buddawiggi, easyeboy, gwenhwyfar, gno, pirate, michaelpaul, girlieq3000, interzone, maurice, librarian

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June 03, 2009 06:33 AM
Does this mean that if I take off for a week vacation and don't update anything, I will lose all my pages?

If I add a new section to the guide note every week, within a year, it will be so long that nobody will want to read it.
Source(s):
Personal confusion about the rules.


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June 03, 2009 05:16 PM
You can also add/edit link sections if you don't have any text to add, depending on you page you could search the latest news on the topic and/or spend time cleaning out the obsolete/dead links. The possibilities are endless in how you can work on upgrading your page weekly. Naturally, if you go away for a week just let us know.

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June 03, 2009 05:24 PM
Actually, scratch that, as of right now it's done automatically, so if you go away and your page is not updated you will lose it. With that said there are current discussions to up the number to 2 weeks. But for now it's 1.

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lon lon
 
June 03, 2009 07:21 PM
Moving a link into the Top 7 counts as an edit. If there's nothing going on of major importance with your topic, that would suffice as an edit. If you go on vacation for an entire week and don't work on your page at all, you may be in danger of losing them. I would check in with Mahalo staff or leave a comment on the message board of the page letting them know it will be dormant for a time, and we can likely work out a plan to keep things updated.

As for overly-long guide notes, the idea is that you would UPDATE or change the note, not just add to it. Making something more up to date, even if you just rewrite a sentence to make it more clear, counts as an edit.

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June 05, 2009 03:06 AM
Is it possible to allow another person to help with editing a page. Seems like it will be completely biased

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ans ans
 
June 03, 2009 07:46 AM
I'm really excited by this new feature. Kudos for taking a chance!

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June 03, 2009 08:00 AM
Very exciting, yet could be overwhelming to newbies :) It would be nice to have some sort of video 101 to Mahalo made by the famous Lon at Mahalo Daily. The other challenge is that every page should be updated weekly.

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Helpful: gwenhwyfar, jeffhoard, ron1, bomae, librarian

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June 04, 2009 12:01 AM
very overwhelming easyeboy

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June 03, 2009 10:35 AM
Seems like a great idea, i just think all the proccess needs to be better documented. I tried looking for that list of how many pages can i claim and couldn`t find it anywhere.

I also think weekly contributions might become hard to do with some pages that don´t need to change much.

Anyway, good luck!

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June 03, 2009 07:31 PM
The number of pages you can manage on Mahalo is determined by your belt level:

New User: 1
Yellow Belt: 5
Green Belt: 10
Purple Belt: 20
Brown Belt: 50
Black Belt: 100

It's in the question. You could have spent some time reading it before answering.

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June 03, 2009 10:41 AM
It is not clear how sson the user gets 50 points for embedding the widget on their home page.
This should be clear.

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June 03, 2009 12:27 PM
Sounds really good. I do have the same question as Williamwaco: what happens if I have to go on vacation or if there is simply nothing new for a week that is better than what I have on the page?

I like how the controls are put in place. This will prevent these pages from becoming like similar sites that are full of spam.

Is there any time limit from the time someone claims a topic to when they have to start filling that page? I'm concerned we'll end up with something like the Oklahoma Land Grab, and maybe people will claim pages for which they really aren't very knowledgeable and don't have the time to maintain. Linking it to the belt system is a very good idea and could prevent some of this, but when you think about how many yellow belts there are vs. how many black belts, I can see potential for some problems.

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June 07, 2009 01:28 AM
Also concerned about this one week thing. Apart from going on vacations, not every page needs an update every week, and it's just making work for the sake of it. Yes, we can quickly tweak a link here or there, but how does that help anyone?

I'd suggest a longer period, even if that is just for upper belts. By now Mahalo should know that a brown belt is a quality contributor, and they shouldn't get booted for not updating every week.

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June 07, 2009 01:34 AM
Second thought.... it is plain unfair if say you have worked on a page for six months and then you miss a week, or two weeks, and you lose it because of that. Whatever the rules are they should give you some credit for how long you've been doing a good job.

Sure if someone takes a page and never updates it, let them lose it quickly.

But if they've put solid work into it for some time, they deserve better treatment.

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June 03, 2009 01:45 PM
Jeff
I read the overview quickly, but didn't see a tool for actual creating the page. Where is the tool?
Source(s):
tool


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June 03, 2009 05:33 PM
To create a page all you need to do is search for the term. If there is not yet a page for that term you can start the page from scratch.

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June 03, 2009 02:39 PM
@jeffboard

I was wondering about this, is there a way to have redirects if a page exists? I don't seem to be able to delete "UFC" and I want UFC to redirect to "Ultimate Fighting Championship". The information on UFC is old and it seems useless to manage one site and not the other

Tags: ufc, ultimatefighting...

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gno gno
 
June 03, 2009 02:50 PM
Wondering the exact same thing.

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June 03, 2009 04:32 PM
There is a redirect section at the bottom of the page creation section - select 'add redirect' to create these if you wish. For example, you might want to add common misspellings of your search term.

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June 03, 2009 05:32 PM
Go to your "pages managed" section and "abandon" UFC > Then go to your page and add UFC as a redirect.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33749589@N07/3593007200/

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lon lon
 
June 03, 2009 07:22 PM
If another page already exists, you can't redirect it to your page. Just keep your page updated, and if you want to change the other page, you'll either have to manage it yourself or get someone you know to manage it.

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June 07, 2009 03:08 PM
I can't find a Redirect section at the bottom of my page http://www.mahalo.com/newton-messagepad-120

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gno gno
 
June 03, 2009 02:49 PM
Very overwhelming, but exciting prospect. I have a bad feeling there will be about 20 Users who end up managing a bulk of the pages, and the rest will shy away once the shininess has worn off. Hope I'm wrong.

In the meantime, here are some of my questions regarding Page management:

1.) When will each page start reflecting the "Number of Edits" (in the bottom management box of each page)? I've made edits, and got no credit.

2.) What happens if no edits are made after 7 days, exactly?

3.) What is the absolute minimum a Page Manager must do to maintain control of the page?

4.) What should we be doing to "advertise" our pages if we want to make some money? Please explain as if talking to a kindergartner.

5.) How are we supposed to be ranking eachothers' edits and management?

6.) Will there be any control over integrating similar pages (example, I manage the "Harry Potter" page. But what about if someone starts a "Harry Potter: Movie" page, "Harry James Potter" page, "Harry Potter, Boy Wizard" page, etc.)? (or do you encourage this competition?)

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June 03, 2009 05:56 PM
1. yes that feature should be operating shortly
2. Currently if no edits are made in 7 days the page will automatically be taken away (we're fighting to raise this to 14 days)
3. We'd hope users aren't going for the minimum, but if you are at day 6 with 1 hour before you lose you page, adding a link or editing the guide note text is considered an update.
4. Share it, share it with your friends, share it on other networks you visit etc.. sharing your site will earn it views and views will earn it money :D
5. Don't follow?
6. I think for now we'll encourage that competition, with that being said you can halt that by using the "Redirect" option on your Harry Potter page.

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June 03, 2009 06:22 PM
Even a brown belt can only manage 50 pages max, and there are less than twenty people that are brown belt of higher. So that would seem to mean at most only a thousand or so pages at most would be managed by upper belts.

While it has to be that way from the workload point-of-view, that could mean the rest of the pages are left unmanaged, or managed by people who don't necessarily care too much about quality.

Hopefully that can be avoided, but it's the common problem of user generated content sites.

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gno gno
 
June 03, 2009 07:34 PM
@jeffhoard, if you got my private question, please disregard. Turns out my page is no longer mine. Bug. All of that work I did already, gone! Someone else has claimed it as their own. Want to kick wall hard.

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June 03, 2009 03:02 PM
Is it bad that I don't feel this new feature appealing at all? I don't even think I'll even try it.

Sounds like way too much work for something I just do for fun.

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June 03, 2009 06:03 PM
Certainly not for everybody Pazaq and not mandatory in the least, if you happy with just Answering questions, were happy to have ya :D

It's not my department at all, but I went ahead and claimed pages that I would be interested in maintaining a archive of, one of my favourite things about the internet is the ability to catelogue and archive information, I think these Mahalo pages can be valuable archives for every topic in storing links/videos/images I think information junkies and curators are the ones that will truly love building Mahalo pages.

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June 03, 2009 07:33 PM
New User: 1
Yellow Belt: 5
Green Belt: 10
Purple Belt: 20
Brown Belt: 50
Black Belt: 100

how you gain belt levels

Belt Level Points Needed to Reach Level
White 50
White With Yellow Tip 75
Yellow 100
Yellow With Green Tip 300
Green 500
Green With Purple Tip 1,250
Purple 2,000
Purple With Brown Tip 5,000
Brown 8,000
Brown With Black Tip 10,500
Black 13,000
Black 2nd 18,000
Black 3rd 40,000
Black 4th 80,000
Source(s):
http://www.mahalo.com/answers/points_guidelines/


Tags: levels, belt

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Unhelpful: christhomson

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June 03, 2009 08:19 PM
Sounds really good, I was hoping for some arrangement like this since I joined Mahalo.

A page "lost" due to inactivity can be reclaimed, later on, right..? provided that it's not been claimed by someone else in the meantime.

Tags: re-claim, pagebuilding, feature

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June 04, 2009 03:00 AM
This idea of managing pages is suprisingly interesting to me however before I try to claim, make or generally explore the idea I think I will wait a few days till all this gets worked out.
Im really kind of excited.
A new way to focus my time.

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June 04, 2009 04:08 PM
Quick question.. how often does the # of Views update?
How long till it shows what pages i've * Claimed * in my profile ? < i have 3 i am slowly workign on, none under my profile.. and i claimed em yesterday = P >

and lastly,
The lost amount of M$, and points, wil lthat be reput on my account?

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June 05, 2009 12:39 AM
After a day or so of playing around with this and claiming one page, I am warming up to the potential of the new Mahalo. Yes, it can be, and is, somewhat intimidating to new users so a few helpful Q&As directly on the page or links to answers will help. I'll check back in on this thread (or the most recent discussing the 'New Maholo') in a few weeks.

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June 05, 2009 01:24 AM
Your url: http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-build-a-mahalo-page now directs to a Mahalo.com search results page.

Thanks! Great site!

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June 05, 2009 09:48 AM
This is great! A brilliant outsource or delegation of a page to MA members! I think it's an honor to be a part of it, isn't it? (I noticed the top search keywords are more celebrities and pity myself not interested to them lol...) I'll be checking every day that might interest me!

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June 09, 2009 04:38 AM
One suggestion about losing pages - as mentioned by others, some people do take vacations (or have stresses in their day jobs or families) for more than a week. It may be a bit tricky to program, but how about the period before losing it being = 7 days + 1 day per every 2 weeks you've had the page, up to a maximum number of days (14 for the lower belts, 21 for the middle belts, 28 for the brown and black belts).

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