What's the future of Mahalo?
What do you think?
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M$7 Answers
1. Mahalo.com
The human powered search engine facet of this community will continue to grow with new and better updated pages of every sort as Mahalo hires and inspires new and current authors to write more and more and better and better pages. A great side effect of the slow growth will be an increased community respect around the internet from people searching for information as they will come here to Mahalo.com and really be able to find and truly rely on the correct and updated information they need as it has been written by our authors.
2. Mahalo.com/answers.
This side of Mahalo.com will also grow and I think it will grow much quicker than the .com side of our community. If we now type a question into Google such as How do I get pregnant? we get several other Q&A sites such as Yahoo! Answers, WikiAnswers, and other sites near the top.. soon enough there will be enough quality Mahalo Answers content that our results will also fill many of these holes with the content you and I have provided. Hopefully we can hold a higher standard than the other Q&A sites and the internet community will grow to respect our answers to common questions like this over the answers from the other Q&A sites. I will also predict we will have a much improved way to search for questions in Mahalo Answers, no more searching Google to find Mahalo Q&A.
3. Mahalo.com/store
This is where I hope to see the greatest changes as this is what truly separates the Mahalo formula from those of our competitors websites. We can get real value back for the contributions we submit to Mahalo Answers and that is great but I would hope to see improvements like international shipping and and the a lot of the other suggestions brought up in this thread from last week. There is no denying that money and shopping are great motivators so as Mahalo.com/answers grows, hopefully with quality Q&A content contributors, Jason and the Mahalo staff decide to create new ways to reward us for this commitment to submitting quality content.
4. Mahalo Surprises?
One thing has been constant in my time here at Mahalo and that has been change and surprise change. I would expect the unexpected for us in the future as well. There really is no way to see these potential surprises coming without getting inside the head of those in charge but we can be sure that change and surprise will happen so be prepared, next year at this time the Mahalo we play and work in will be a lot different that the one we have today. Maybe we even get to see a surprise return of revenue sharing in a different context? Stay ready and stay adaptable to get the most out of your time here. Expect the pivot.
personal experience and opinion
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M$Mahalo 4.0: We will be launching a refreshed design, home page and--yes--Mahalo Answers in a "couple of months." this project has been underway for a couple of months already, and for those folks who have been around since the launch of Answers, Mahalo 2.0 and Mahalo 3.0, I think it will be really exciting. The main goal of "M4" is make the experience between topic pages, how to articles, videos and answers more seamless.
Social rewards & Incentives: We've found that the "reward system" of Mahalo Dollars can be uninteresting for some, fun for others and--sadly--something that brings the wrong type of contributor to Mahalo. Given our findings in virtual currency we've decided to make it a secondary reward--a small token or prize if you will--as opposed to a primary reward. Badges, a new leveling system (which will replace belts) and "powers for performance" will become the primary driver. If you do well and gain badges, you will get a small amount of M$. Our goal is to keep the virtual currency fun, but make sure no one looks at it as "employment" --which we never wanted it to be in answers (but some insisted it was so!).
Answers: We are going to keep pushing for high-quality answers over the Yahoo Answers spammy/stupid/sad community. We'll also have a fresh design and much faster speeds (something that makes me crazy.... 30 seconds to save an answer sometimes... grrrrr).
Content: I think we're going to see a lot more video on Mahalo since consumers are moving toward that as a major consumption option--in some cases over text.
Store: The store will remain fairly straightforward, perhaps with more Mahalo schwag and more ephisis on donating to causes. For example, imagine one week all M$ earned in the system go to rebuild Haiti or pay for a well in Africa... those 'caused based drives' might be optin or mandatory--we're not sure. We're going to play with it.
Social Networking: We're going to continue to improve our profile pages and add a messaging system for folks early next year (at least that is the plan).
More data: we're going to continue to pull in more data from APIs to boost our knowledge base. Some day we might have a topic page for the top 10,000 products in Amazon or the top 5,000 songs in iTunes... users can then "participate" in some way around those "objects."
We're going to build the largest content site--or knowledge exchange--on the planet... bigger than About.com, Wikipedia or eHow. It will take another three or four years, but when we're done we think a large percentage of folks will say "oh, you want to learn X, Y or Z? Go to Mahalo.com."
That's the vision... all the services and content we build are the building blocks.
It's gonna be a lot of fun, and the new designs will be super sexy. :-)
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M$
:P
I'm pretty upset about all my Kennedy pages, ill never truly know how much they made mahalo. Oh well. we have the above. And. The future :)
Good catch @opher... I could have been clearer about things. Let me try again:
1. Mahalo Answers: In Mahalo *Answers* revenue sharing and virtual currency were, largely, a failure because:
a) it drove tons of people to game the system
b) gamed answers were low quality, if not spam, and that pushed away good users who don't want to participate in a low-quality community.
c) virtual currency drove non-native english speakers (think folks from Manila, India, etc) to flood the system with questions and answers. 90%+ of these were between unreadable and poorly written. This isn't to say the folks had bad intent, but when folks answer questions with poor grammar, spelling and sentence structure (let alone blowing a cultural reference!), it makes the site--again--feel "spammy." The only solution for this issue is to not provide incentives for these folks to participate
2. Mahalo Topic Pages: Our goal with the virtual currency and revenue sharing here was to make it a fun, and sometimes profitable, version of Wikipedia. However, some folks took it on as a serious gig and some pages (very few in fact) started performing very well. The result was:
a) People started fighting over potentially high-revenue potential pages
b) People started creating a lot of lower-quality, high-revenue potential pages
c) People stopped making important pages that had "less than high" revenue potential
d) Due to the randomness of SEO one person might make one page that paid $1,000 a year, while another use made a thousand HIGHER-QUALITY and MORE USEFUL pages that made $25 a year.
e) 95% of Serious writers turned down revenue sharing--most on principle ("i get paid for my work" and "that sounds like a scam" was a common refrain). Some folks who hit bigger revenue pages became super motivated--but only to create niche pages that didn't really help users.
Given the excitement around revenue sharing on pages, there was a time when I was very enthusiastic.... however my team showed me the stats and conversations they were having and it became clear that the system was 1. unfair in revenue distribution, 2. non-scalable since people didn't buy in (dozens did, not hundreds--or thousands--like we need), and 3. quality was suffering.
Given the teams position we took more than double the amount we were paying out each month and gave that to regularly paid set of "Guides." This program has started slowly, but is now picking up stream. We now haver ~50 guides and we should hit 100 by the end of the year and 200 by June of 2011. These Guides are making around $1,250 a month on average--which is almost 15x the $75-125 most folks were cashing out during the revenue sharing experiment.
As a startup you have to evolve and do what's best for the entire team. Since moving off revenue sharing we've seen a massive lift in quality, a happier team of contributors and just in the last two weeks, the promise of scaling the system.
We did the right thing, even though the dozen folks who were doing OK to good in the rev-sharing system were bummed out. The good news is many of those folks are still with us--some even making less--but they just love working with Mahalo!!!
That's a real testament to my team.... they are hard-working, honest and fair--and the contributors love them for it.
Jason,
You say in your answer "We've found that the "reward system" of Mahalo Dollars can be uninteresting for some, fun for others and--sadly--something that brings the wrong type of contributor to Mahalo".
However, back in November 2009, in your comment to my Best Answer to http://www.mahalo.com/answers/anybody-really-making-a-living-from-mahalo you stated (proudly I believe) the following:
- quote -
Here is a look at the September payouts (which land in October). As you can see a number of folks are breaking into the $1-2,500 a month category (after just three months!
http://www.mahalo.com/answers/mahalo-answers-community/mahalo-dollar-payouts-for-october-overview
I think we'll see 100+ people making over $50,000 soon.
- end quote -
It seems obvious from that comment that at one point you were very much in favor of people considering Mahalo even a full time income, not simply a side-line where folks can make a few bucks on the side, and where Mahalo dollars were simply a fun game kind of thing.
It was only recently, around June 2010, that you began calling out folks who felt that their earnings from Mahalo were an important aspect of their participation, implying (if not saying outright) that such people were a negative phenomenon on Mahalo.
Am I missing something here?
I like M$. I'll be very, very, very sad to see that disappear, or become even more reduced.
Dang about people gaming the system.
Create badges for people to turn in suspected gamers. (But you have to figure out how to protect families. There are now 3 hooked-on-Mahalo users that I know of in my family. Of course we all check on each other, but we don't necessarily vote for everything each other answers.)
Badges are great fun, but the money somehow makes it adult rather than camp, makes it somehow legitimate.
So.......
Bring back revenue sharing. :-)
Bring back "How-To" pages too. I'd like to be an author here and there, I just can't devote compressed hours to do it all at once. Also, better instructions on how to get the right facts to show up in the right boxes would help. There's lots of good writers who just aren't good html'rs. Maybe you could have guides reviewing answers and if someone has a great, detailed B/A, you could invite them to take it the next step and do a page on the topic. Maybe they could be the writer and someone else could be the techie.
Thanks for the inside scoop on upcoming changes. Thanks for Mahalo. I look forward to eclipsing ehow.com, Answers.com, etc.
Can we see some proof of this better quality in pages please?
I think the Mahalo dollars have already moved away from any 'employment' status all together, but I'm sorry you're still having trouble with gamers.
I've had a goal for about a month and a half to work hard make enough to get an iPad by Christmas. I'm almost half way there and if I keep working hard I should have it. Will the new reward and incentives make that still an optional goal?
I agree with @bunnyphuphu that the $M are already at "non-employment" levels, but it would be disappointing to see them go much lower. I’ve got a similar goal to bunny, so it would be nice if an iPad type level could be achieved with 3 months of high quality involvement.
Along similar lines, I've thought quite a bit about the voting and best answer process (less about the gaming and more about ensuring that a high quality answer is always selected). It's frustrating when you put some time and thought into a good answer and a really poor answer gets selected as "Best Answer" because they got 1 votes and you got 0. I see a few problems – overall voting rate is low (so it only takes 2-3 votes to get best answer on most questions), the askers often don’t vote on the answers to their questions and the votes are there don’t always have the community in mind.
I'm not convinced that reducing the $M incentive is the only way to go. What about not allowing everyone to vote? Recently I've seen some high quality, high activity Mahalo members going around voting up good answers. These are people that have the interest of the community and Mahalo in mind and as I look back at recent answers, I see a better correlation between good answers and “best answers.”
What about using badges as a means to giving people the ability to vote up answers or providing a modest incentive for Gurus to vote? That would put a higher barrier to entry in front of the gamers and hopefully ensure that quality standards and the community are being kept in mind.
To me, one of the key differentiators of Mahalo vs WikiAnswers and Yahoo Answers is the $M, so it would be disappointing to see that decrease.
... oh yeah, you might see the ability for people to "lightly participate" in Topic pages early next year, with some social recognition and *light* virtual currency rewards.
So, sit tight my mahooligans! :-)
Jason,
Thanks for the serious answer. While I disagree with much of what you say, and feel that your answer sweeps some important things under the carpet, it is a legitimate point that a startup needs to be able to make changes. The biggest disagreement I have with you is as to how the changes were implemented. You could have taken away all pages from PMs who did not write them. You could have stopped new pages from being accepted if the pages did not meet topic requirements and/or quality requirements. However, you should not have yanked away rev share from people who had written pages that brought in lots of money for Mahalo and continue to do so to this day. Don't forget that for every $45 you paid out to PMs and VMs combined, Mahalo was earning $55. This means that Mahalo was not losing money from paying PMs (and even VMs) for pages they created.
Had changes been implemented in a forward-looking manner instead of retroactively, I'd have stayed active on Mahalo. As it is, sadly, I feel betrayed and the loss of trust seems irrevocable.
Chris: don't have time to pull them all up, but we have a scoring system that has been standard for a couple of years... and now that we are paying folks we've seen it go up... which makes sense since if they don't maintain a high score we simply let them go.
Opher: No one was more disappointed about revenue sharing not working more than myself... I mean, it was MY idea. We tried to make it work, and it didn't. Keep two systems working would cost at least a million dollars in developers. We hacked together the revenue sharing from an EXPERIMENTAL feature in Google analytics/adsense... we were constantly dealing with users complaining and crying that it was updated today... it was a total drag and not a fun system to manage.
Maybe a year from now if Google makes it easier to measure page revenue, and we get the quality level where we want it, and we're at scale, we may add back in some type of revenue sharing for our top users. additionally, it drew a large number users who were not pleasant to interact with. we have to do what is fun and exciting for us.... and the revenue sharing system brought out the worst in many people (not all of course).
we are much happier as a company without it.
like you say, it's our site... and I always said it was an experiment and that we might change or discontinue it. So, we can do what we want and users can do what they want. we want to constantly keep changing and iterate.
If folks don't like it they have my permission to take our entire revenue sharing concept and do it themselves! :)
I think if you're super active and amazing the most active person might be able to get something like an iPad once or twice a year.
It shouldn't become a place where you can game the system to get three iPads a month. :-)
To be completely honest I have been extremely disappointed at the way Mahalo's interestingness to the likes of myself outside the USA seems to have plummeted from what is was, and inappropriate high level changes in management policy appear to have been dictated by some unrepresentative ruling authority which seem to be the reason.
When I first came on to Mahalo, after my attention was directed to it as another source of earning money by answering other people's questions by somebody answering a question on Webanswers, I found it interesting, enjoyable and refreshing. I found various challenging and interesting adult questions I enjoyed answering and took pride in trying to give the questioners detailed information about what they were asking. Some of those saw fit to award me best answers some decided to give somebody else the best answer, and I fully respected their decision.
But apart from Mahalo Answers, I was unable to find any other part of the website that I found appealing to myself nor worthwhile. There are far too many search engines on the Internet already and all my needs in that area are more than excellently provided by Google, Yahoo, Ask and Webcrawler. So I just can not understand why Mahalo are trying to get involved in that kind of operation?
Regarding finding facts, information and opinion differences for research and helping to improve my learning, knowledge and understanding, in that region Wikipedia and the BBC are surely 2000% ahead of Mahalo in that fulfillment and Mahalo can never catch them, particularly now Facebook, Yahoo and Twitter are also trying to get in there but seem to be equally unsuccessful. Wikipedia remains where I will first go to on line if I want to learn more about anything, as well as encyclopedias and quality reference books like Whitaker's almanac at home and in libraries here. So I can not see any sense in Mahalo continuing to try to keep up with the big boys in that zone of the Internet?
But the greatest magnitude of my disappointment about the deterioration of Mahalo is in the question & answers section. The interesting questions just do not seem to getting asked on Mahalo any more. Moreover many that I put considerable time and much effort into answering in my early days, which in some cases nobody else attempted to answer have just lain in limbo with the questioner not having the manners to make any comment or tell me if he found my answer helpful or if not why not?
Only very recently has just one long standing Mahalo members has apparently started coming in to read my unawarded answers, and had the courtesy to do what the questioner and rest of the Mahalo community could not be bothered to do, and that has brought me back on to Mahalo to re-explore what is currently going on. But what I now find is to me distinctly unappealing.
I have been through all the questions currently available to answer including on Canadian Pharmacy, but just can not find even "one" question that interests me. I am disappointed that most of the questions seem to me to be immature youth cult fantasy are given huge numbers of votes, yet the same voters can not be bothered to read any of the answers or give them a thumbs up. Yet I can go in to other Q & A sites like Yahoo Answers, Wiki Answers, Webanswers, Answers,com, Answer.bag and on all those sites there is still a good flow of interesting educational questions which I can equate to and enjoy answering and enjoy reading other people's answers. So why is this no longer happening on Mahalo?
So OK if I do not like the questions that are nowadays being asked on Mahalo, you are entitled to tell me that I should try asking these kinds of questions on Mahalo myself. That is fair comment. So I have tried that, but nobody apparently is interested in answering them with facts or points of view I am really interested in learning about. For example not one person answered my query on the rationality of the expression "Love of God" which I wanted somebody to clear up my confusion about.
So you inquire what is the future of Mahalo. I tend to feel "oblivion" may be the answer to that. Because very basically the site seems to have changed from being "good" to "poor", "interesting" to "boring", "adult" to "puerile" and sadly I detect no sign of any desire to take any measures to cause it to bounce back to what it was. But what I also come across elsewhere on the Net are comments on other websites from disenchanted former members of the Mahalo community who are now elsewhere. Some do explain why they are now there and why they left Mahalo. So perhaps the wording under this question should have been "Where do you think the Mahalo membership will go next?"
Again apologies for my being so negative but you asked the one and only interesting question I am currently able to find on Mahalo and I think you deserve an honest answer, even if you do not like what I write.
Very best wishes to yourself.
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M$
Hello there,
I found your answer quite insightful and I'm puzzled by your very negative attitude towards Mahalo. I too live In Europe (in the UK) and I have recently noticed Mahalo.com's shift towards the American market (which is starting to expand to Canada). I feel that this is quite a clever move. Mahalo.com is a human-written content website and therefore it requires a lot of effort to get it working. I think Mahalo is "re-starting" in someways. It's focusing on the American market aiming to make its admittedly basic website into a strong competitor to eHow and Wikipedia. Yet I agree, that Mahalo should still be involving Non-US community, to which could increase the marksmanship of users and readers.
Although Mahalo is definitely improving and I foresee that Mahalo will expand internationally. I remember stumbling on Wikipedia and finding very little information on it - having to turn to encyclopaedias and books for information. Now I rely on Wikipedia more than any other source as the main information provider. Wikipedia has many disadvantages. It's quality is quite poor and it can be edited by anyone. Mahalo.com is restricting it's content to just a selection of writers who are building high quality pages.
I have noticed that Mahalo Answers has slightly slipped but this is because there is just a lack of members on the site. I used Mahalo as a way of making money when I was in school and enjoyed the slight "pocket-money" effect and satisfaction by answering on the site. I do feel that money, in a way, was the crucial success of Mahalo Answers - however to re-establish this success and to make Mahalo Answers the best QnA, a system of quality answering has to be created.
I faded away from Mahalo when studying for exams but now at uni, I hope that in my spare time I can use Mahalo as a way of making some extra cash and also to do what I had always loved about Mahalo which was learning about new things and having discussions on topics - much like what you mentioned.
That's a very thoughtful and complete answer from a different perspective than what I've heard before.
i always appreciate a different perspective.
the 20m people coming to mahalo and it's various services (i.e. video) might differ in large part. :-)
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M$
That is linked to exposure, easiness of use and utility, and hide factors. Exposure to access new markets. Easiness of use and utility to conquer them. Hide factors they always exist. Think about Twitter, MSN, Gmail et cetera. IT nerds are mostly the early adopters. Behind the tools and users there are people, and people have needs and crowd sense. With they have a tool that is useful or appear as it and at the same time uses it becomes a common thing to do, they will enlace it. Mahalo can learn a lot studying the past, as http://answers.yahoo.com/.
Maybe a direct work with the community and a professional effort to create a very good quality initial answers database help make it a more interesting tool. Maybe a IT technician, a love counselor, a math teacher, etc.
I agree, more members would arise as a result of breaking the language barrier. What I found interesting about your answer is that you believe Mahalo only targets IT nerds. So what could be done to the site to interest new audiences?
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M$
Thanks Jason, I do run a couple of blogs and stores. My Grammar is not that great but my stories and content people enjoy.. Just search DNatureofDTrain or Casey Heinzism you'll fine my blogs, forum, and stores.. may not make anything off my sales (yet) but I do earn for ad impressions when people read my stories in my forum and on my DNatureofDTrain webpages, again thank you all! :) . I am trying to come up with a system to maybe offer my writings for free if they never sell free, but ad supported..
I'm sorry that you're having a hard time finding work. I know it's hard out there right now.
My suggestion is that you learn how to write with perfect spelling, grammar, research and speed. If you are in the top 20% of writers you will find work. The best way to do this is to create your own blog on a topic you are passionate about, and simply writer 2,000 words a day across five blog posts. In six months to a year you will be a good enough writer to get serious work at $8-12 an hour.
Put the time in and I'm certain it will pay off. We are always looking for elite writers for Mahalo, and I know other sites are looking for high-quality, fast writers too.
Improve your skills and watch the work flow in!
Wished I could remain active every day but I have other mission too. I must admit MAHALO.COM is on its cutting edge the way it was started and how it is now and it will be!
I will keep coming back!
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M$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$
This is the exact kind of thing that keeps me away from mahalo.
Crap like this. It's very frustrating to say the least
Now I'm presuming that at the time I'm posting this, it's not one of the busier times in the day, but this time seems to be the worst. And look at @jljl 's earlier responses. Repulsive.
This is obviously not a new roblem as we had issues with this element the whole time i've been here. It started with the anonymous questions. Maybe we should report to a IP black list each time it happens to us so they know. I know it's a pain the the backside but I intend to report each time it happens from now on. Maybe then it will be sorted.
As this is an opinion based question I felt the unhelpful vote by @eth was undeserved.
@jiji has a right to their opinion.
Every user has a right to their opinion, but this is one of those one-liner answers that could have been improved upon and expanded.
these accounts will all be deleted if someone reports them. and they were sent to the botto of the page due to votes... so, the system is working.
this feels like spam to me...
ps: I voted down by the way.
@kelraye78 -- exactly correct. a one-liner has to be absurdly insightful and clever to provide value, and this isn't one of those.
@shadowbear :
The unhelpful vote was most certainly well-deserved. @jiji provided no basis or support to their answer. I would be more than willing to change my mind and vote if they could provide a basis for their line of reasoning. An answer with no support to substantiate the claims made lacks quality and credibility. Quality and credibility are among the qualities things that make something helpful.
@jiji has a right to their opinion, and by your own admission I do as well. I exercised my rights and voted down.
