Mahalo Answers has been an important community for Internet Researchers since it launched in December of 2008. It is important for new users to learn and understand the etiquette that has been practiced within the community over the past years. The goal of this page is to make Mahalo Answers an easier community to be part of. Users new and old are encouraged to follow these steps and help make Mahalo a greater community.
Although this page centers on many of the intricacies involved when answering questions, you can learn more about the different features of Mahalo Answers by visiting the How Mahalo Answers Works page. You can also learn about the set rules by visiting the Mahalo Terms of Service page.
Etiquette Short List
Be Polite and Helpful
Understand how to Copy and Paste
Provide Answers that only help the Asker
Offer Authoritative Sources
No Spam Please
1. Be Polite and Helpful
The most important thing about being a Mahalo member is that you are polite and helpful. Visitors come to Mahalo generally looking for information and or help from our community of Internet researchers. To write a helpful answer you must be able to provide clear and original text presented in a professional and courteous manner, free of any chatspeak and other deliberate grammatical errors. Please be considerate with your self-promotion - Mahalo encourages you post links to your own Mahalo pages and websites but only do so when it is related to the topic and directly answers the questions. If it begins to look like you are spamming Mahalo Answers with your website links this will be considered a terms of service violation and your account will be removed.
It's good practice to take the time to read over your answer before sending it, ask yourself if you have properly provided what the Asker is looking for.
When answering questions you must avoid assuming anything of the asker beyond what a question presents. Personal attacks and other forms of harassment are against the Mahalo Terms of Service and Mahalo users will automatically be removed from the community if found abusing these important terms.
2. Copying and Pasting
It is proper Mahalo Etiquette to avoid the practice of plagiarism, this is when you copy other peoples work and make it out to be your own. At Mahalo we make the Copy and Pasting Guidelines clear, you need to separate the copied text from your own text using quotes, we also as that you cite where the text comes from before and after you present the copied text. Finally we encourage that you include some text of your own, perhaps explaining why you chose to copy the text.
. These guidelines are explained in full detail here - Copy and Pasting on Mahalo
3. Provide Answers that help the Asker
We ask our users to understand that Mahalo's first priority is help the Asker - If you do not know the answer to a question and are not willing to research the answer, we ask that you avoid typing anything into the answer box.
If you have a comment or would like to reply to another members answer you can do that only by clicking the "Reply" option that is listed under each answer on a question. If there are no other answers yet, again we ask that you refrain from commenting, understand that Mahalo questions expire after 3 days only if they have an answer, if your comment ends up being the only "answer", that asker will be disappointed to learn their question closed without any real answers.
Unhelpful, one line statements will be reported and most likely result in your account being investigated for abuse. Making jokes about the question are also not tolerated, this doesn't mean we don't appreciate users with comical personalities, we simply ask that you make sure the askers question is answers before you make you joke. Mahalo Answers first priority is to help users.
4. Offer Authoritative Sources
Offer a source every time you answer a question that is not asking for an opinion, and only offer an opinion when it is being asked for. Authoritative sources include leading news agencies, and official government sources, they can also include leaders and experts in whichever field the question is related to.
Wikipedia and user generated content can be considered a source but we ask that you try to dig deeper and find the source in which the user content is is based upon.
Questions on Mahalo will either ask for facts or opinions understand how to distinguish between the two of them.
Voting Etiquette on Mahalo
Voting is important on Mahalo it ensures that the best answers are rewarded and most visible to the question they correspond to. Voting is optional and we encourage everybody to participate as the end result will help Mahalo become a greater website and community.
Each answer on each question has a "helpful" and "unhelpful" vote option. Any eligible visitor to that question can vote on answers in either of these two categories. In regards to Mahalo etiquette it is understood that you only vote based on the facts presented in the answer, not based on your personal opinion of the answer.
For Example. If somebody asked "Who won the Stanley Cup in 1993?" and somebody answered correctly saying "Montreal Canadiens" - Don't vote down that answer because if you don't like the Montreal Canadiens.
When you do vote "unhelpful" it is recommended that you explain why you voted that way, the goal of the "unhelpful" button is to help users understand the standards we share here on Mahalo Answers. We understand explaining unhelpful answers may appear as confrontational, which is why we've created this page, all you need to do is refer and link to the Mahalo Answers Etiquette page.
No Spam Please
We welcome and appreciate content creators on Mahalo because they are generally experts in their fields, however if those content creators use Mahalo as a platform to try to sell their own products it will be recognized as spam.
A good example of this is when the owner of an online shoe shopping website comes to Mahalo and asks a question like "Where can I buy shoes?" - Then in the details of their question goes on to plug their website. This is spam.
The same can be said for answers to questions that include nothing but links to the users website. In few cases this can be tolerated, if a user asks "Where can I buy shoes online?" and you just happen to own a shoe retailer, you can certainly plug your product, but we ask that you do this at full disclosure, making it known to the user that you are owner makes it seem a lot less like spam.
The form of spam we will not tolerate is the simple copy and pasting of a script into multiple question threads promoting your product, where the other methods will most likely get you a warning, this form will get you banned from Mahalo.
