COMMUNITY UPDATE: The march to 1,000 questions a day, plus thoughts on our wonderful community?

Comments: 1. How we can get to 1,000 questions asked a day (from 300-500). A.

Identify your target market(s) - who would you like more of in Mahalo? EG. University/college/high school students b.

Identify where these people are/where they hang out, and through what media(s) or source(s) could they be reached EG. University/college/high school newspaper/website/forum c. Research what might motivate them to use Mahalo/what are their needs/interests EG.

Would they go there if a professor/instructor assigned them to use Mahalo/review it? Could youi establish affiliate programs/information packages/incentives/teaching materials for all journalism classes to participate with some bonus for participation for students? Teacher?

Ready made lesson(s) prizes for all journalism students in some contest EG. The Mahalo blogidol contest for a team of journalism students to be paid fair market value for articles/blog items of interest to Mahalo users located in the bottom right hand currently blank column of Mahalo Answers, and a cash donation for each Journalism Faculty/or for the instructor to use for educational materials or programs for the students.... EG. For teacher professional development and/or for a scholarship for each student who won of that amount and have a team of a number of winners, then have a continuation EG.

Mahalo blogidol finalists, participants mailouts by email as journalists will forever be spreading news. You can keep the person(s) as long as you like or make it for one year, renewable at Mahalo discretion, or make it for one year and get new participants each year but perhaps find other role(s) contract writing pieces for the past winners to do on an as needed basis, etc. Or some other ideas you may have that suit better, such as a paid virtual internship paying an honorarium or for piecework, etc.D.Do the research, preparation, run it as a pilot project so you don't commit but say if it goes well further new programs may be supported and keep a collection of their suggestions, plus solicit suggestions from all participants. E.

Make some public placing/advertising of the process/progress/results, you know how to do this already EG. Mahalo vlogidol contest: http://www.mahalo.com/Mahalo_Idol_Casting_Call http://www.mahalo.com/Mahalo_VLOGIdol f. Perhaps move the discipline to some other department each time?

Or keep it open to all disciplines? Build in some mechanism so that every year something good happens and it benefits others so your name will spread. G.

Advertise everywhere you can including unique areas seeking them out as most options have not even been touched yet.EG. Associations of university college high schol teachers, associations of students, university/college newspapers by press release or pre- prepared story with photo/url for video, student and faculty usenet discussion groups, nings, blogs, scholarship websites/directories, etc.2. How we maintain the quality level of answers as we grow 2-3x in size.

There must be great bloggers who may be interested in freelance work - or even on staff already. You have 2 Mahalo characters, a hula woman and a man. To not always have people leaving and coming and going and keep continuity - I would say, activate the characters, either one person writes as one or one writes as both, and have them write a column or blog placed somewhere on the Mahalo Answers/Mahalo site, to be a permanent record of ongoing news and orientations for Mahalo users new and old, they need to have a teaching component in their work or it will not work to optimum level I think, but keep it fun and light, add nice graphics from your staff etc, make it attractive so all new users can see it, and add links to some mailouts/help files/press coverage, etc. So folks can be painlessly oriented, or link to that place when people ask for help and the topic is already covered from new questions etc.Make it an active teaching and learning source and for new Mahalo Answers and Mahalo news and updates too like a posterous for Mahalo Answers and Mahalo by the two characters.

Otherwise why have the characters if they do not speak. Later you can add voiceover instructional slideshows with the characters, screen snapshot instructional videos with snips of the characters animated URL5 make it really cool and with it. Another option: could commission a full animated short film or have a film student contest for animated or regular short film to use for instructional purposes with some reward.3.

How we make sure new folks understand what we expect in this community (i.e. Helpful answers, a kind tone, 'Mahalo spirit', etc). SEE number 2 above.

Expand the help page(s) or add a FAQ, or give Mahalo Answers Community a separate website with link from the site etc.And include links for this and other instructional materials frequently in correspondence and in reply to answers. Have a Mahalo Answers quick links page for tips and insider advantage how to be more successful on Mahalo Answers because even the information that is currently there in Mahalo Answers and perhaps Mahalo etc. Is not easily accessible, it needs to be linkable from a single source page and maybe include links with one sentence explanations and perhaps also searches that will find these things.EG. Help page, Answers to questions how can we have better answers?

How can we earn more mahalo dollars, etc. All in one place 4. Tactics we can use on the "March to 1,000" questions. See info from above, also a few ideas.

I don't know if this is a budget project or a zero budget project - depends on what you want, is it short or long term, flexible, ongoing or only till incoming traffic reaches a threshold level and does not drop off or go down etc.A. Find new partners - institutions, individuals, contestants for contests, contestants for scholarships, companies that want to help for various reasons b. Clarify your goals/mission/role in society/benefit to society if any, motivation that people will have to help you do a march to 1,000 answers.EG.

Is it a march to 1,000 answers like the march to one million twitter followers that Ashton Kutcher just beat CNN twitter site to? Then in that case you have a short term goal - but can you articulate and communicate a larger, long term goal, ideal, values, purpose for Mahalo/Mahalo Answers within society - not just to fill the bank for the administration and participants. What is your intrinsic currency for Mahalo?

Can you articulate it in one sentence from many participants for example and do a nice one page blurb posted somewhere? There is very little articulation of the value and values of Mahalo Answers/Mahalo anywhere on the site or elsewhere in a permanent accessible fashion it seems - you could do more. CASE EXAMPLE: SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN FOR ONE MILLION ACTS OF GREEN: "one million acts of green" http://green.cbc.ca/ - corporate sponsorship of major company with money for a website and staff to update it, eg. Todays act is .... - champion in a national, daily one hour prime evening time show that featured it regularly and reported on it as a sincere champion of the cause - core value of the project for the environment, to save the planet, to change the world etc.And people feel good about participation - over a month ago, one million was reached, but the host said he hoped folks would not notice and not stop but decide to continue as they only meant it as a catalyst and indeed it has continued on to expand to date.

Put "one million acts of green" in a search engine and you can see the press, coverage, events etc. Of such a campaign and event to get ideas from. Ashton Kutcher did a one million followers campaign recently against CNN and won it here http://twitter.com/aplusk He continues to increase followers even though the contest is over, maybe due to his celebrity, popularity, entertainment value that certainly spotlights his business weblink prominently from his Twitter page - but what will his following be like in the future? Is celebrity enough?

S website has good content for young girls though so that may continue. That kind of wacky publicity stunt would not be enough for continued growth for Mahalo because Ashton Kutcher on his website has a target audience of young girls who may be attracted by such fun, but Mahalo is hoping to attract participants who are mature and experienced enough in areas of knowledge and expertise to answer and ask quite sophisticated questions well. Mahalo would probably not flourish longterm solely using such a simple campaign.

Will Mahalo be able to tap into a long-term participant community with a clearer articulation and sharing of Mahalo's wider meaning beyond fill the cash drawer of participants and administration? I hope that it proves to be sustainable and suspect that identifying some continues to grow on its own long after any campaigns and clever advertising campaigns have stopped.5. What budget will you need to accomplish all of this?

How much time and effort do you want/can you/should you devote to all of this - how important are these elements? Key? Pretty important, peripheral to your already existing plan?

Where does all this fit into your plan or do you need to expand your plan or build your plan, or strategic plan around a core process like this? How important is it to articulate what you are doing, planning to do clearly? Can you succeed as you wish if you cannot define what you are trying to do?

Is the definition part of your success process or is it peripheral/frill? How much input will you ultimately accept from a community consult process and how much will need to be fit into an already existing strategic plan perhaps due to administrative pre existing not publicly known deadlines, project timelines, deliverables required by your administration, etc. How much leeway do you have if you suddenly see a lot of value in pursuing some ideas you see gathered from your feedback process in terms of flexibility, funding, ability to obtain staffing or reallocate staffing without collapsing your existing priorities, or do you need to develop some process of an articulated additional plan/budget request/activity in cooperation with your administration for their consideration and hopefully buy in and approval? How much of this info that you gather is really really implementable and practically possible knowing your constraints of all possible staffing funding and increase parameters?

A lot of your questions may remain private for administration and your planning officer(s) team(s)/administrative structural participants only, but they can be asked in a forum like this as triggers for further etc.D. Do0. Can you find relevant elements within business literature, or practices to benefit this process you are going through?

Questions to ask specifically for participants - strengths/ weaknesses/opportunities/threats of proposed or mentioned ideas or points for feedback purposes by all participants internally and externally or just internally? How will you want Mahalo to proceed....to articulate its heart or core purposes and drive it from within, in as organic a process as possible considering feedback, changes, new information, or how much do you want to stick to your constraints of your preplanned schedules and deliverable dates of results that you must produce or your project receives a fail rating from your administration. Food for thought - your internal process is your business but how you choose to focus and prioritize it has connections to what happens externally - are you remembering to connect the dots and make the obvious links short term, long term, and for the future of your corporate direction?

Is there any relevant literature out there, any studies that you can find that may shed light on important thoughts, concerns, and tipping points, decision making processes that you are undertaking as an expert individual or team or as a collective whole for all etc.D. Do1 do you want to find and post an article for instructional purposes to go along with any feedback you request from your users to make sure they are on the same page, and all terms are defined by all parties similarly......etc. I know you have done this all before many times, your board too, just brainstorming at this juncture in time so you can frame your enquiries in the most productive ways. Good luck to all.

Thanks for asking for feedback. 6. For an image - I liked the idea of everyone building a communal building together as a representation of Mahalo/Answers but did not find one that was free for anyone to use.

Apparently it used to be very common for communities to build farm buildings on a volunteer basis but individual farms have been declining. Watched a segment of a public television show recently about an organic farmer that contained some images of the shareholders of the farm collective building a large new barn together with arching beams. If you are interested in trying to obtain or use a still or segment from the show to represent a communal building process or collectively working in the fields, or view the last part of it for ideas on collectives here is the link to the film I saw "The Real Dirt on Farmer John" etc.D.

Do0 Instead, I found this copyright free image that I liked not only for its green color, global scope, but also that the arrows could represent communication round the globe, and the figures holding hands are definitely a community. Creative Commons by lumaxart etc.D. Do1.

I think a priority to hit "OKAD" (1k a day) (tm), comes from specializing. I thought I heard, Jason, that you were going to put a system in place in which our specialties would come more into focus. Only searching for questions in our specialties and being identified as someone with a specialty would be important.

Quality answers doesn't seem to be a problem. Seems like we have that down. But, quality answers only come from quality questions.

Those who have been around a while often want to get more information or more clarity around a question. Something needs to be done to allow for this and allow for modification of questions for this new information/clarity. Those are the big-two on my hit-parade.

Here's your picture:

I have an idea for #3. When gaining belt levels, I think, instead of having a higher belt member simply ask how we are liking MA I think they should stress certain points. Ex: using quotations, siting sources, being polite, voting on undecided questions.

Like @stephenk said a mentor of sorts. I think that would help in the quality of answers. Just a thought....

I've brought it up before and you have said that it's being worked on; but, it's important in the context of this question. We need to be able to customize our main pages and filter by subject. As it is, questions scroll off too quickly and I don't see questions in areas I like to answer until too late.

Three times as many questions and they would scroll off three times as fast.

I don't know if this would be feasible but one obvious way to get more questions is to have a method of translating questions that are asked in a language other than English into English. Imagine Mahalo with a strong Chinese presence. If someone could ask a question in standard or traditional Chinese, this would probably increase the number of questions."I am bringing my family to the United States for the first time.

What places are the safest for us to travel? What cities have the largest immigrant Chinese populations? Are there translators available at any US historical places, like the Alamo or the Jefferson memorial?

It seems that the best way to get to having more questions per day is having more users. Maybe Mahalo should/could offer a reward system for existing users who invite (via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. ) new users. Or maybe we simply need to encourage existing users to invite others without any reward system (except that warm fuzzy feeling, of course).

I'm not very familiar with the main Mahalo side of things, as I usually stick to only Mahalo Answers, but I understand that Mahalo produces "How-To"s. Maybe someone could put together a how-to on how to make a quality question on Mahalo Answers and how to provide an excellent answer. These could be included in the e-mail that new members receive upon joining.

And... here's a picture of a group activity that won't end well. I know that Mahalo's March to 1000 Questions A Day will end well.

I'd like to see a gradual ramp-up to 1,000 but that could be because in my quest to improve my performance, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed right now. I think M.A. Made a great step with being able to "farm" twitter for questions. I've explored it a couple of times, and once I can specialize a bit more that will be a gold mine.

How to get to 1k/day? Exactly what's happening...I'm amazed at how many people are being added each day to the community, and the growth will doubtless add to the total. I don't know how many are dropping per day, but I presume it's a net gain.

I think the quality level will remain high so long as growth is gradual. As you point out, the community polices itself pretty well. If we're not overwhelmed, and have time to set community norms with the newbies, the quality should continue.

This presumes that M.A. Continues to flush the jerks when they break through now and then. Strategies - Mahalo does a great job of continually improving content and tools. The iPhone app would help, as would customized profile/home pages.In the case of the former, I could more easily participate away from my desk.

For the latter, it would make my participation easier, more efficient. As you can see, I do pretty well in most areas - except asking questions. Between blowing out old questions by voting and answer a set amount per day, I simply run out of day.

As far as getting the word out, working with Twitter seems to be a great strategy. We can submit our answers to Twittter, we can farm Twitter...what about a couple of points/Mahalo bucks each day for tweeting about M.A.? For people with lots of followers, this could be substantial advertising. Finally, I agree with Dr. Matt - we need more quality questions.

I'm hoping Twitter farming will grow to accommodate that. A toast, sir!

Personally, I would like to see more real questions and less "seed" questions. I find it strange that people ask questions that they already know the answer to OR that require no real talent or search skills to answer. If a person is able to find Mahalo.Com and type in a question - why didn't they do a search in Google?

I also find it frustrating that the in-house people answer questions - are they not paid employees? Furthermore, the "seeding" of questions gets out of hand - and some of the in-house people ask multiple questions a day on subjects they obviously know the answers to. I don't get it.

Jason - I think you have a great goal in mind (to get to 1000) but I think you also need to look at how your numbers are currently skewed by the in-house people creating and answering questions. Maybe it would be a good idea to see how Mahalo Answers does for a day without the seeding? Obviously, I enjoy easy questions and earning a buck for answering.

But I would find it much more redeeming when I answer actual OR hard-to-find, research questions. And, yes, I do understand that some people are asking simple questions from phones and pdas and such - and those are perfectly valid/legit times to ask Mahalo questions (regardless of the ease of search). I promise - I'm not complaining - I'm trying to give constructive ideas.

1. How we can get to 1,000 questions asked a day (from 300-500). Get a mention on a Pajamas Media outlet.

They helped coordinate the tea party events Wednesday. Might not cost anything. 2.

How we maintain the quality level of answers as we grow 2-3x in size. Vigilance. There already is positive reinforcement of viewing pages.

There needs to be reinforcement for ensuring people vote so that the undecideds get cleared. 3. How we make sure new folks understand what we expect in this community (i.e.

Helpful answers, a kind tone, 'Mahalo spirit', etc). Mahalo Daily is the sort of tool to help bring such up. A mentoring system by higher belt participants of newer folks may also help.4.

Tactics we can use on the "March to 1,000" questions. Promote the questions beyond Twitter. Get Jason on Radio Australia, Radio New Zealand International, BBC World Service, and the Voice of America to promote the project around the globe.

Designate special incentive questions with double points perhaps. 5. What questions haven't I asked above that we need to consider?

What do community participants seek through their participation? What are three things going well in community life? What are three things that need attention and possibly fixing?

Where do community participants see Mahalo Answers standing in six months? 6. Please place your favorite photo of a community activity!

As the number of questions go up I think getting a list of the questions you think you would be good at answer is going to get tougher. I kind of wish a twitter like interface could be developed. Instead of following people one could follow topics.

And your main page would be come this list of questions. The current feed would be moved to an ALL instead. So I could subscribe or follow tech and food for instance and my main MA page would just show those.

One thing I'd really like to see is the ability to ask questions vial Dial2Do or Reqall. I guess with Dial2Do you could use its Twitter function to post here. But Dial2Do already has a slew of services that also interface with Twitter.So perhaps Mahalo Answers could have a Dial2Do function where you'd call Dial2Do, say "Mahalo Answers" and just ask your question.

This would be great for people who don't like driving intexticated. Keeping our spirit here as MA grows is going to take continually talking about it. I like it when you ask public questions like this, Jason, because I think that helps create the spirit from the top down.

I missed this question because it went by too quickly. This is the kind of thing that needs to be a sticky question--and because it addresses the Mahalo Answers spirit, doubly so.

Go to the top users at Yahoo Answers (say top 20) and gift them Mahalo black belt status if they agree to use Mahalo Answers (ie. Ask/answer a set amount of questions a day.) This will cause some members here to resent the fact that they were just gifted this status; however, it's not like there's standing room only at these belt levels. Giving other people a high status won't impact anyone's quest to reach these high belt levels.

So while some might not like it, it doesn't impact their ability to reach these levels. If you flatter top users at Y! Answers, (perhaps give brown/black belts special privileges that other users don't have as well) they will be more likely to make Mahalo Answers their permanent home and make a concerted effort to get other users at Y!

Answers to make the switch as well. Should be noted that the top users at Y! Answers are intelligent--some are anyway--and aren't the root cause of the problems with that service.

So people should welcome them with open arms and open minds. Could even pull a Propeller, pay them to quit Yahoo and join Mahalo. But I think special status/privileges work better than cash incentives anyway.

I agree with @jfinke, getting more users into the system, rather than more questions by existing users, seems like the best way to increase the number of questions. Existing users have found a comfort zone in the number of questions they add into the system - let's leave that alone. I don't know if MA advertises on any other sites and/or podcasts at this moment, but I have never seen/heard a MA ad anywhere.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the only way that MA advertises is via personal MA widget, twitter, facebook, and Calacanis mentioning MA at his many appearances (which is how I found MA). If MA ever considers to start advertising, I have an idea that just might be worth a thought. It is taking the idea of the existing personal profile widget and expanding on it.

This time the widget would be category-centric. The category-centric widget will consist of the top 3 or 5 most interesting questions in that category. It will also provide the question textbox for any user of that site to ask their own questions.

This widget will not only add value to the site, but it will be an ad for MA, as well. Lifehacker. Com, the personal productivity site, already does something similar to this with their "Ask MetaFilter Roundup" series - at certain intervals, lifehacker posts about 5 of the best personal productivity questions from ask.metafilter.com.

Perhaps Engadget. Com, a site about technology, can show the MA technology widget or dogster. Com, a community about dogs, can get the MA dogs widget.To answer your bullet questions 2 and 3, I will state the following.

As long as MA keeps doing a great job at keeping the trolls out, the quality of questions and answers should remain constant. Finally, If the number of questions increases, there is a possibility that I will miss questions that are right on my alley. The way that I look for questions is simply by going to the MA homepage and if the list changes by the hour or minute, I will only see a subset of the questions - those questions that just happened to be submitted in the last hour.

MA needs to do a better job in giving me the ability to personalize the questions that I see on my homepage, that way I would personalize to only see questions under the topics I choose.

Overall I agree largely with what drmatt has said. Answers are good, questions need some work. I was going to write something long winded, but I gave up halfway though as it started to take the form of a rant.

I will say I enjoy the community here more than just about anywhere else on the net and I really hope it's not compromised by the influx of 2-3x more questions than it already handles. "1. How we can get to 1,000 questions asked a day (from 300-500)."

Maybe special incentives for asking a certain number a questions a day for those "Mahalo Experts". Like a sports expert asking sports related questions fact and opinion based. Here's my picture:

Finding questions matching my interest is still difficult. Can Mahalo create an expert system that rates the question by User question rank, popularity of keys word in the question, and hits? Create a new filter category - Most popular.

Mahalo expert system could be the google of question patterns.

1. How we can get to 1,000 questions asked a day (from 300-500). I think it's important that we don't all loose sight of what we are trying to do while innovating, staying focused on our goal and continuing to squash bugs, make the site faster / more responsive and at the same time improving aesthetics of the site should still remain our top priority.

We had a couple of ideas over the weekend I would like to share as well. A type of Mahalo "SDK" or "WDK" ("Writers Developer Kit") would be a great edition if Mahalo could put it's official stamp on it. This could definitely stir up some buzz and at the same time give people the opportunity to improve their writing skills by utilizing tools they might not even know had existed.

Such as stitch or other tools. Perhaps Mahalo could even work together hand in hand with the developers of some applications and put together something not only official but working with them as well to both improve publicity for their product and also Mahalo at the same token. 2.

How we maintain the quality level of answers as we grow 2-3x in size. I think what I mentioned above (staying focused on improving speed and "Fluentiality" (if you will) of the site would kind of also fall into that questions answer =P 3. How we make sure new folks understand what we expect in this community (i.e.

Helpful answers, a kind tone, 'Mahalo spirit', etc). I had some thoughts about this over the weekend as well, And I always wondered to myself why Mahalo doesn't put A "stickied" tip at the top for people to come in and read (at the same time if they respond getting a tip) that included rules and guidelines they should follow to remain productive in their stay here .? Anyone jason? , Buler?

4. Tactics we can use on the "March to 1,000" questions. Like I said a mahalo "sdk" or "WDK" would def.

Stir up some buzz. 5. What questions haven't I asked above that we need to consider?

With the increased traffic I think site security might also come into factor here, I have noticed that with the quadrupled spring in traffic within the past 3 months has now come more trolls and people trying to deface the good work we are all trying to do here. Perhaps employing and empowering a 24/7 Comodo/HS exec to make sure site security doesn't become a issue might be something to consider. I also have some other suggestions, however I would rather post them when I have more energy to fully explain them in great detail.

Until then , thank you so much to the owner, staff, and supportive members of this site . (You know who you are!) 6. Please place your favorite photo of a community activity!

Woah woah now... lets not get ahead of ourselves :P

1. How we can get to 1,000 questions asked a day (from 300-500). Spend money on direct/indirect advertising.

Still waiting for that Tesla! 2. How we maintain the quality level of answers as we grow 2-3x in size.

Make a video of instructions and give 50 points to watch it. 3. How we make sure new folks understand what we expect in this community (i.e.

Helpful answers, a kind tone, 'Mahalo spirit', etc). Have more employees to watch on people. 4.

Tactics we can use on the "March to 1,000" questions. 500th question and 1000th question of the day will get $5 prize! 5.

What questions haven't I asked above that we need to consider? How can we have all the questions answered? Should the absurd questions be deleted?6.

Please place your favorite photo of a community activity! This photo is dated March 29, 2009: Volunteers fill sandbags to reinforce levees in Fargo, N.D. Flood waters from the Red River have begun to recede, but locals aren't letting down their guard.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.