Mahalo Glossary

[edit] Terms

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• Ad-heavy

  A page with a disproportionate number of ads versus content. Always warn for ad-heavy sites: <w>WARNING: Ad-heavy </w>

• Advertorial

  An ad posing as editorial content. Do not link to an advertorial, ever.

• AFK

  Away From Keyboard. Abbreviation used to indicate you are not actively watching the chat, though you are logged in to it.

• Bad Link

  A link that is either dead, or provides no help to the user. Do not link to a bad link, ever.

• Blown Out / Blow Out / Totally Blown

  Extremely awesome and complete. As in:

  • "This SeRP on Geoffrey Chaucer is so blown out."

    "I'm gonna blow out this SeRP iPhone style."

    "Did you see that [[your SeRP here]] SeRP? Totally blown!"

• Categories

  Categories are how we organize SeRPs by subject on Mahalo. Every SeRP should belong to at least one and no more than ten categories. The category code belongs at the very top of the page. Categories should be written: [[Category:News]]

  To inlink to a cateogry in the note box: [[:Category:News|News Category]] or [[:Category:News|news]]

• Deep Link

  Linking to a page of content inside a website, not just to the site's main page.

  • i.e.: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_37342,00.html instead of http://www.foodnetwork.com/

• Did you mean...

  For SeRPs that have a similar name as another, different SeRP, put this code at the top of the page:

  • *<font color="red">Did you mean:</font> ''[[Damien Rice|Damien Rice, the musician]]?''

• Disambiguation

  Disambiguation is necessary when a SeRP title could refer to more than one topic. For instance, Chicago refers to the city, the band, a musical, and a movie based on the musical, among other things. In these cases, we use the Guide Note and the Did you mean... features to aid in disambiguation.

  • Read how Wikipedia deals with Disambiguation.

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• External Links

  Links that take the user away from the Greenhouse or Mahalo to an external page. To make an external link use this code:

  • *Pre-text: [www.link.com Hypertext]

• Fast Facts

  Short verifiable facts about the search term in the Guide's own words, with no ending punctuation. Fast Facts are meant to be browsed, and should not be complete sentences. There should be between 5 and 10 Fast Facts on each SeRP.

• Firefox

  Our preferred browser for searching. The Greenhouse Guide Tool only works with Firefox. For best results, enable the tabs.

• Formatting

  Refers to the way the underlying code on a search results page is written as well as how the links are written. Formatting of the code is uniform and you can learn it here:

  • Mahalo Style Guide and watch this video: Writing a SeRP Using Wiki Formatting

  Formatting of the links can vary by vertical. Consult your vertical's Style Guide for information.

• FTG

  Full Time Guide. FTGs work at Mahalo's office in Santa Monica and are responsible for the page on Mahalo. See Guide Lead.

• Good Link

  A good link is helpful to the user and from a high quality site.

• Greenhouse

  The user-participation wing of Mahalo where users can be paid to write search results pages for Mahalo.

• Greenhouse Guide

  Part-time, remote freelancer who builds search results pages in the Mahalo Greenhouse which may be purchased for inclusion on Mahalo.com. See Part Time Guide, PTG.

• Guide

  A human who creates and maintains the search results pages on Mahalo. Learn how to be a Mahalo Guide. See Greenhouse Guide and Guide Lead.

• Guide Lead

  See FTG. Guide Leads work at Mahalo's office in Santa Monica, where they direct Vertical Teams.

• Guide Note

  The Guide Note is a description of the search term in the Guide's own words. The Guide Note should have internal links wherever possible. The Guide Note should consist of a few sentences of concise, well written information.

• Guide Tool

  The Greenhouse Guide Tool enables faster completion of SeRPs by automating part of the encoding.

• Guide's Choice

  A designation made by the guide to indicate a particularly noteworthy link. Indicated by a shaka symbol:  

  • To insert a Guide's Choice shaka use this format: <c>Guide Name: Comment </c>

  The comment should be a positive, original statement such as "I love this site's layout" or "Extremely funny video." Do not use ending punctuation except for exclamation points (!)

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• Internal Links

  Links that take the user to another Greenhouse or Mahalo page. To make an internal link simply put the title of the SeRP in double brackets like this:

  • [[Oranges]]

  To make an internal link read differently from the title of the serp write it like this:

  • [[Oranges|orange]]

• IRC

  Internet Relay Chat. For directions on joining the IRC chatroom PTG, see the Chat section of the Contact page.

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• Mahalo

  Hawaiian for "thank you" and an amazing human-powered search engine.

• Mahalo Top 7, The

  The best seven links about the serp topic on the Internet. Always include the official site of a topic. Do not link to the same site more than once in the top seven, unless it is to different parts of an official site. Formatting of links is different in the top seven, so pay attention to your vertical's style guide. To make the numbered list in the top seven, start each link with a pound sign:

  • #Official Site: [www.officialsite.com Company Inc.]

  Don't put links in the top seven simply because they don't fit under any of your other sections. Create a section for a link if need be.

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• Note Box

  The Note Box refers to the box in the right sidebar of Mahalo pages. It consists of a Guide Note, Fast Facts, and any other section of information that is pertinent to the page. Note Boxes should always be scannable, in the Guide's own words, with correct spelling and grammar. They are a way to add substantial original content to pages by giving lots of interesting information to the user. The entire Note Box should have 200 words minimum, not including disclaimers or related pages.

• Part Time Guide

  See Greenhouse Guide.

• Ping

  Alert, via chat, private message, or email. As in, "I'll ping you when I have a question."

• PM

  Private Message. Two Greenhouse Guides might PM each other on IRC.

• Pop-ups

  Small web browser windows that automatically appear over a web site. Usually pop-ups are advertising banners. Mahalo warns users if a site we link to has pop-ups. <w>WARNING: Pop-ups </w>

• PTG

  After a Greenhouse Guide has five search results pages accepted on Mahalo.com, they are designated PTG, or Part Time Guide and can work on up to five search results pages at one time. See Part Time Guide. See Greenhouse Guide. Learn more:

  • Greenhouse Guide Levels

• PTG New

  New Part Time Greenhouse Guide. Newcomers to the Greenhouse are automatically designated PTGNew. They may work on one search result page at a time until they have five search results pages accepted to Mahalo.com. Learn more:

  • Greenhouse Guide Levels

• PTG Plus

  Part Time Guide Plus. Greenhouse Guides who turn in consistently excellent search result pages may be upgraded to work on 10 pages at a time. Learn more:

  • Greenhouse Guide Levels

• QC

  Quality Control. When a search result page is submitted by a Greenhouse Guide as complete, it goes under a quality control review by a Mahalo Guide. Also called Review. Quality control is necessary to ensure quality links and formatting compliant with Mahalo standards. See an outline of the process.

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• Related Pages

  Include related search topics for your topic in the related links section of the Guide Note box. Only use internal links to search results pages we have or should have, and to category pages that currently exist. Use this format:

  • <small><h2>Related Pages on Mahalo</h2></small> [[Doc]] | [[Dopey]] | [[Sneezy]] | [[Grumpy]] | [[Bashful]] | [[Sleepy]] | [[Happy]]

  Order them from most relevant to least relevant to the search term.

• RSS

  Really Simply Syndication. The use of RSS feeds helps us keep our SeRPs updated. Learn about our RSS Best Practices. See vertical-specific style guides for information on what types of RSS feeds to use and where to insert them on the SeRP.

• Search Term

  The topic of the search result page, as well as its name.

• Section

  We organize each search result page under sections. Each SeRP should have 3-9 sections, not including the Mahalo Top 7. To create a section use this code:

  • ==Section Title==

• SeRP

  Search Engine Results Page.

• SeRPing

  The act of building a SeRP.

• Shaka

  See Guide's Choice

• SKYPE

  A free instant messaging platform with voice and chat capabilities.

• Spam

  Unsolicited commercial email, or, content-free web pages with many advertisements. Many sites that Mahalo considers spammy offer no original content to the user and exist to make money or advertise something. Do not link to spam.

• Splog

  A blog dedicated to selling a particular product or service, or to showing advertisements. Some, but not all, splogs utilize unauthorized content from legitimate blogs (scraping) to provide their content. Do not link to splogs.

• Standards

  Mahalo's standards regarding quality of links we put on our search results are high. We only link to very helpful, high quality sites. We never link to spam, splogs, advertorials, or sites that are overly ad-heavy, have poor content, have unoriginal content, or are of no help to the user. When in doubt do not link to anything questionable.

• Subsection

  A related but less important section that belongs to a main section on the search result page. To create a subsection use this code:

  • ====Subsection Title====

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• Template

  Building a search results pages usually start with inserting a template. See a list of codes here: PTG Templates Templates are flexible: add and remove sections and subsections as needed. Don't forget to replace the generic template name with the SeRP name on each section.

• UID

  User identification, user ID or user ID number. Everyone with an account on Greenhouse has a UID. Find yours by going to your profile page. In the URL you will see your UID. For example: http://greenhouse.mahalo.com/Special:Mahaloprofile?uid=583

  • The UID is 583

• Vertical

  An area in which Mahalo has concentrated its efforts to create pages, for instance Health, Food, Sports, News, etc.

• Warning Tag

  Warning the user what to expect on a site we link to is part of our "we're here to help" mission. Indicated by a warning sign:   When in doubt, add a warning tag. Try to use warning tags already in use: List of Mahalo Warnings Use this code:

  • <w>WARNING: Pop-ups</w>

  Note that there is no need to put the "Auto plays audio" or "Auto plays video" warnings for sites where the user will expect video and audio to play, such as YouTube or Metacafe.

• What is...?

  This code appears as a blue bubble next to links to pages that the average user might not recognize, such as Technorati, HypeMachine and Gothamist. When you click on the icon it takes you to a page about the site. These are automatically entered on the Mahalo site and require no action.

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