Credit @Buddawiggi for his daily participation, his top quality writing, his well researched answers and his constant praise of fellow Mahaloians. @Buddawiggi is the model Mahaloian and the AOTD stats simply present this in chart form.

Also congrats to @bunnyphuphu, @gno and @chriswingate for their fine participation in the contest as well. Good luck to everybody in October.

In this first edition, the updates I was looking for; was for Mahaloians to add two featured objects to their “How-To” pages – one video and one image. One of the most common errors that eliminated many of the competitors was that they forgot to add an image, reading rules is key.

18 different Mahaloians nominated their updates for the grand prize, I had no judging template until the day of judging came, I decided I would simply create a checklist. On the checklist I checked to see if users followed the rules, that was an instant 4 points, 3 points were rewarded based on my judging of the quality of the updates and lastly 3 extra points were awarded if the user went “above and beyond” what was asked in the contest description. All the judging categories were decided prior to me looking at any of the entrants.

In the end, I believe this first edition went off without many problems, the biggest problem was perhaps the judging took a little bit longer then I had intended

Well that has changed, today I posted the inaugural “Mahalo Weekend Update Contest” – This will be a weekly contest to encourage and educate Mahalo page managers to make different types of updates on their Mahalo page. Each week I’ll choose a type of Mahalo and type of update to be done, managers will perform the updates and post them as an answer in the official contest thread.

On September 14th, @lesliec will post the “Answer of the Day Contest for September 15th” – The contest proceeds as it always has, with contest participants finding the best answer previously written on Mahalo. The nomination that receives the most “helpful votes” in 24hrs wins the contest prize + team tips. Same thing compared to the old version except the contest is posted and closed a little later in the day.

The most beneficial change users will notice is that the total prize money has been increased from M$10 to M$14. We’ve included a prize for the authors of the “Answer of the Day” in this new version. In previous versions we rewarded only the nominators, it was always meant as token for their participation (you had to play to win.)

In the new version we’ve adjusted the prize money for nominators and slightly make their role in the contest easier. We are removing the emphasis of the nominator to “explain” their reasoning behind choosing their nomination. This could have led to the voters voting for explanations instead of the actual nominated answer. This is no longer a concern, nominators need now only introduce their answer in a paragraph or less, no images, no video. We want the nominated answers to speak for themselves.

In the latest version Mahalo Staff will also be able to participate, in the past we have had no rule about staff. Since we started the contest participants have actively nominated staff answers for AOTD, including answers from myself, editorial director Lon, and even CEO Jason Calacanis have all had an “answer of the day” before. Which I think is fine, because sometimes even us staff can write up great answers, in fact in the latest version staff can also nominate, because we find some pretty good answers too.

Thanks our good friend Rob Brown, we now have tiki awards that will be used throughout the community for the contest. Users now have to place the nomination tiki within the comments of the answer they are nominating, this way Mahaloians know if an answer has been nominated already. I’m a big fan of the Tiki’s I think they will add much needed visual personality throughout the site.

We hope all Mahaloians are as excited about these changes as we are, we look forward to your participation in future Answer of the Day contests. If you are a fan of the contest we’d appreciate you showing your support by clicking the “interesting button” this helps fund the winning nominators prize total, and the nominators help make this contest happen.

For more information visit the Answer of the Day Mahalo page.