Mahalo: A Retro Approach to Search? - Helpful Guide Signals
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In the screen shot I took you'll see symbols next to some of the listings. These are hands making a funny "V" shape, and they mean that one of the guides thought that link was particularly cool. If you hover over the symbol you'll find out who thought it was good and why. Here's an example from the Guitar page:
The site has a similar system for pages they think are worth suggesting but rate some kind of warning. The warning icon is a yellow triangle with an exclamation point inside it; Mahalo provides a complete list of the warnings it uses. These range from the site auto playing audio or video to requiring membership for making purchases or seeing content. The warnings are actually pretty diverse, and if you hate being sent to sites that haven't been updated in a while, or are ad-heavy, or aren't actually safe for work, you'll definitely appreciate this system.
Sometimes the warnings are more in the nature of information. On the Guitar page, the "warning" for Craigslist only said that classifieds on Craigslist often feature guitars, and to check your own city. Personally, I think they ought to consider using a different symbol for "information" rather than "warnings." There is a special symbol for information, but it's specifically for "sites that our guides find useful that might be new to you." It's a blue circle with a question mark inside. Hover over it, and you get a question: "What is [name of site]?" Click the blue circle, and you get taken to an answer page. Here's the one for Technorati:
The guides know that they don't know everything. Those who want to be a little more proactive with their search engines can create an account, after which they can recommend links. Each page also has its own message board for discussion between logged in users. Additionally, you can click on links on each page to report a problem; you don't have to be logged in for that feature to work, though you do have to pass a captcha test (which is only sensible).
Incidentally, if you'd like to see Mahalo page creation in process (sort of, anyway), you can go here. And then of course there's Jason Calacanis' blog which is full of information about Mahalo, including such matters as how the guides are dealing with pages getting spammed.
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