If you have not heard about it yet, there’s a new question & answer website (CleverDodo.mu) that’s been recently launched in Mauritius and aims to help people easily find answers they are seeking. Although the concept is not unique as there are more established Q&A websites like Yahoo!Answers, CleverDodo however is more adapted to us Mauritians though as it allows people to communicate in English, French or Creole on the website.
It is the first Mauritian website to be properly designed in Creole and the extent of our mother tongue being used throughout the site is remarkable. There are many places on the web where you can find Creole being spoken but CleverDodo has been built with the language in mind and the buttons as well as any other feedback prompts are displayed in Creole and this gives it that special touch and patriotic feeling.
As more and more people turn to the Internet for information to help them in their everyday life, a site like this can really help in obtaining timely and accurate information on a particular subject. Sometimes it can be hard to search on google.mu for a specific topic relating to Mauritius as it’s a tiny island which has not yet fully used the power of the Internet to facilitate things and you can find yourself going to 10-20 websites before you actually find what you’re looking for (if you’re lucky that is) and many people get frustrated in the process and turn to friends/family who may recommend someone knowledgeable in the area for guidance instead.
Anything that’s going to make our lives more simple will be welcomed and sharing knowledge is always rewarding as well as helping other people in need. To see Mauritius embracing technology and progressing warms the heart, so let’s hope to see more initiative like this.
By the way, you can head over to CleverDodo.mu/cr/ to see the Creole version of CleverDodo in action.
A guest article by Gices, a web developer living in UK.
So, if you have a web site and you want to promote it, follow Gices’ example and write something** on the blog here. Contact me for more details.
**Conditions apply : Rs10,000 for a full featured post. Come on, am kidding 😛
I want to be the first to leave a comment, for once 🙂
The site is wonderfully made while the translation engine seems flawless.
A few improvements which just came to my mind :
Creole CAPTCHA words 🙂
More close integration with Social Networking (While Facebook connect might increase registrations Facebook comments might however be a problem to moderate)
Provide more functionality on the home page (Example : Add voting icons)
Make the top left logo click-able
A mobile version?Why not 🙂
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bookmarked! thanks for sharing
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Didn’t know about it. Bookmarked! 🙂
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Mo turv bann prosedir pu poste komanter inpe agasan e mo pa kontan siyn Anonymous . Sinon mo panse amizir li devlope sa sit la pu vinn byen pratik pu rod bann info lokal – sirtu si bann repons pa tro a kote .
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This is a useful idea, I have bookmarked. It will help me too.
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Wouldn’t it be nicer if the people behind CleverDodo inserted a list of categories as well?
Love the website so far! 🙂
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@yashwin : Thanks for the feedback..
a) Creole captcha is not practical as the website is offered in 3 languages at the moment. Moreover, when people solve captchas on the site, they are helping to digitise books (see reCaptcha for more info)
b) I’ve looked into facebook connect and it imposes many restrictions such as email address of the users which I need to send notifications of new answers etc
c) For the voting icons, i’d prefer the user to look at the whole question before voting because on the homepage, i list just the subject and not any additional message for the question
d) Mobile version, why not. I was thinking of an iPhone app 🙂
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@yey!, @Inf, @Mike : Glad you liked the site, I hope to see your contributions there 🙂
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@Sagitarius : Eski problem to p gagner la, li avan to fine login ou kan to p met komentair san login?
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@W T : We’ve got a list of categories to choose from when you ask a question? Where else would you like to see categories?
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@W T
I suggested this feature and the developer is implementing that as well as other features in the next update.
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@gices: Yashvin Yashvin Yashvin.
As a punishment, you need to write my name 1000times. handwritten please.
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@yashvin : I already started a for loop and then I saw the “handwritten” part :p
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i love dis site extra top et mone fini bookmarked li
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a good website. nice suggestions made above, but I had a good laugh however with this specific post:
http://www.cleverdodo.mu/cr/kumen-pez-1-fam/10074
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interesting work by Gices!
its a bit like Stackoverflow.com concept.
it would be nice to know if there is a panel of ‘experts’ who will answer the questions and moderate the BEST Answer. and as time passes by, makes sure the best answer is valid and accurate.
@jp lol.sa bizin rode ene top best answer pu sa!
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@gices
Mo pa’nn vrema geyn enn problem , mo zis turv prosedir la [e-mail -> kod -> e-mail -> kod] inpe agasan .
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Along the same lines, another website has been created for Mauritians: http://www.answers.mu
With one major difference though: Top users will get gifts every 3 months! 🙂
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