HowIHelped aims to give users a place to report altruistic acts they have engaged in amid a community with the ability to respond to those reports and engage in discussion about them. The site encourages posters to discuss the benefits that they themselves have received from performing altruistic acts with the goal of providing positive reinforcement and encouraging new participation. This is particularly timely given the crisis in Haiti - people who have volunteered there could use this site to spread information about what they have done and network with other potential volunteers as well as find out about other opportunities to help that they may not be aware of. Not all acts of altruism need to be so explicit, however. People are encouraged to report even small acts of kindness. Other features of the site include: Activity Tracking A profile page allows the user and the community to track each user’s activity on the site by reporting their posts and their responses to the posts of others as well as their "Instant Karma" score. Ajax Discussions In order to make the flow of discussion as seamless as possible, when a user responds to a post this takes place via Ajax to ensure that the flow of a real-time discussion is not broken by page refreshes. Ajax Voting & Instant Karma Scores An Ajax voting system applied both to posts and responses allows users to provide encouraging feedback to other users, adding to their accumulated Instant Karma. Because only upvoting is allowed by regular users to avoid the negativity found on sites with two-way voting, an additional flagging feature exists which is accessible only by an administrator or higher-level user who has achieved a degree of trust on the site. Gravatars & Identicons A user can further personalize their experience by associating a gravatar image with the email address they sign up with. In the absence of that association, a unique identicon graphic will be generated to allow them to be visually recognized on the site. Textile Formatting Users can format the text of their posts and responses with common Textile formatting to add bolding, emphasis, hyperlinks, etc. Geolocation The site also has the capability, through a geolocation feature to allow users in the same geographic area to contact each other, with the goal of encouraging local networking around altruistic endeavors.