My only question is whether AskPatents was how it got to the USPTO.
I don't see why it's reasonable to assume that they saw it on the site considering most examiners still don't do that sort of thing. Most of them search the USPTO approved databases, internally, and go about their way. This is in fact, what the search strategy/et al says happened. Given that, i think the burden falls on you to show some likelihood here.
For example, do you have anything to say that any significant percentage of examiners (IE > 10%) use askpatents on a regular basis? I would be pleasantly shocked if you did.
The rest is not the argument i am making, the only argument I am making is: "Do you have any evidence that your site is the reason the USPTO found this?"
From what I can tell, your answer is "no".
If you do, great!
No offense meant, of course, my problem is if you declare victory when you were not actually involved, this will actually make things worse - people will think they are helping solve the issue, yet, if the PTO actually isn't using your data heavily, they aren't.
Again, don't get me wrong, i think askpatents is a great idea, and i'd hope and love to find out it's actually being used heavily by the PTO. I can't find any stats on that, and given the history of prior pilot programs/etc, i'm very skeptical.