theseeker

Re: photography site I worked on a couple of the letters in there today, and your was the first in line under A. It should appear on the public pages within a few days.

I doubt that anyone would wish to use the ODP software to create a directory. ODP was designed before large sclae databases like MySQL became widespread, so it used no central database. Instead it uses the disk's file system, lots of flat files and Berkeley databases. If it could be re-designed from the ground up, I think the ODP programmer(s) would go a different direction. My personal opinion is the reason the ODP software is no open source is because there would be very little advantage to it, and the people who would have to make that call--AOL executives--have far mroe important things to deal with. This is all my own personal opinion, based on observations only.

What marketing spin? Where did you read this? The Open Directory makes no money. How can it? It's data is free and it has no ads. I think somewhere in this conversation you've really lost me. Who is Omnicorp? What do they have to do with dmoz.org? It has been said already that servers are being upgraded and new servers added. This is not so simple a matter as everyone seems to believe. The Open Directory was not designed to use more than one server. It was designed, many years ago, to run with the minimum of investment, equipment and staff. But the founders did not expect the growth we had. They designed for an eventual 1000 editors and 1 million sites. 50,000 editors and 4 million sites later, one person must redesign the site to work on many servers. It won't be done a couple of days. The RDF server, which is one half of the important part of the structure, has been upgraded, and the RDF has been produced regularly for quite some time now. The editor portion, which is the second half of the important part, will be next. The public side is the least important part. The Open Directory could easily get by without public submission and public visitors. In fact, the main reason for poor performance on the public side is because current resources have been channeled to editor only sections. There's never been any doubt that the ODP would have to fight longer and harder for any technical and monetary assistance. It takes time, but it is happening. People without patience don't last long as editors.

Now that I've been a little bit general, I'll be a bit more specific to this issue. The site in question would fit into Arts/Online_Writing/E-zines/Fiction; and there is no convenient way to cross link between the that category and http://dmoz.org/Society/Gay,_Lesbian,_and_Bisexual/News_and_Media/Magazines_and_E-zines/E-zines (which can contain a variety of genres besides Fiction). Since there was only two waiting to be reviewed (counting Blithe House Quarterly), I listed it there.

>>http://dmoz.org/Arts/Literature/Cultural/Gay,_Lesbian,_and_Bisexual/Online_Writing/<< This category is a misplaced, and needs to moved. You can't have an Online Writing category in Literature, since Literature is for writing in print. But many little categories like this were orphaned over the years, and when someone notices them, like now, they tend to get moved. Listing a site in two categories follows the same rules no matter where those categories are; being in different top level areas makes no difference. In a perfect world, no site would be listed twice. All sites would fit perfectly in one category. But it's not a perfect world or a perfect directory, so we work with what we have. In the case of Online Writing, sites listed there tend to be listed there as a last resort. The sites don't usually have a more specific topic reference and are simply Fiction or Poetry. In the case where a site covers writing about one specific subject, those sites will tend to be sent to that subject's category. So very few sites in Online Writing are listed twice in the directory. It is probable that we need to do a bit more cross linking in these areas.

Note that applications cannot be reconsidered in this sense. Once rejected, applications are gone and cannot be retrieved. The only way for an application to be reconsidered is if you apply again. You can always apply again and mention this thread in the reason field.

Re: Suggestion to help remove stale links from DMO Yes, good point. I was already thinking about a confirmation screen using POST, so that probably wouldn't be a problem. The confirmation screen would slow down a malicious visitor also.

Re: Suggestion to help remove stale links from DMO I think I have to come out and say, as a programmer and a long time editor, that I think this idea has a lot of merit and would work if done right. A simple link on the public side after each description that said "Report bad link" or something like that. Then clicking on it would mark it like robozilla does, only say orange instead of red. The thing we would have to guard against is a malicious visitor who might begin clicking on everything (I even have a couple of ideas for that but won't go into it here). I don't think I would suggest anything like this, though, until we have a couple more promised improvements that would relate to this; which we likely won't have until the new hardware arrives in about 5 months. Once the hardware does arrive, though, rest assured that I will suggest this internally. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

Any website listed under Arts/Literature should also be published in print, or should be about writing published in print (with a few exceptions). If the writing exists online only, it goes to Arts/Online_Writing. The Arts/Literature/Journals category does have a few exceptions in fully online journals that are published by English departments of a university or other educational institution. A recent editor did list a couple of sites that did not belong there, but I have just gone through the category and removed those.

Scooters looked interesting, so I spent some time running through the queue listing many of the obviously listable sites, of which yours was one. Cat still needs a lot of work though; if you feel you could edit objectively without favoring your own site or deleting your competition then please apply, to this category or a related cat. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

mamabear, sent you a private message with some info that might help.

The new place for the RDFs _is_ also on a different server. That would appear to be all part of various changes that are being made, and will continue to be made for 6 months at least, to take some of the load off the main server. I suspect when the RDF is generating correctly we may see RDFs at both places, or one will redirect to the other. IN any event, we hope to see RDF generation return to normal soon. <img src="/images/icons/cool.gif" alt="" />

Those links have been fixed.

IE attempts to decompress the file while downloading it. I surf with IE, but I use Opera to download the files. I believe there are other tools for downloading these types of files, but Opera has always worked for me so I haven't explored any others.

It appears some kind of glitch appeared when this category was recently moved. Your site was listed as being in the category but it was not showing. I was able to fix it.

I did get a copy of your feedback and it's on my to do list. I try to make my way back into e-zines on a periodically basis, but have been short of time lately, so it's getting a little backlogged--not nearly as much as other areas though. If you do have a zine in print, then it does belong in the Literature cat. I'll try to take a look at that as soon as I can.

Did you apply to the Recreation/Humor/Jokes category? Because that category is far too large for a new editor. A category with less than a 100 sites is a good guide when you reapply. Several of the subcategories in there fall into that range and would probably be perfect for a new editor.

Update done. Thanks.

Sounds like the browser the user is using isn't sending the referrer, and the forum won't accept a post that isn't from resource-zone, as checked through the referrer.

One good way to help assure that won't happen is to include on the end of the description "English version included." or something like that. The editor may edit it out before adding the site, but it will call attention to it and the editor should then look for the English version, which is easy to find in this case.

Yes, and that's confusing everyone. Having a link on a page with a PageRank of 6 would be a good thing, hence the possibility of abusing bookmarks for the page rank. However, since Google never spiders the Bookmark page itself (type "dmoz.org/Bookmarks/S/sabre23t" into Google it won't find it), this means Google does not know that a site listed in Bookmarks is linked from it. Therefore, there is no real advantage to having your site listed in your bookmarks, as far as page rank is concerned. As matter of fact, I believe there might be a disadvantage to it. But I'm not an expert on the page rank subject. There are far more knowledgeable people in the world in that sense. I believe, though, that having a link on a bunch of pages with very low page rank can lower your page rank. A site listed in bookmarks is likely to appear on all the sites that skim dmoz using a program, and these sites are likely to have low page ranks.

Search for dmoz.org/Bookmarks in Google. You won't find any. Apparently, they have never been spidered by Google, and therefore cannot effect page rank. Bookmarks on sites that use a program to scrape the data from dmoz are spidered, but most of those have a low page rank anyway. For the most part, I see this as a non-issue.

Another editor has actually been handling most of cleaning up that category. I will contact that editor and then send you a private message about the results.

Well, now, nothing's perfect. I doubt there are many at the ODP who think the directory is perfect, considering we spend so much time talking about how to improve it. I do like constructive criticism, though I usually ignore or remove posts that are as insulting as these are. This time, though, I think I'll ignore the insults and address some of the claims... How does accountability relate to submission processing time? You are assuming that editors have some obligation to the submitters. I personally think the ODP would be better off without submissions, populating the categories by searching for sites in the spiders like Google, Alta Vista, etc. This would not be contrary to our stated mission. I don't think that will happen though. Worthless in whose opinion? The policy at ODP is that deeplinking is the exception, not the rule. I'm sure there are a few sites that have been deeplinked when they shouldn't be, which have not been found yet and removed, but that's not the norm. Are you saying there are no spelling errors in Yahoo? If you're thinking that's a loaded question, it took me less than 30 seconds to load a second window, go to Yahoo, and find a spelling error.

Yours was the only site in there and it was submitted with the currently active URL. Since I even found your submitted description to be acceptable, I added it to the category.