stevesliva

I'd probably try something with an xml parser that allows tree traversal, but then I'd probably run out of memory.

Re: DMOZ policies on advertising ? Content, Content, Content-- We have affirmative content policies instead of negative ad policies. A site with both lots of ads and lots of content may be listed, but a site with all ads and no unique content will not be listed. Also related is the policy against listing sites that are exclusively affiliate links. These sites are merely ads for other sites that mirror content, instead of offering additional unique information.

See the Bugs and Features forum... we're hoping for an update very soon.

Most editors will in fact try to be helpful when they get polite email, but it makes sense to be wary. Here's an excerpt from an email I recieved from an editor the other day: "I have been having a problem with a person. This has been going on for sometime ... She has filled up my mailbox with some pretty strange rantings about "editors raking in millions" and "taking bribes". In the past 2 weeks alone she has emailed me over 30 times."

Re: Editor Application Status ? I just took a look at your application, but I can't review it because I don't speak German, nor can dozens of other metas who normally would have reviewed it by now. It looks like we currently have about seven meta-editors fluent in German, and the time to review obviously can be a bit more varied with only seven people able to review your application rather than over 100.

Well, heck, if they meant Unicode, why didn't they say so? And why throw in -8 when the big deal about Unicode is the transition to 16-bit characters from 8?

It's "only" been running for three or four days now. We've got our fingers crossed. Here is a example of the character set nightmare referred to above, although I think it's gotten a bit worse. I've read a lot about transitioning to UTF-8, whatever that is.

It's still there. (Added later) Your application happens to be to a category that has been "abused" in the past, and we tend to tread cautiously in such circumstances.

nuthin, I agree that new features allowing submittors to track their submissions would be a great idea, but they would rank very low on the priority list of tasks for the engineering staff. Something like a tracking number, rather than a published "new!" icon... but don't hold your breath.

There is a large unreviewed queue in that category. (It's under-edited) Your site is still waiting for review.

Perfect altruism, of course.

<< And your authority to answer for decisions made for the Home Page is >> As good or better than anyone else here. What is linked on the front page has absolutely nothing to do with the hierarchy, is not reflected in the RDF. Why do you care? Google does it differently at http://directory.google.com -- They put Alternative first. The also boldface the largest subcategories of any category... Buddhism, Christianity, Pagan for Religions... That's Google's perogative. The front page has absolutely nothing to do with the hierarchy and everything to do with looking neato. It's modified by staff, with input from the editors. It's not reflected in the RDF data at all. You're talking to editors here, bud. We CAN change the hierarchy, but you've got to grasp the fact that we make objective decisions, and size and popularity don't count. If you want to talk about Health/Alternative, create a new topic. I don't think you care, though. If you want to continue to debate the Religion hierarchy, feel free to continue here. You're not going to convince anyone, though-- and we're not going to change your narrow mind. Goodbye and thanks for all the flames.

<< 42,000 compared with 22,000 is hardly the same as comparing 61,000 with 9. >> It is when the categories logically belong at the same level. They're just numbers, and we don't classify things based on the number of sites for that topic. Just because Rock music has 7,500 sites and Polka has 41 doesn't mean they both don't belong in Music/Styles. Just because Christian music has far more sites than Jewish doesn't mean Christian music is under Styles when the others are under Religious, no matter what MP3.com or Amazon.com do. We don't care about popularity. Trying to incorporate the number of sites for Christianity versus other religions, denominations, sects, etc. into your argument just won't work. We don't make popularity decisions. If it behooves a data user to to so, they can. You can get your own copy of the RDF and put Christianity wherever the heck you want to. Feature it on the front page of your site if you want. Similarly, if someone wanted to lift the "popular" artists out of bands and artists and ignore the thousands of unknown, that's their perogitive as data users, but not ours. We're no more likely to link Christianity from the top than we are to link Britney Spears from the front page.

Why don't we just make an "Important Countries" category while we're at it? It will include the US first, followed by Japan and Taiwan, in that order. Nobody will get upset, especially not the PRC, which we'll put in the "Undeveloped Countries" category along with Rwanda.

Editors can edit in any of the subcategories of the categories they have editing permissions for. None of the Blackjack categories have a large unreviewed queue, so we can assume some editor is fairly active there, even in the subcategories.

Didn't know Werewithal changed their name to Xoron. Funny, I don't think I'd intentionally pick a name that rhymes with moron.

yup, that's me

let's see if this icon works.

Sorry about that. Once categorized, sites are often not recategorized, and the "Update URL" form backend-- what editors see-- is poorly suited for your type of request, since only the editors of the current category see it.

Try resubmitting to Games/Gambling/Blackjack/Software. I'll add a note on the URL for the reviewer to take more than a cursory look at it. Try to make sure the title and description are reasonable.

We realize that there are self-serving editors, but when we learn of them, as we have in several hundred instances, they are removed. I'm personally not that familiar with the affiliate policies, beyond knowing that perhaps the first impetus of about three years ago was bookstore affiliate links... a category with a few hundred sites all offering links to Amazon.com didn't offer anyone any more value than a single Amazon.com link or deeplink.

I'm curious whether Looksmart requires that the portals it has paid to use its listings not use ODP data as well. It seems that logically, they'd do both-- take the money from Looksmart, and the free trove of data from dmoz. (This might not be the best forum for this, but it does relate to the use of ODP data in some ways, at least for major sites.)

We've clamored for a number of software enhancements to help filter spam, but we haven't considered that one... Really, it'd be difficult to justify a fee for commercial sites, and impossible for non-commercial sites. It just doesn't mesh with the open aspect of dmoz. In reality, that could be one on the greater long-term problems with the ODP. It's tougher to find good, non-self-interested editors for commercial categories than it is for stuff like video games, hobbies, arts, science, regional, etc. Unsurprisingly the ODP has a much higher percentage of its sites listed in non-commercial categories than Yahoo. With paid inclusion will the relevance of the Yahoo commercial listings increase, while the other categories wither? And vice versa for the ODP? I tend to think the ODP will be able to do both for free, but that Yahoo and Looksmart will be catering more to the SEOs than the searchers. On the other hand, the ODP's Adult directory is much, much larger than Yahoo's. Not sure how that fits into the equation.

No, that's not what I meant, just that the situations aren't exactly analogous. You can bet that the $299 fee acts as a wonderful spam filter, while we're wallowing in thousands of submissions that are the equivalent of you submitting your travel reservation service to a travel category for every major state, country, and municipality with an all-caps all-crap description the the effect of "travel reservation, reservations, cheap, low-cost, planes, trains, automobiles, rentals, leases, cruises, clearance, etc, etc." And if they get lucky and two of the 60-odd submissions make it in, they'll just try again a few weeks later. When the equivalent on Yahoo would cost them somewhere around $18,000 for the first round, I'm betting Yahoo sees a lot less of that sort of thing. I've sure even one $299 fee down the drain for a crappy submission makes submittors seriously re-evaluate a number of things. Decent submissions are buried in a ton of crap, and that makes it difficult to find them sometimes.

And if it was accepted by Yahoo recently, didn't it cost you a few hundred bucks? Minor detail.