502 Proxy Error (Editor Feedback form)

motsa said:

Not sure how that would help you here. This forum is not owned or run by AOL. So any issues here have nothing to do with any issues at dmoz.org.

Click to expand...

From the point of view of a site submitter, this forum - regardless of who runs it - is part of the DMOZ package. It's one of the few ways we can communicate with DMOZ in general. Again, I say: look at it from our point of view, from the viewpoint of the helpless outsider, just trying to use the service. This would be an excellent case study in how to confuse and alienate clients.

pvgool said:

BTW Google has stated several times that they do not put a high value on a DMOZ listing, they threat a link to a website on DMOZ exactly the same as they do threat a link on any other website.

Click to expand...

I'm assuming you meant 'treat' rather than 'threat'. Regardless, I was not aware that Google had stated that. Would you perhaps have a link to a site where that or similar statements were posted?

pvgool said:

Disabling the option to suggest websites to DMOZ has been discussed by editors more than once and until now the pros are higher than the cons and that is why we still accept suggestions. But each editor can decide on his own if he wants to look at those suggestions or not. Yes, editors are not forced to look at the suggestions. But most do look at them.

Click to expand...

Okay, I'm beginning to get the picture. Given what you said, it would save submitters a lot of agony if DMOZ could - for categories not open to submissions - either disable the site submission link or add a notice of some kind.

jimnoble said:

Others have already said this but you might have missed it. We aren't a free listing service for website owners; we're hobbyist directory builders. There's a big difference .

Click to expand...

Please enlighten me as to the supposed big difference.

jimnoble said:

If you can help get this message out to other forums (as you seemed to be threatening) you'd be doing us a great favour. In my experience though, and I've tried hard enough over the years, it falls on deaf ears.

Click to expand...

Well, if you insist. I'm sitting here, shaking my head, trying to get my head around the attitude shown by DMOZ editors here: "Leave us alone: we don't really want people to submit sites; don't complain to us about DMOZ problems; we don't care about Google; we can't tell you anything about your site submission; and we don't really want to talk to anyone." For a potentially useful service, this kind of thinking seems like a freight train headed straight for irrelevance and oblivion to me.

We have fun building a directory by seeking out appropriate websites to list in it. All too often, the most informative sites are never suggested at all and so we have to go find them.

Sadly, far too many website owners believe that an ODP listing will magically cause money to fall from the sky. That might even have been true years ago but few SEO professionals believe it to be so nowadays. That doesn't stop them from bugging us and spamming us demanding that we do what they want us to do and demanding that we amend how we operate so that they can more quickly reap the financial shower that they believe will follow a listing here.

It's a point of view thing and it's a great shame that so few seem willing to accept ours, still less read our guidelines to determine whether or not their site is listable here at all.

Bottom line, please don't tell us we should switch from enjoying our hobby to doing your bidding. <rhetorical> How would you react if we kept telling you how to run your website ad nauseam? </rhetorical>

I guess I'd better respond to your final comment.

Leave us alone: we don't really want people to submit sites; don't complain to us about DMOZ problems; we don't care about Google; we can't tell you anything about your site submission; and we don't really want to talk to anyone.

Click to expand...

- Leave us alone: we don't really want people to submit sites;

We don't mind if people suggest listable websites just once to appropriate categories. They can be a useful resource in some types of category but there's no reason that they should be given priority over our own searching endeavours. We aren't a website listing service.

- don't complain to us about DMOZ problems

I assume you mean AOL server problems. AOL are well aware of them and there's not a lot that we volunteers can do to adjust their priorities. We probably see a lot more of them than you do and I can assure you that we have similar frustrations.

- we don't care about Google

Right on - we don't. They are merely one of our many downstream data users.

- we can't tell you anything about your site submission

Not quite correct. It's more that we won't. We tried it here for a few years and it caused even more bad temper than you see here today. It was completely unproductive for everybody concerned so we decided to stop it.

- and we don't really want to talk to anyone

I'm talking to you aren't I? As are other editors here, I'm trying really hard to educate. Didn't I mention deaf ears earlier

Jeff Rivett said:

Please enlighten me as to the supposed big difference.

Click to expand...

It is very easy.

There was a group of people that was collecting links to websites they thought were worth collecting.
One day these people decided to combine their efforts.
They decided that their collections of links best could be grouped by subject.
DMOZ was born.
Those people also decided that there was some need for guidelines about which websites the would not accept for the collections and to stardardise they also wrote down some guidelines about hwo to describe the websites in their collections.
Than they decided that they also would let others benefit from their collections and made their collection to be used by others under some kind of open source ruling.
They continued to collect websites as they like to build their collections bigger.
They also welcomed other people to help them build the still growing collection. The editor application process was born.
They also recognised that there were much more websites on the internet than they knew of.
So they invited other people to tell them about usefull websites. The suggestion process was born.
After some time it showed that there was a flaw in the suggestion process.
Some people tried to abuse the process for their own benefit.
Despite this flaw the group of people decided to continue but install stricter guidelines.
This managed them to select the worthwhile websites and to discard the websites they did not want to list.
The interent kept growing and growing and so did the collection of websites.
New people joined the group and people also left the group.
But all the time the group of people kept buidling the collection for fun.
And that is how it still is.
Editors build a collection of websites out of fun and offer that collection to all people to use.

First of all, thanks for all your responses, which have generally been measured and (very) patient. I think that my critical misunderstanding of DMOZ stems from my failure to fully realize that DMOZ is not - and probably never will be - run as a business. There is no apparent 'need' to compete with other similar services, including Google. Editors participate because they enjoy it, not because they want DMOZ to become the most important directory on the web.

I've seen a lot of useful services fade away on the web, and in my own selfish way I felt like I could help to keep that from happening to DMOZ, especially because its problems (as perceived by me, of course) seemed so easy to fix.

It seems to me that the additional attention DMOZ received from Google, when it was rating DMOZ links highly, as well as its adoption of DMOZ as the starting point for its own directory, led to most of the confusion about DMOZ. Certainly it directly led to my own misunderstanding of DMOZ' purpose. For instance, many web development and SEO sites still recommend submitting new sites to DMOZ as a way to improve SEO scores.

I will do what I can to help the rest of the web understand this.

Thanks again.