A
artson
>>It is a community of sorts, with a stated purpose; and all members of that community work toward a common goal.
Yes it is a community and it is also something else. It is an enormous resource for the internet and those who use the internet. Its presence is felt everywhere and the fruits of the labours of all those editors provides a lot of potential energy, just like water behind a dam.
What is happening is that unscrupulous folks are feeding on that resource and polluting it with spam, which degrades the performance of the editorial crew. Each spammy submission, mirror, affiliate or duplicate wastes some of an editor's time and they have less time to do the job of writing descriptions and classifying web sites. One individual spammy submission isn't that bad, but the numbers soon become overwhelming - see The Tragedy of the Commons .
The solution for the Open Directory and for everyone else is that each editor must be vigilant in disposing of spam, mirrors and affiliates.
For my own part, I've found a nifty way to clip the feathers of abusive Real Estate submitters. I simply explain to them that the ODP is a valuable resource to all realtors in the province and if they continue to submit duplicate sites or otherwise attempt to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, I'll report them to the provincial real estate board as a nuisance. I doubt that the provincial real estate board would know or care, but the mere mention of it seems to do the trick. <img src="/images/icons/cool.gif" alt="" />
Yes it is a community and it is also something else. It is an enormous resource for the internet and those who use the internet. Its presence is felt everywhere and the fruits of the labours of all those editors provides a lot of potential energy, just like water behind a dam.
What is happening is that unscrupulous folks are feeding on that resource and polluting it with spam, which degrades the performance of the editorial crew. Each spammy submission, mirror, affiliate or duplicate wastes some of an editor's time and they have less time to do the job of writing descriptions and classifying web sites. One individual spammy submission isn't that bad, but the numbers soon become overwhelming - see The Tragedy of the Commons .
The solution for the Open Directory and for everyone else is that each editor must be vigilant in disposing of spam, mirrors and affiliates.
For my own part, I've found a nifty way to clip the feathers of abusive Real Estate submitters. I simply explain to them that the ODP is a valuable resource to all realtors in the province and if they continue to submit duplicate sites or otherwise attempt to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, I'll report them to the provincial real estate board as a nuisance. I doubt that the provincial real estate board would know or care, but the mere mention of it seems to do the trick. <img src="/images/icons/cool.gif" alt="" />