Any chance you guys might...

Just wondering if there is any chance you guys (and gals) might put up a search page where the public can check on the status of their site submissions?

Maybe show us something like:

1. Status: Pending
2. Position: 4 billion sites ahead of you.



I know you guys are busy...AND you are working for free. But if you had something the public can use to check the status, it would free up some valuable time. Just a thought. Keep on trucking.

Thanks for the effort.

Robert

rcarr said:

Just wondering if there is any chance you guys (and gals) might put up a search page where the public can check on the status of their site submissions?

Click to expand...

No. We can see a lot of benefit to the spammers, who could tell how quickly we detect their spam, but not much benefit to the honest submitters.

Yeah, I guess it always comes down to the spammers screwing it up for everyone else.

I had a feeling it was too obvious a solution.

arubin said:

We can see a lot of benefit to the spammers

Click to expand...

Not really, well it requires some coding, but a password protection or e-mail submission solves the spam problem.

password protection or e-mail submission solves the spam problem

Click to expand...

What? Spammers don't know how to use e-mail or passwords?

And even if we could give you the "Status: Pending" part, you'd never get the "Position: 4 billion sites ahead of you." - for the simple reason that we don't have a precise order for the submissions.

We can sort the sites submitted, but we can do so in a variety of ways. We don't when someone is going to work on a category or group of categories next. We don't know how they are going to tackle it. We don't know which subcategories will be dealt with first, etc. There are just too many variables. We don't know the information, no computer can calculate it, and so of course, we can't tell anyone - spammer, editor, or administrator.

sole said:

What? Spammers don't know how to use e-mail or passwords?

Click to expand...

In a technical arena there is always a technical solution; otherwise it is better to shut down Dmoz, Google and Internet.

In a technical arena there is always a technical solution; otherwise it is better to shut down Dmoz, Google and Internet.

Click to expand...

Well then we'd better shut down the Internet because no technical solution has stopped spammers yet.

The issue is not whether there is a technical solution or not; it is a policy issue.

After extensive internal and external deliberation, we have made a policy decision that any type of automated status checking creates more problems than it solves.

This issue gets brought up monthly/weekly/daily in both internal and external discussion forums. Instead of an automated system, you get the R-Z and all of us nice, personable editors. Now what could possibly be better than that?

There is no technical problem There is the social (not technical, never technical!) issue that the audience we are trying to attract is put off by painful, technically unnecessary mickey-mouse form-filling, and bitterly offended by the obvious lack of trust such things imply ("If I want to do something good, I'll go where they obviously expect to meet well-meaning people!"): while the people we are trying to repel are deceitful, highly motivated, and malicious. The same interventions that turn off honest people only challenge them ("look how many obstacles I got past to put in my spam") or even justify them ("I can't be spamming, look at all the anti-spamming techniques I complied with!")

From this perspective, it's obvious that it's not a technical problem, but exactly the reverse: it is an ethical and social problem. And the answer to that is altogether different. A sufficiently large cooperative organization can survive and accomplish goals even in the face of massive damage by saboteurs driven only by nihilistic rage or personal greed: so the solution is to build the editing community.

And to think I started this thread to suggest a way to improve productivity.



Sorry guys. Didn't mean to cause you to debate the merits of my suggestion.

BTW, is there anything short of being an editor I can do to help out around here?

Robert

If you have categories that you are interested in, try visiting the sites and see if they are still relevant to the category. Leave feedback in http://resource-zone.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5453 so that an editor can check it out. We don't always have the time to revisit sites to make sure they haven't been hijacked, changed content, etc.

I can do that. As a matter of fact, I can do that right now!

Thanks for the reply here as well.