Are more editors needed?

Hi. Over the years I've considered becoming an editor, but never felt I had a good reason until now. Somehow it always seemed that there were plenty of folks clamoring to become editors. Anyway, my question - are you actually in need of more editors? The category I am looking at is at http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Recreation/Science_and_Nature/ .

I thought of posting over in this forum about a month ago when I felt I had waited quite a while for my site to be reviewed. At that time I was told that I was on some sort of "short list" of sites. Given that was four weeks ago, if you need folks to look over sites, I can do this. On the other hand, I am not interested in wasting my time on an application if there really are plenty of people in the category.

Thank you for any and all informational responses.

To help determine a category, read the FAQ and General Advice 'Sticky' at the top of this forum.

Go to the parent category of the one you are interested in so that you can get an approximate total of the number of sites in the category. In this case the category appears to have about 450 sites.

>Are more editors needed?

That question is hard to answer: in a couple of subtle ways it has "have you stopped beating your wife?" - like presuppositions.

1) We do want more editors, and appreciate people who are willing to try their hand at this task. Some find it tiresome and thankless; others, addicting and rewarding. Your mileage may vary, and you may not be able to predict which way you will feel -- we certainly can't.

2) Many people are clamoring to get "in", truly. If someone seems to show good skills and motives, we generally give them a try. (Some of the clamorers have evidently bad motives or weak skills; but the critical issue is, they haven't offered convincing evidence of _good_ skills and motives.)
3) We don't "need" any editor -- new or experienced. The ODP can survive well without you or me. But if you have an acute sense of the ODP's shortcomings, and burning desire to take the actions required to alleviate them, you're a good candidate for an editor, and I'd love to see you working on it.

4) We don't need anyone to "review submitted sites." That's a much too narrow vision, and leads to fatally flawed editing biasses. We DO need people to "build the directory" making effective and balanced use of any and all resources they have: personal knowledge, printed sources, searches, reviewing other link lists, ... and ... yes, even submitted sites.
It boils down to: more good editors would be better than fewer good editors, but more bad editors would not.

We'd like to try you out, and vice versa. Pick a smallish category that needs help, find three good examples of the help you can give (and be prepared to do a dozen or two more edits in that and related categories).

I would _consider_ accepting someone for a 450-site category, but it's probalby a good idea for you to try for a subcategory of the one you mention. It wouldn't take a lot for someone to "work up" to that larger category if you're demonstrating that you understand and can edit by the guidelines.

I would like to add that there are many, many, many helpful editors and programs to make an editing experience easier. Not to mention the comaradarie of fellow editors from around the globe.

If accepted, you might feel a bit overwhelmed at first, but it isn't as bad as it seems. [Other than what looks like a myriad of reading.]

Don't feel or fear that you will be alone, that isn't the case. Whenever assistance is needed/wanted, it is readily available.

I'm sure it wasn't intended to be offensive. He gave you some really excellent advice in that post as did everyone else.

I quoted that merely as the classic textbook example of a question with embedded presupposition. There was no intentional personal referent.