Category Backlogs, Editor Numbers and Nonuniqueness Fractions

After browsing through some of the discussions here, some of which were amusingly fraught on both editors' and submitters' sides, I notice that the major reason for the delays in submission acceptance or rejection--and therefore in submitter frustration--is simply that of backlogs.

Wouldn't it help calm things a bit if each category listed its backlog, number of editors involved, and a running fraction of submissions rejected for nonuniqueness? (Subcategories without their own editors should simply copy the numbers of the first category above them.)

I searched this forum and saw somewhat surprisingly no discussion of such easy feature, which surely might help a little all around, especially with links beside or even incorporating the three numbers to explanations thereof.

JDK

I'm not sure what help that would provide. If we tell you that category abc has a backlog of three sites waiting, maybe that makes you feel good. But not if in reality that there is nobody dealing with that backlog of 3 sites. that may end up waiting a year.

And if you look at that category and see an editor name - maybe that makes you feel there is someone working on it, but not if that person, though normally a busy editor, has gone on vaction for three months and won't be doing much editing.

Then I tell you that category def has a backlog of 1000 sites, and has no named editor. You feel that nothing will get reviewed there. But if I tell you that an editor [though not named there] is working on that category and 90% of the sites there are misplaced, and will be moved somewhere else, and that work will be done in a week - leaving very few sites to be reviewed.

What figure would "number of editors involved" be, what would it mean? Do you want the total number of different editors who edited in that categroy ever - for the last year, for the last month? Again, what does this tell you?

Copying number from categories above is totally meaningless. I edit some areas where there is no backlog - while the categrory above is totally backlogged. And those categories [where I have no backlog] "have no editors" - showing that you have a very basic misconception that having an editor name on a categroy has some meaning. I edit in hundreds of categories, and am only the named editor in a few of them.

The problem is that what happens at ODP is way more complicated than the number of sites "backlogged". Providing these numbers if anything just encourages people to submit their sites to the wrong category where the backlog is lower.

Remember it's a very dynamic place, and a category that totally backlogged can change at any time, as editors move around and decide to work on different things.

The only figure I would like to see, is the number of sites rejected from a categorry and moved/delayed because they were submitted to the wrong category. Maybe that would reduce some misplaced submissions, but I doubt it.

<calmly>

The objective of all that I suggested is to depress submitters with the facts from the first (and indeed the figures would probably be generally inflated somewhat against the submitters' favor, helping in that noble cause), which should help induce a submitter fatalism which should generally in turn result in a general cutting of the editors a little more slack.

As for your moved-due-to-miscategorization number, well, there's number number four (another percentage), and no doubt an enlightening one at that.

JDK

Numbers of "edits done" or "submissions waiting" have been discussed over and over again, no need to do it once again. See previous forum threads on this topic. The main reasons not to have any statistics about editor activity available to the public as I see them:

- Submission of sites should not be done regarding "Where are few sites" or "where is review time shortet" but according to topic. And only according to topic. And we all know, people would not do that once they know the stats, do we?

- How much a specific editor does per month is his own judgement. Different editors may edit in the same category, but to the poublic a category with 10 edits per month and a listed editor looks like "editor xyz did 10 edits in that category". We consider it the editory privacy not to publish such information.


Now to the other two ideas:

"Editors involved" - The number of editors who touched a specific category does not say anything about the state of the category or processing speed. I for example fixed a recent bug that occurred in a conversion process and touched lots of categories for it. Another example is that "This category in alternative languages" links are often changed by editors with higher permissions, which does nothing to the entries. Every now and then our linkchecker flags some sites as "down", and editors who have no further interest in the category pass by to look after the sites. (and so on, and so on). Just listing editors who have access to a specific is not very usefull, too - there are hundreds with access to all categories and lots with high level access.


As you and bobrat, I like the idea of knowing percentages of "moved/rejected/..." sites. But I see the possibility that this influenced decisions where to submit sites, so I personally would vote that this would be "editor only" numbers.

I appreciate both your remarks, not to mention experience.

I caught a mention in one thread somewhere around here--I've been reading some of the "hot" submission threads--that indeed at least at one time there were submissions figures supplied in the directory for the various categories, so I inferred from that that this very discussion and a lot more went down at the time that feature was discontinued.

A history of the ODP and its policies, features, triumphs and debacles (surely there's been at least one good one) is obviously another task waiting for volunteers . . . .

Thanks again.

JDK