Closed Directory Project

I'm writing to express some frustration with the lack of transparency with the dmoz project. Transparency is the opposite of opacity, and in this context means that information regarding internal processes and procedures is available to people outside the organization.

Right now, it seems that if the incense doesn't blow in just the right direction, your site isn't getting added into DMOZ. "Try another directory" will no doubt be the response.

Some statistics I'd like to see:
* Elapsed time between a site's submission and inclusion
* Each editor's hours per week logged in
* Instantaneous and moving average of elapsed time in each editor's queue
* Approval/rejection percentages, by editor
* Status of submission request (i.e. your approval is currently on step 4 of 6, you submitted the site 103 days ago)
* Status of request to become an editor (i.e. 4 people have approved your request, 4 have not yet reviewed your request)

In the spirit of making the internet better, I'll *write* this software for you. I'll even turn over the source code, and you can put it on the DMOZ download page, right next to the link to download the DMOZ.org website software. All I need is access to the various databases/log files.

Thanks!

+Steve

Dmoz has plenty of publicly available information, including http://dmoz.org/guidelines and http://dmoz.org/help/helpmain.html , which should provide some interesting reading for you.

My personal view on your various questions:

1) Varys between approximately ten minutes and two years
2) Editors are volunteers and are not required to make more than one edit every four months, many make hundreds every week. Those who make hundreds every week are generally doing so in a much broader range of categories than those who make one every month or so, but dmoz considers every edit to be a valuable edit, so long as the editor is editing objectively and within the scope of the guidelines.
3) Each editor has multiple queues and each queue has multiple editors
4) Some editors like deleting spam (I do), some editors like finding sites themselves to list, some editors like approving new editor applications - so that information doesn't tell you a lot
5) There are only two steps in the ideal submission process - a) you submit to the correct category, b) an editor chooses to list or reject your site. If you submit to the wrong category then you may add in a part 2) an editor moves your site to the correct category. You should already know when you submitted the site.
6) Again, a single editor approval/rejection is (usually) made by a single meta editor.

What would be more useful than a list of tasks is an explanation of why you feel this information would be particularly helpful - perhaps the information you want is available and you haven't seen it yet or maybe there are elements of the workings of dmoz that you don't quite understand correctly.

Hope that helps a bit at least.

In the spirit of making the internet better, I'll *write* this software for you.

Click to expand...

Good luck with recruiting volunteer editors... Again that notion that ODP editors swore to be slaves, and committed themselves to list any submitted site

It has already been said here ad nauseam, but here you go once more:

* Volunteers are not paid, they do only the amount of work they are willing to do, or have free time for.

* The only commitment they make is to edit according to the Editing Guidelines.

* An ODP category can be built from the submissions, but also from sites actively searched for by an editor. Some sites will never be added.

Some - maybe most - of what you want would be impossible to accurately track. Other details are not likely to be shared as they are along the lines of violating editor confidentiality.

You don't understand what the "open" in ODP means.

Some statistics I'd like to see:
* Elapsed time between a site's submission and inclusion
Some areas of the directory have lots of submissions and few editors, others have few submissions and lots of editors. Some editors log in every day, others once per month. Knowing how long anything took to happen last time is no indication as to what might happen next.
* Each editor's hours per week logged in
People do what they want to do. There is no pressure to do any more. The ODP would rather have an editor that added one site per month, than no editor, and therefore zero added per month.
* Instantaneous and moving average of elapsed time in each editor's queue
Really no point - see above.
* Approval/rejection percentages, by editor
I know of one editor who scans the whole site looking for duplicate submssions and useless affiliate crap. His rejection rate is probably 99.999% and he does 10 times as much editing as your "average" (whatever that means) editor does. He is a very good editor. I know of someone else who accepted 100% of sites, oh, and he has done 20 edits in 8 months.
* Status of submission request (i.e. your approval is currently on step 4 of 6, you submitted the site 103 days ago)
You get that response by asking in the forums. Previous threads in this forum give many reasons why editors are not that keen on automated reporting, not least of which letting spammers know exactly which submissions have been rejected, and when.
* Status of request to become an editor (i.e. 4 people have approved your request, 4 have not yet reviewed your request)
You get email to say application is in the queue. You usually get email after review with accept or reject note.

I don't see how any of the suggestions would improve the ODP in any way. The directory adds at least 3000 new sites every day. It is heading in the direction already agreed by editor concnsus.

Status of submission request (i.e. your approval is currently on step 4 of 6, you submitted the site 103 days ago)

Click to expand...

Yes we could tell you you submitted that site 103 days ago. But we assume you kept a record of when you submirted, so why bother. [Of course seeing the many posts here that people forget when they submitted and to which category, we should think again .... but our job is not to help those with lack or organization]

The rest is meaningless, step what of what, there are no steps. There are x number sites waiting to be looked at in a category, each editor handles them in a different way. I even handle the heap of submissions differently based on different categories. So if I tell you there are 567 sites waiting in your chosen category, it does not help you, maybe you will end up the first to be edited, maybe the last. As indicated many hundreds of times in the forum, the "position" in the "queue" is not a meaningful number.

And I'm not about to let someone know I just refused to accept their site. I get too many annoying complaints already about not putting a chosen word into a description.

I think that increased transparency related to the submission process might be beneficial to the directory as a whole.

Regarding the specific points of the post, it strikes me that this is probably just a troll. Either that or the author is insane.

<added>
Not trying to get personal here, but seriously, there is no organization that operates with anywhere close to the level of transparency you are describing. Please, give me a single example of an organization with an analogous level of transparency. The implementation of the described ideas would doubtless cause nearly every editor to quit. Imagine how long it would take to get a listing if there were no editors.
</added>

In my opinion more 'transparency' would cause even more confusion. It is already transparent enough for me and even now some people still get confused - never mind the fact that most of the answers are already within the guidelines or FAQ.

I suppose 'more' transparency would be an idea if the ODP was here to 'serve' the submitters or was a PLC. Contrary to popular belief the ODP is not a business promotion tool that every website owner is entitled too and within a given period.

Yes - submissions are very welcome - but they are far from the only way the directory grows and dealing with submissions are not the sole task of editors! These sort of figures would snub the editor who has spent weeks cleaning up a 10,000 site tree by getting rid of the dead, duplicate and hijacked sites.

And then what of the editors who spend hours assisting the submitters in this forum and then providing hours of support to other editors?