ODP has no commercial imperatives - other directories, where the webmaster/submitter is the customer have and they would have an interest in ensuring submissions are dealt with promptly or they lose money and customers. ODP may have an end product that looks the same but the underlying model is completely different.
Complaint [split from ODP editors are so slow]
- Thread starter Alex75
- Start date
>commercial imperatives will force the submissions system to change or to go, perhaps along with the current system of volunteering.
Change is always possible, and commercial pressures might well have an impact. I think the Marxist ideologues overestimate the extent to which commerce controls humans. But insofar as commercial pressure forces change, I'd agree with Marx this far: WHATEVER CHANGE WAS FORCED, WOULD BE TOWARDS A SYSTEM MORE RESISTANT TO COMMERCIAL PRESSURE.
And, once you start thinking about how that change might work out in this particular niche, you'd realize: IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED ONCE, AND THE ODP IS THE RESULT.
I remember when every portal and search engine had its own directory, built by its own hirelings. Yahoo! was the pattern, but frankly, none of the imitations came close to matching it -- and yet attempt it they must do, or be less than a REAL portal.
OBVIOUSLY, two things are going to happen: (1) Portals are going to start pooling efforts, and presto! appears as if by magic but really impelled by commercial pressure -- Looksmart, Zeal, NewHoo! (And, just to remind the greybeards among us, many other similar efforts started, just in case these stumbled.) and (2) people are going to start looking for non-commercial motivations -- and so go Zeal and NewHoo.
The obvious winning combinations in this all included: (1) take commercial considerations out of the picture by using volunteers, (2) push commercial considerations downstream by allowing customers (that means HOSTING USERS, not webmasters, in case anyone has forgotten!) to add ads (or whatever floats their nest eggs) (3) Circumvent commercial pressures by harnessing other sources of human motivations: such as community, public service, challenges, curiosity -- thus avoiding the horrific commercial overhead of the traditional hierarchical management, which in many organized systems may absorb the majority of all income.
So it is no accident that the ODP is relatively immune to commercial pressure -- it is the most successful of all the attempts to create something that WAS immune to the commercial pressures that had crippled previous efforts to build something like this.
That's humanity for you: don't give up, work around the problem, even if the problem is malicious humans. There's nothing unique about THIS niche. In computer operating systems, Microsoft's criminally monopolistic behavior and commercial predation has resulted in a whole new breed of programming projects relatively immune to predatory price-fixing: open-source projects such as Linux, Mozilla, Apache, OpenOffice. In media distribution, every attempt by the RIAA pigopolists to shut down any alternative music distribution system (mostly by litigational harassment) has resulted in new systems more resilient to single-point failures, and therefore harder to use legal thuggery against. And "self-published" (samizdat) literature thrived under the most brutally and violently repressive dictator of the mid-twentieth century.
Other pressures, other changes, are certain. But it's the pay-for-quick-review, pay-for-inclusion, pay-for-click directories that are constantly sliding down the knife-edge between economic collapse and descent into ad-farm irrelevance. That's one direction it's obvious the ODP won't go!
Change is always possible, and commercial pressures might well have an impact. I think the Marxist ideologues overestimate the extent to which commerce controls humans. But insofar as commercial pressure forces change, I'd agree with Marx this far: WHATEVER CHANGE WAS FORCED, WOULD BE TOWARDS A SYSTEM MORE RESISTANT TO COMMERCIAL PRESSURE.
And, once you start thinking about how that change might work out in this particular niche, you'd realize: IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED ONCE, AND THE ODP IS THE RESULT.
I remember when every portal and search engine had its own directory, built by its own hirelings. Yahoo! was the pattern, but frankly, none of the imitations came close to matching it -- and yet attempt it they must do, or be less than a REAL portal.
OBVIOUSLY, two things are going to happen: (1) Portals are going to start pooling efforts, and presto! appears as if by magic but really impelled by commercial pressure -- Looksmart, Zeal, NewHoo! (And, just to remind the greybeards among us, many other similar efforts started, just in case these stumbled.) and (2) people are going to start looking for non-commercial motivations -- and so go Zeal and NewHoo.
The obvious winning combinations in this all included: (1) take commercial considerations out of the picture by using volunteers, (2) push commercial considerations downstream by allowing customers (that means HOSTING USERS, not webmasters, in case anyone has forgotten!) to add ads (or whatever floats their nest eggs) (3) Circumvent commercial pressures by harnessing other sources of human motivations: such as community, public service, challenges, curiosity -- thus avoiding the horrific commercial overhead of the traditional hierarchical management, which in many organized systems may absorb the majority of all income.
So it is no accident that the ODP is relatively immune to commercial pressure -- it is the most successful of all the attempts to create something that WAS immune to the commercial pressures that had crippled previous efforts to build something like this.
That's humanity for you: don't give up, work around the problem, even if the problem is malicious humans. There's nothing unique about THIS niche. In computer operating systems, Microsoft's criminally monopolistic behavior and commercial predation has resulted in a whole new breed of programming projects relatively immune to predatory price-fixing: open-source projects such as Linux, Mozilla, Apache, OpenOffice. In media distribution, every attempt by the RIAA pigopolists to shut down any alternative music distribution system (mostly by litigational harassment) has resulted in new systems more resilient to single-point failures, and therefore harder to use legal thuggery against. And "self-published" (samizdat) literature thrived under the most brutally and violently repressive dictator of the mid-twentieth century.
Other pressures, other changes, are certain. But it's the pay-for-quick-review, pay-for-inclusion, pay-for-click directories that are constantly sliding down the knife-edge between economic collapse and descent into ad-farm irrelevance. That's one direction it's obvious the ODP won't go!
Monayuki, Happy New Year to you. No need to be scared by my "senseful" wit. Goodwill to all men and all that.monayuki said:
Ah, the commonest phrase to provoke anger. I'm not angry at all, and wont fall for it.monayuki said:
Thanks, but I only know little.monayuki said:
Another provocation. I use stuff from Africa, thank you very much. It seems to work much better. It calms me by keeping my head coolly focussed on the subject matter rather than let it stray into personal confrontation.monayuki said:try Feng-shui to calm yourself.
As I said before, we seem to have exhausted the ODP subject proper. The mantle of thread-starter was thrust upon me; I owe it to you to let you know this will be my last word in this thread. Thanks for your contributions.
>> It might not be the ODP's priority, but a huge backlog of site submissions will soon give the ODP a reputation. Don't underestimate the power of negative perception. <<
A reputation like "only lists the best sites", or "rejects spam and schemes", we will willingly accept; and ask you to broadcast it to every webmaster you know, and ask them to tell everyone they know too.
There is no concept of a "backlog". Every site not included in the public listings is a candidate for being reviewed and included irrespective of whether anyone every suggested it to the ODP or not. The date it was suggested is also irrelevant.
Anyone can suggest any site at any time, and editors suggest and list sites all the time. You could look at the editors as being "trusted suggesters" - they get to suggest and edit in one move. Everyone else gets to put their suggestion into a list - one list per category - that an editor can look at when they take an interest in, and then access, a category to do further work on it.
Editors are specifically not "queue processors for other people's suggestions", having to work in some specified order, but can take those suggestions and use them, or not use them, as they see fit. If a suggestion isn't used at any particular time then it remains in the unreviewed pile until someone else takes an interest in it.
Spam and unlistable stuff will be deleted as it is spotted, and wrongly suggested sites can be moved to the unreviewed part of another category at any time, and wait there until an editor takes an interest in building that particular category up.
A reputation like "only lists the best sites", or "rejects spam and schemes", we will willingly accept; and ask you to broadcast it to every webmaster you know, and ask them to tell everyone they know too.
There is no concept of a "backlog". Every site not included in the public listings is a candidate for being reviewed and included irrespective of whether anyone every suggested it to the ODP or not. The date it was suggested is also irrelevant.
Anyone can suggest any site at any time, and editors suggest and list sites all the time. You could look at the editors as being "trusted suggesters" - they get to suggest and edit in one move. Everyone else gets to put their suggestion into a list - one list per category - that an editor can look at when they take an interest in, and then access, a category to do further work on it.
Editors are specifically not "queue processors for other people's suggestions", having to work in some specified order, but can take those suggestions and use them, or not use them, as they see fit. If a suggestion isn't used at any particular time then it remains in the unreviewed pile until someone else takes an interest in it.
Spam and unlistable stuff will be deleted as it is spotted, and wrongly suggested sites can be moved to the unreviewed part of another category at any time, and wait there until an editor takes an interest in building that particular category up.
I feel your pain...
Alex, I know what it's like. I have waited over two years to get listed. In my opinion, the editors waste their time writing lengthy and mostly oxymoronic replies instead of actually reviewing submissions while sites with crusty content are already listed in DMOZ.
Alex, I know what it's like. I have waited over two years to get listed. In my opinion, the editors waste their time writing lengthy and mostly oxymoronic replies instead of actually reviewing submissions while sites with crusty content are already listed in DMOZ.
I agree with PMojo, and said so at the start of this thread.
- Joined
- Oct 8, 2002
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- 10,093
jdaw1, as an ex editor you should know better.
That thread you started was seen a a good joke. After your last post I´m not so sure you meant it to be a joke.
PMOjo´s problem is cuased by the fact that he doesn´t understand what ODP is about.
DMOZ is not a listing service. And by so suggested sites are nothing more than that. Just one of many possibilities for editors to find sites worth listing. And we all know it certainly isn´t the best source. For that reason DMOZ editors don´t care about how long ago a suggestion might be made.
And as a volunteer editor I decide myself how to waste my time.
That thread you started was seen a a good joke. After your last post I´m not so sure you meant it to be a joke.
PMOjo´s problem is cuased by the fact that he doesn´t understand what ODP is about.
DMOZ is not a listing service. And by so suggested sites are nothing more than that. Just one of many possibilities for editors to find sites worth listing. And we all know it certainly isn´t the best source. For that reason DMOZ editors don´t care about how long ago a suggestion might be made.
And as a volunteer editor I decide myself how to waste my time.
thanks jdaw1...
just look at hutcheson's comment.
i think i clearly stated my opinion while he/she brings up something completely irrelevant like differences b/w editors and non editors. what does it matter in the big picture.
perhaps they should just stick to reviewing the sites and stop trying to write (what they think are) witty comments.
just look at hutcheson's comment.
i think i clearly stated my opinion while he/she brings up something completely irrelevant like differences b/w editors and non editors. what does it matter in the big picture.
perhaps they should just stick to reviewing the sites
and stop trying to write (what they think are) witty comments.What we do with our time is no one's business but our own. If today I feel like spending 0 minutes editing, 10 minutes posting here, and the rest of my time doing stuff completely unrelated to the ODP, your site, or the Internet in general, so what? How I spend my time isn't your concern. And, let's face, however much or little editing I do is more than most people on the planet are doing so yay for me (that was the crux of hutcheson's post, BTW). You're also presuming that editors who post here are doing so at the expense of editing they could be doing and that would be incorrect.
spectregunner
Member
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- Jan 23, 2003
- Messages
- 8,768
Motsa is so correct in this that it almost hurts!
I log onto the web from a variety of places throughout the day, but there is only one place I edit from: my home computer.
The answer is simple: dual monitors. I find it exceptionally cumbersome to edit while using a single monitor. Why am I telling you this? Because it is but one reason why a person would participate here while not taking away from their wilingness to edit.
And, addressing this to no one in particular, what we often see in this forum is projection.
Visitor A, upon becoming an editor, would immediately mess with his competitor's listings, so Visitor A proejcts that all real editors would do the same.
Visitor B, who believes that the ODP should be a listing service, projects that all editors not handing submissions/suggestions in unethical/lazy/incompetent.
Visitor C, who has no real understanding of how our proejct works, but knows how to keep the pople in his company in line, projects that we should immediately fire any editor who does not meet an artifically-set number of edit.
Visitor D, who is into group hugs and kumbayah, projects that and editor who gives a plain-spoken answer is being "mean".
Visitor E, who never read the submission guidelines, and never read the on-screen acknowledgement that the system generates, projects that we lack customer service skills because we did not send a personalized e-mail.
Visitor F, who is a big deal within his/her company, projects that we are in grave need of his/her management and visionary skills, and proceeds to tell us what is wrong wih the project -- without bothering to understand what we are and what we don't.
And the projection goes on and on and on....very day in different ways.