Concern with Gambling related categories

I would like to express my concern over the online gambling categories, and specifically http://www.dmoz.org/Games/Gambling/Guides/.

Over the last two years I have submitted about five sites for inclusion in this and other gambling related categories. Needless to say they were not included (else I would not be here posting this). Let me first say this. I accept that not everything will be good enough, even if I may think it is.

This industry probably has some of the worst affiliate website and spammy networks there is online. However, there seems to be little effort from the editors to add anything whatsover. I am familiar with about 70% of the sites in the above category, and in many cases I know who owns them.

My big concern is that there has been very, very few new sites added to this category for a year now. I find this hard to believe. There are many people like me trying deliver one thing: quality web experience and useful help for a user in a professional manner. The editor's don't seem to think so. My users do. My business partners do. My competitors even do - I am building some of their sites for them now.

I have been told on numerous occasions by different sources that you have absolutely no chance of getting into these categories, as they are "tighly controlled". Whatever that means?

I read the ODP charter and rules. I keep an eye on the said categories. One plus one in this cases equals zero.

I am, quite frankly, fed up with this situation. And please don't tell me its backlog. A friend of mine applied to become and editor of this group and was told "there are already more than enough editors". This is five months ago. There have since been about 4 or so additions from what I can see. They must be really busy.

Please tell me what to do to get reviewed. Clearly having a site that is obviously better than 50% of what is listed there is not good enough.

It seems to me that, because

This industry probably has some of the worst affiliate website and spammy networks there is online.

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that the editors have little interest in looking for the few new sites that might be added to the category.

Assuming that your sites are not part of the problem perhaps you might apply to become editor in a less-spam-ridden area (being sure to give the sites you worked on the affiliations section -- the new editor application asks for all your affiliations, not just those relevent to the category you are applying to), and work your way up to that area -- provided, of course, that you can give sites that you did not work on fair treatment.

As for your friend's editor application, the canned message which states "there are already more than enough editors" (actually, if I recall, it didn't say "more than"), also says "...or the category is too large for a new editor." In this case, please replace "too large" by "too spammy".

I am not one of the "Meta" editors who decides the fate of editor applications, but I suspect that was the "real" reason.

I have been told on numerous occasions by different sources that you have absolutely no chance of getting into these categories, as they are "tighly controlled". Whatever that means?

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That is spammer-speak for "those folks at DMOZ are on to our tricks and we can't get our spammy sites in there any more."

It does not mean that quality sites can no longer be listed.

stgeorge said:

There are many people like me trying deliver one thing: quality web experience and useful help for a user in a professional manner. The editor's don't seem to think so.

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(There shouldn't be an apostrophe in "editor's".) Looking back over your post, you may be misinterpreting what editors are looking for. I've listed a number of sites where the graphics were miserable and the navigation was difficult, but the useful help for users is there and accessible (with some persistance on the part of the user). I don't edit in Gambling (at the moment), but, in general, the keyword is unique content. What do you have that no one else has on the web.

there seems to be little effort from the editors to add anything whatsover

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Well... considering what you already know of the product, you can't blame the editors for nothing much being added in _this_ category. I regularly delete stuff submitted there, though. Does that tell you something?

I find this hard to believe.

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Believe it. I objected to the creation of the category in the first place, as did some other level-headed folks. It is such a spam magnet that it's (IMHO) unlikely that any submission will ever be seen as something other than a beautiful affiliate-linked directory.

Please do not interpret my post as a direct attack on the editors as such, but merely frustration with the process.

Unique content? I count about 5 sites there that have unique content. Snd that is being generous. As for the rest. Affiliate linked sites indeed.

I could well imagine that you feel inclined to delete all submissions as you must be receiving tons of them and the quality is probably poor.

It is very frustrating to work your butt off, look at the sites that are listed and six months down the line wonder why your site isn't being listed. I have full admiration for what the editors do, and what they are up against.

I just ask for a level playing field. Maybe DMOZ should drop the gambling listings. At least that would level the playing field, IMHO.

As for apostrophes, terribly sorry. English is not my first langauge. No problem being challenged for the content of my post though.

Regards

We are not thinking about "markets" and "playing fields". We are thinking of "editing effort" and "usefullness for our visitors". We are not thinking about "promoting websites", but about users finding a selected set of websites for a specific topic. It's not our goal to be fair to everybody, it never was. And it can't be, because due to the nature of a volunteer-edited project, editing time will always be limited.

While it is true that a category with all relevant companies for a topic would be better, we consider listing some of them better than listing none. In areas like this, listing all sites would mean lots and lots of work, digging through incredible large amounts of bullsh**, which no editor really wants to do. (And "Online Gambling" is an area we can't possibly accept new editors into. People often ask why, but I personally think this is to obvious to explain)

Why don't we like editing there? As you have seen the editors who try to do so might make mistakes, resulting in users ranting "why are so many affiliate sites listed". Additionally, sites change content, so what has been a good site when listing might as well be an affiliate site some months later. Which usually results in users ranting "why are so many affiliate sites listed".

How do I know all this? Been there, done that, got the accusations. As a Meta-Editor I processed lots and lots of abuse reports reading like "The editor MUST be an abuser!!! He listed site xyz which is so CLEARLY an affiliate site! Instantly remove him from the project or I will call the police!!!".

So if you know affiliate sites, use the apropriate thread in this forum to report them or - if you don't want to do it in public - use the ODP Public Abuse Report System. Be sure to include some information for the reviewing editor how to spot that the site in question is an affiliate, at least when it's not absolutely obvious. Don't make assumptions about the reasons an editor had for listing those sites, that's part of the Meta-Editor's "job-description".

Hi Windharp

Thank you for your post. That sheds some light on the matter.

Let me be frank. If you talk amongst the gambling community, there is a widespread belief that the DMOZ editors are actually affiliates themselves, protecting their own interests and that of their friends. This is probably due to the fact that very few people nowadays receive a listing. So all sorts of wild rumours start circulating.

I appreciate the responses in this thread.

Regards

Having looked at the categories again I would like to point out a couple of things. I randomly opened five sites and this is what I got:

http://www.americancasinoguide.com/Tips/gaming_tips.shtml
Spammy affiliate site. Content severly outdated.

http://www.everything-casino.com/
What is the purpose of this website? Bought a crappy $15 template. copyscape their content and tell me if you think they wrote it... Nice black on black text - google must love this one

http://www.smartvegas.com/
Site was last updated in April 2004. Users will love that.

http://www.startgamblingonline.com/
Looks good enough but nothing unique - I can show you, oh, another 400 like this one

http://www.vaslegas.com/
A downright embarrasment for the ODP as far as I am concerned. Value to a user = 0. If you're interested, I can show you where they stole their images and content.

I picked 5 sites at random. They are all of no use whatsoever. Sure there are some good ones in there: 4 Online Gambling, Wizard, got2bet. All top notch. But that goes for about 10% of this category.

I still don't get it. What does one need to do to get a site listed? If these guys can, I am still confused. Settle for mediocrity? I'd rather not. I assume the ODP can review, identify and list good useful sites.

6 months later - laughable

One site seem to have been added to the said category, and its again one that is of no use to anybody except gullible visitors who will click banners.

More than one site listed there actually doesn't work any longer. But they are still there.

We can now safely assume that DMOZ has not received a single request for a good gambling guide in more than a year, which must imply that no new sites of quality have been launched in the year, or at least in the eyes of the editors. So from that we can also assume that there is an entire community of webmasters who just deliver useless rubbish, day in day out.

No what DID all these rubbish sites do to get themselves listed? Shall I build a really low quality website and submit it. Will take me about 3 minutes to emulate 80% of the sites there.

Have a wonderful day.

If you would like to tell us which links are dead, someone will remove them.

I know nothing about gambling and I am no editor, so I did just a search for dead links on the category. I could find just one dead link, but I am not sure this has been in this condition for a long time. For the rest, while it's true most websites have a lot of banners, they also have subsections with content about game rules, most famous casinos, etc.etc.

stgeorge,

I think I can understand a bit how you feel about lousy gambling sites. Many of the ones that are listed probably do have worthless information in them, but from what I have come to realize is that for a dmoz listing, sites don't necessarily have to have correct info within. The criteria for listing are usually described as having to be unique or original, but that doesn't equate to accuracy of content. It's not the editors' job here to evaluate content; very few editors are qualified to do so anyway in the manner of a magazine or newspaper editor.

I remember the days when I played serious blackjack and had to rely on the printed word to find any useful information. As you can imagine, it was practically a full time job just ferreting out the real story. (I eventally did due to the truly great legitimate sources like Wong, Snyder, Griffin and even Uston). But at least 95% of books on the market then were worthless and still are I suspect. Unfortunately, many of the authors I rejected then now have their own websites and indeed are listed in the ODP. I doubt if anything can or will be done about that; it's always been up to the reader to wade through the chaff no matter the source be it in the form of print or websites.

So I wish you good luck, but don't blame editors here too much for listing sites that don't meet your personal standards for accuracy - that's just not their job. Editors do their best to list sites according to the publically available guidelines, and in the process sites that you and I would reject in a microsecond will still get their day in the ODP.

I will have to agree - this part of DOMZ is disgusting!

I have acouple of websites related, but after years of submissions they all returned with "you have affiliate links" response, before you guys stop tracking submissions.

Whoever the editors are - should be moved to a different cathegory. Have you looked at "Winneronline" or "GamblingOnlineMagazine"?!? Just go and take a look - nothing but flashy banners all over the websites.
Good God, fire those editors, couse they probably got paid (trust me, it's a very good business).
The only reason people (and I ) submit in DMOZ is to bump their Google ranking, period. Nobody visits your directory as a sorce of information - why would you browse through 10 links to get to a cathegory when you can simply google what you are looking for and get a response in less then a second? And you guys know that your basic existance is based on Google, otherwise you'd have "no-follow" tags on the links

Welcome to planet earth, ODPforall. In this reality, the ODP came before Google. There are still many people who remember back five years or so: you could learn a lot by listening to them.

No Sir, you will have to come to earth - your project gets 95 % of the traffic from webmasters - Wiki is WAY ahead of you as far ranking is concerned.
Everybody knows that your goal is not to provide the user with relevant information - you have no unique content, just links to websites, period(therefore I understand that Wiki is not a competitor in a sence).

Me, as a Internet user first, and maybe almost all of the Internet users in the world, I will go for information:

a). On Wiki if I want to get term-specific info, dictionary style.
b). Google/Yahoo/MSN if I needed LINKS TO WEBSITES for a specific interest of mine.

Your project, although good as an idea, and working in the past, is SOOO outdated and made obsolite by any search engine. The simple fact that you base your listings on 1 person's opinion makes you useless to most users.

Anyhow, I got way to distracted because of your "grasp for air" response.

My main point was that DMOZ now serves the only purpose of boosting Google rankings, and dont blame me for being the only one who has the balls to say it. If you ask any webmaster if they would rather be on DMOZ or Google...well, you know the answer to this one :icon_idea

I like to use DMOZ for getting an overview over different sites on a certain matter. If I need a certain information right away I use search engines like Google and MSN.

Sachti said:

I like to use DMOZ for getting an overview over different sites on a certain matter. If I need a certain information right away I use search engines like Google and MSN.

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Basically, you are using DMOZ to get a general idea of how the veterans decide what to list in a cathegory before you do it on your own?

Otherwise Google is as good in giving an overview over different sites on a certain matter - you can have 100 results at a time on a Google search page...

Did you come here for any other reason than to kvetch? It would appear not so I'm closing this.