Deleting Sites with Mirrors? (policy question)

2 quick questions, as odp is only listing unique quality sites,

-is there a policy in place, deleting those sites that have one or more mirror sites exposed to the public? (not talking about the one listed in odp)

-how about sites containing half a page and more stuffed with hidden text/keywords?

Re #1993

-is there a policy in place, deleting those sites that have one or more mirror sites exposed to the public? (not talking about the one listed in odp)

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If a site is listed more than once*, or if more than one mirror is listed, we want to know about it. In some cases I have listed different mirrors in Regional and in Shopping, because of the way the site is set up -- listings would have been, even if it were the same URL, but the navigation from the in-store catalog to internet ordering is difficult.

*Some sites may be listed in a Regional and in a Topical (non-Regional) category; sites may be listed in each language for which there is unique content which is not automatically translated; Kids & Teens and Adult have separate rules, etc.

If only one of the mirrors is listed, you may mention it to an editor, for internal notes, in case those sites are likely to be suggested by the webmaster, a surfer, or a less-observant editor, but I'm not sure this is the place for it.

-how about sites containing half a page and more stuffed with hidden text/keywords?

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The present policy is that we don't care about hidden text or keywords, as they only affect robots. Invisible links may be a problem, as the surfer might "accidentally" click on them -- especialy invisible links to porn . If the site doesn't have unique visible text, the information that it also has spamming invisible text doesn't matter.

I should add that this is my interpretation of the guidelines, and that I don't speak for DMOZ as a whole.

Mat1 said:

-is there a policy in place, deleting those sites that have one or more mirror sites exposed to the public? (not talking about the one listed in odp)

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In general no, we are not worried about sites that have mirrors which are not listed in the ODP. Site owners are perfectly entitled to duplicate or spread their content as they wish. But we ask people not to submit mirror sites. If they persist in doing so, all the sites of that webmaster might be removed or blocked. See http://dmoz.org/add.html .

In fact, I remember that when I was still an editor I reported some mirror sites close to the category I was editing, and those were removed. The problem is often caused not by the editor not reviewing the content with the needed attention, but also by issues like domain expiration. There was this website who had bought three-four expired domains listed in dmoz.org and also in the yahoo directory; he then had put there copies of his original website, exact same content, with just a couple of minor changes in the layout.

This has recently gotten worse, much worse - at that time, while wrong, unfair, etc.etc., at least this guy was copying a website that was relevant to that category; now there are companies using robots that just wait for a domain present in directories and search engines to expire to buy it and redirect it to their "homepages". Needless to say, these are often just filled with spam, porn, or worse, and are used to mess up search engines rankings.

What you say is true: but those sites aren't generally listable anyway, so it really doesn't matter WHY you remove them, if only you do it quickly.