Deleting websites and a Junk Category

1. What about a delete link similiar to a submit link?

It would be good if people could also vote websites out of a directory....

2. What about introducing a link farm or junk site category where bad websites are listed? This way other search engines could use this information to rank those sites down.

Would be interested to hear from thoughts about that, especially of the some early DMOZ people who are probably disappointed as well about to what a link farm the internet became.

I only see links sites nowadays with affiliate links, no content etc and only keyword urls.....some of them are even listed in DMOZ, but most are not even listed.


I love this idea of such a category...what about you?

To 1) Use "Update URL" to give any comments you like about an existing listing

To 2) We are not optimizing for Search engines, and I can't see a benefit for human visitors of DMOZ in having such a category. Apart from that, if you want to reduce those sites, you should not encourage anyone to link to them.

dermotz said:

1. What about a delete link similiar to a submit link?

It would be good if people could also vote websites out of a directory....

2. What about introducing a link farm or junk site category where bad websites are listed? This way other search engines could use this information to rank those sites down.

Click to expand...

1) We have "Update URL" -- which requests a re-review. If deleting is the right thing to do, the editor can do it. Who needs a vote -- our enemy is the spammer, and his sole business is creating false entities as aliases for duplicate websites, e-mail addresses, etc. Are you TRYING to think of ways the ODP could be made MORE susceptible to manipulation by spammers?

2) You're confusing the Open Directory Project with the Mass Search Engine Fodder Project. We are the former. Oh, I fantasize about being able to banish a spamming-affiliate-site-submitting jerk forever from search engines ... but even Google hasn't yet asked us for help with the search engine spam problem, and if they don't, this won't happen.

not necessarily....

hutcheson said:

Are you TRYING to think of ways the ODP could be made MORE susceptible to manipulation by spammers?

Click to expand...

(a) You could introduce a lengthy anti-spammer procedure where people need to copy a graphical code into an input box in one or more stages that is long enough to make spamming difficult.

(b) You would not need to look at every submission, but just if a certain amount of the same submissions from different authorized people/clients has been received.

hutcheson said:

... but even Google hasn't yet asked us for help with the search engine spam problem, and if they don't, this won't happen.

Click to expand...

I thought you were independent of google?
I think if a good system establishes, search engines (not only google) will automatically think it would be pretty neat to make use of those resources.

dermotz said:

(a) You could introduce a lengthy anti-spammer procedure where people need to copy a graphical code into an input box in one or more stages that is long enough to make spamming difficult.

Click to expand...

Spamming our directory is usually done by hand, not by machine. We are quite good already in filtering out automated suggesations, no problem with that.

dermotz said:

I thought you were independent of google?

Click to expand...

Yes, we are.

dermotz said:

I think if a good system establishes, search engines (not only google) will automatically think it would be pretty neat to make use of those resources.

Click to expand...

Just repeating: We don't care for the problems that search engines have. If people spam our directory, we take apropriate actions.

Dermotz, if you wanted to create a "worst of the web" directory in which you listed spam and crap sites, and then offered it to search engines as a spam-busting tool, I think it's an interesting idea. We at the ODP are already quite busy with our stated goals, which specifically exclude search engine manipulation; however, if your Spam Directory got off the ground, many of us might forward useless sites we found over to you, or even spend some time editing for you ourselves. It would depend on how the directory worked.

*We're* not going to do it, in other words, but that doesn't mean it's a bad idea for *you* to. Especially if you got one of the search engines interested in using your data. (-: