What "fairness" means, in ODP terms, should be:
All that matters about a website's listing is the unique content of the website itself, and its interest to surfers.
Google ranking, or any other search engine placement, should be irrelevant.
Alexi rank, or any other measure of traffic, should be irrelevant.
ODP suggestions should be irrelevant.
Ad revenue, or ad expenditures, should be irrelevant.
Wealth (or poverty) of the website owner should be irrelevant.
Desires and ambitions of the website owner should be ESPECIALLY irrelevant.
But, in practice, (1) How DO you determine interest to surfers? and (2) How CAN you eliminate the unfairness caused by ulterior motives of website owners and the weaknesses of automated tools?
The first answer is simple. We sample surfers by getting hundreds or thousands of them to help find what interests them. (That's the volunteer editors...) The larger the sample, the better.
And the second answer is also simple. We have multiple sources of unfairness: all of which can affect whether our volunteers (sample of surfers) can find a website. That's where experienced surfer judgment comes in. For each category, a surfer can sample all the various ways of finding sites. A sensible surfer will focus on what works best.
There's no single solution. Volunteers, like all other surfers, have to keep adapting, to penetrate through all the site promotions (and other kinds of spam) to get to what interests them.
But there is a simple principle: logically, all solutions must lead in the direction of making surfing MORE efficient, and website promotion LESS effective.
All that matters about a website's listing is the unique content of the website itself, and its interest to surfers.
Google ranking, or any other search engine placement, should be irrelevant.
Alexi rank, or any other measure of traffic, should be irrelevant.
ODP suggestions should be irrelevant.
Ad revenue, or ad expenditures, should be irrelevant.
Wealth (or poverty) of the website owner should be irrelevant.
Desires and ambitions of the website owner should be ESPECIALLY irrelevant.
But, in practice, (1) How DO you determine interest to surfers? and (2) How CAN you eliminate the unfairness caused by ulterior motives of website owners and the weaknesses of automated tools?
The first answer is simple. We sample surfers by getting hundreds or thousands of them to help find what interests them. (That's the volunteer editors...) The larger the sample, the better.
And the second answer is also simple. We have multiple sources of unfairness: all of which can affect whether our volunteers (sample of surfers) can find a website. That's where experienced surfer judgment comes in. For each category, a surfer can sample all the various ways of finding sites. A sensible surfer will focus on what works best.
There's no single solution. Volunteers, like all other surfers, have to keep adapting, to penetrate through all the site promotions (and other kinds of spam) to get to what interests them.
But there is a simple principle: logically, all solutions must lead in the direction of making surfing MORE efficient, and website promotion LESS effective.
