DMOZ a respected site?

www · Feb 11, 2011

I have heard for years that DMOZ is one of the most respected sites and directories to be included on in order to help make it known about the existence of one's business and web site.

I first saw or read this opinion perhaps a half-dozen years ago already, and every now and then (perhaps once a year) I try to resubmit my information when it never shows up in the directory. There have also been one or two times that I tried to contact a supposed editor responsible for my geographic or content area when nothing happened through regular submission channels, and I have never received any response through that means either.

Without mentioning website names, my site has predominantly been a golf-related, free educational portal since its inception. While the small, root-address site has educational material on it listed for sale, the main, free educational matter is contained in a blog having a sub-address.

I have tried everything from submitting just the root site to submitting just the blog address when the former did not work, to trying different catagories (as my material could easily fit into multiple golf-related catagories), all to no avail. It is particularly frustrating when seeing the plethora of garbage golf-related and other sites that DMOZ has admitted to its directory and calls quality, hand-selected, deserving sites.

While I have hardly spent an extreme amount of time (maybe an hour a year) attempting to get listed on DMOZ, I have had a sufficient number of experiences to formulate an opinion about it that is much closer to laughable disrespect for the concept and/or organization rather than respect. Of course given the number of mistakes I usually make on a daily basis, I could have been doing something wrong in my attempted submissions of the past, so I will check back here at some point to see if there are any comments or suggestions regarding my experiences. Thank you in advance for any comments or suggestions.

jimnoble · Feb 11, 2011

that is much closer to laughable disrespect for the concept and/or organization rather than respect.

.. and you've amply demonstrated that by repeatedly ignoring our submission guidelines, which require that a website just once to the one best category. You acknowledged that you'd read and agreed them on each occasion.

You claim to have been spamming us and by your actions, you have increased our volunteers' workload, thus contributing to a process slowdown for everybody.

Well guess what. We treat spammers the same way that you treat spammers - and it's not with any kind of respect at all.

microvb · Mar 19, 2011

jimnoble said:
.. and you've amply demonstrated that by repeatedly ignoring our submission guidelines, which require that a website just once to the one best category. You acknowledged that you'd read and agreed them on each occasion.

You claim to have been spamming us and by your actions, you have increased our volunteers' workload, thus contributing to a process slowdown for everybody.

Well guess what. We treat spammers the same way that you treat spammers - and it's not with any kind of respect at all.

Once a year is hardly spamming when in your guidelines it does actually state 2 weeks. (yes, i see the or more clause that is stuck in there, however, there is a huge difference between 2wks and 10 years. If you truly are backlogged, perhaps change that text to read 10 years or more), else people will continue to re-submit since they have no idea what happened with the application.

You also state that a user can re-submit if it was declined -- how is the user to know when an application was declined, or is just pending.

I am pretty sure that giving editors 1 year is more than sufficient to accommodate back-load. Perhaps if there was some sort of clear indication as to the applications status -- say when someone typed in their domain name they were submitting if it could return an email to the registered user on the domain with a status --- or a simple page that says one of the following

Pending
Approved
Declined

Would be very simple to implement such a regime, and it could be locked so that google would not spider it -- maybe even put the 6 line script on this site somewhere ?

microvb · Mar 19, 2011

Sorry, my bad.

It's actually 12 lines of code

Code:

$status = "Pending";
$cn = mysql_connect($host,$user,$pass);
$sql = "SELECT status FROM dmozdb WHERE domain = '" . sanitize($_POST['domain']) . "' LIMIT 1;";
$result = mysql_query($sql, $cn);
if($result) {
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
if($row) {
$status = $row['status'];
}
}
mysql_close($cn);
echo $status;

motsa · Mar 19, 2011

I am pretty sure that giving editors 1 year is more than sufficient to accommodate back-load.

It probably would be if editors were not allowed to work where, when, how often, and on what they wanted. That is a basic fact of life as it relates to DMOZ that isn't going to change any time soon. And as long as editors are not and cannot be forced to edit in categories that they don't want to, there will always be areas of the directory that don't see a lot of editing activity.

Perhaps if there was some sort of clear indication as to the applications status -- say when someone typed in their domain name they were submitting if it could return an email to the registered user on the domain with a status --- or a simple page that says one of the following

Pending
Approved
Declined

Would be very simple to implement such a regime, and it could be locked so that google would not spider it -- maybe even put the 6 line script on this site somewhere ?

The implementation of such a system has little to do with how simple or complex it is.

microvb · Mar 19, 2011

It probably would be if editors were not allowed to work where, when, how often, and on what they wanted. That is a basic fact of life as it relates to DMOZ that isn't going to change any time soon. And as long as editors are not and cannot be forced to edit in categories that they don't want to, there will always be areas of the directory that don't see a lot of editing activity.

When someone Volunteers they are taking on a big responsibility. Just think about organizations that are Volunteer based if the Volunteer was not on time, or came in once every 4 months for 10 seconds --- Those organizations would not survive, so allowing for new volunteers would be imperative.

In addition, sifting through the data in even your larger categories can't be much worse than sifting through your spam box for legitimate mail (containing 10,000+ spam per day). A process that takes only a few minutes of your day.

This system has grown from just a hobby site for volunteers that can only spend 1 minute every 10 years, and as such should require a more strict hammer on Volunteers if they wish to retain access to their account -- aka .. if an account consistently has say (10,000) sites pending in their green box and/or do not login and validate at minimum 10 or 20 sites / week (depending on category and inflow of new sites), then their account should be re-assessed.

The implementation of such a system has little to do with how simple or complex it is.

As an "OpenSource" / community project, what does it have to do with? This status flag would save the directory more work than it would take to implement -- regardless of any politics involved after AOL acquisition; unless the goal is to keep an influx of the same domain since the domain submitter really has no idea if it was denied (in a year, 10 years, 100 years), or what really happened. Most of the known planet re-submits after a 1 year waiting period as this is something that is felt more than reasonable by the general community. If 1 year is not reasonable, then why not simply add a flag, and maybe something else stating in the submission guide that the user should expect that their site will take more than 1 or 10 years before it ever gets reviewed for submission, and to re-submit after that ?

Black-balling a site because they re-submitted after a very long extended period of time hearing nothing, and not seeing anything, is unreasonable without some form of status system in place.

motsa · Mar 19, 2011

When someone Volunteers they are taking on a big responsibility. Just think about organizations that are Volunteer based if the Volunteer was not on time, or came in once every 4 months for 10 seconds --- Those organizations would not survive, so allowing for new volunteers would be imperative.

That may well be, but we function differently.

In addition, sifting through the data in even your larger categories can't be much worse than sifting through your spam box for legitimate mail (containing 10,000+ spam per day). A process that takes only a few minutes of your day.

You would be wrong.

This system has grown from just a hobby site for volunteers that can only spend 1 minute every 10 years, and as such should require a more strict hammer on Volunteers if they wish to retain access to their account -- aka .. if an account consistently has say (10,000) sites pending in their green box and/or do not login and validate at minimum 10 or 20 sites / week (depending on category and inflow of new sites), then their account should be re-assessed.

You may feel that volunteers should be required to do more, but the fact of the matter is that we function how we function. We are never likely to ever require what you're asking for. An inactive editor is not taking up space that prevents another editor from editing in a category so I don't quite get how re-assessing an editor's account (and presumably removing them if they are deemed to be too inactive) is going to make the situation any better. (By the way, there is no such thing as a "green box" for an editor -- suggested sites reside in a pool in the category where any editor with the appropriate permissions can review them if they choose.)

As an "OpenSource" / community project

We aren't an open source project. We are an AOL-owned project.

Black-balling a site because they re-submitted after a very long extended period of time hearing nothing, and not seeing anything, is unreasonable without some form of status system in place.

Sites are not blacklisted for simply being resuggested after a long period of time.

microvb · Mar 19, 2011

Sites are not blacklisted for simply being resuggested after a long period of time.

You would be wrong. The implication from post #2 by

spamming us

and

Well guess what. We treat spammers the same way that you treat spammers - and it's not with any kind of respect at all.

states otherwise; unless jimnoble is mistaken in this conduct. This post is only one of thousands on here with similar stories. I personally have a post which was deleted thread started in 2008 -- i got the same "i'm spamming" response which is laughable given that I only resubmitted once every 2-3 years (originally tried once / year), so in total, over the 10 years I have been trying, 4 submissions. I re-activated that post, asking several valid questions, and was very polite about it, yet it was removed as the thread clearly indicates a several year delay in response.

If your directory editors were 1/2 as active as the administration is here, there would not be the kind of problem which we only have your word for it exists.

You may feel that volunteers should be required to do more, but the fact of the matter is that we function how we function. We are never likely to ever require what you're asking for. An inactive editor is not taking up space that prevents another editor from editing in a category so I don't quite get how re-assessing an editor's account (and presumably removing them if they are deemed to be too inactive) is going to make the situation any better. (By the way, there is no such thing as a "green box" for an editor -- suggested sites reside in a pool in the category where any editor with the appropriate permissions can review them if they choose.)

By your own application, the agreement is 4 months no activity, and 1 month no activity for first month. That may well have been fine when there were only a couple hundred sites on the internet in total, but since then, the internet has very much evolved -- as should DMOZ, and not just ownership. You complain about a backlog as being an EXCUSE for these problems, and claim that all volunteers are acting with the utmost integrity. Yet nothing is done to ensure the backlog is taken care of, and the only system in place for corrupt volunteers is a base reporting system of a specific individual. I am sure that the engineers who work at AOL could think up something nifty to enhance the management of the data here -- i have several ideas, but you will rebutt them with something like "has nothing to do with how simple or complex the solution is" -- lets leave that to the experts who have been "working" on the same simple problem since 2006.

Unless this system is now defunct, and instead AOL is boosting their paid search engine (not DMOZ), by killing this project. Time Warner/AOL strikes again ? Is that what is happening here ?

motsa · Mar 19, 2011

You would be wrong. The implication from post #2 by <snip> states otherwise; unless jimnoble is mistaken in this conduct.

Spamming and resuggesting your site a couple of times are not the same thing.

If your directory editors were 1/2 as active as the administration is here, there would not be the kind of problem which we only have your word for it exists.

We choose our activity levels here, just as we do at DMOZ. For most of us, time spent here isn't time taken away from DMOZ.

By your own application, the agreement is 4 months no activity, and 1 month no activity for first month. That may well have been fine when there were only a couple hundred sites on the internet in total, but since then, the internet has very much evolved -- as should DMOZ, and not just ownership.

I've never quite understood how people make these leaps of logic. The people who are willing to undertake whatever minimum amount of editing you'd want to set are already doing so without being forced, so implementing a larger minimum amount of editing would only cause those who are unable to sustain that activity level to leave (and isn't likely to encourage more people to become editors than already apply), resulting in fewer active editors overall. How does that benefit anyone? The project loses the few edits those editors might have done for what? An editor who is inactive or under-active isn't preventing an existing editor from editing in a category nor are they preventing any new editors from being joined there.

You complain about a backlog as being an EXCUSE for these problems, and claim that all volunteers are acting with the utmost integrity. Yet nothing is done to ensure the backlog is taken care of

Actually, editors rarely complain about a backlog. Most non-editors would probably consider the backlog to be the total of all sites suggested but not yet reviewed. Most editors would consider any backlog to be the total of all listable sites, whether or not suggested to us, that aren't yet listed. That's a big difference in viewpoint. The pool of suggested sites is only one tool (and frequently not even the best one) that an editor can use to build up a category.

and the only system in place for corrupt volunteers is a base reporting system of a specific individual.

That may be the only (or primary) system in place for non-editors to report corruption or editorial abuse. But while we welcome those reports, they aren't the only way that we find, investigate, and deal with editorial abuse. No system is perfect, however.

Unless this system is now defunct, and instead AOL is boosting their paid search engine (not DMOZ), by killing this project. Time Warner/AOL strikes again ? Is that what is happening here ?

You'd have to ask them directly, but it's unlikely they'd be putting in the resources they have recently on the project if they planned to kill it off any time soon.

pvgool · Mar 19, 2011

microvb said:
Perhaps if there was some sort of clear indication as to the applications status -- say when someone typed in their domain name they were submitting if it could return an email to the registered user on the domain with a status --- or a simple page that says one of the following

Pending
Approved
Declined

The real reply should be.

Pending - do NOT suggest your website again
Approved - do NOT suggest your website again
Declined - do NOT suggest your website again

Or a shorter message
Do NOT suggest your website again.

microvb · Mar 19, 2011

The real reply should be.

Pending - do NOT suggest your website again
Approved - do NOT suggest your website again
Declined - do NOT suggest your website again

Or a shorter message
Do NOT suggest your website again.

Are you sure you didn't mean to say "Don't suggest your website" -- PERIOD

pvgool · Mar 19, 2011

microvb said:
Are you sure you didn't mean to say "Don't suggest your website" -- PERIOD

There are editors, including me, that would not object to turning the possiblity to suggest websites off for the whole directory.
We do not need the suggestions to build the directory.

microvb · Mar 19, 2011

pvgool said:
There are editors, including me, that would not object to turning the possiblity to suggest websites off for the whole directory.
We do not need the suggestions to build the directory.

Of course you wouldn't object as you don't approve "suggested" links, so by extension, havn't you collectively disabled this feature -- the very feature that built this site in the first place.

Now, you only list the sites that you have a personal interest in --- newsflash -- a feature in web-browsers call "Bookmark" or "Favorite" that allows you to do this. But of course, that is not all there is to it unless you have a monetary reason for entering said sites.

Don't be suprised if you see a huge traffic drop to your personal bookmarks over the coming months. Thanks for being so caring and such dicks about this. As with everything, too much power --- you just can't handle it without becoming corrupt.

And as for AOL with a whopping 1.7% market share of the search engine market --- lol. I just thought I would give it one more go before I play hard ball ... SEO wise of course. As for the geniuses at AOL/Time Warner who can't manage to fix a simple time/date stamp problem (that is if that REALLY is a problem, or you are simply covering for your inadequecies). Collectively, you are a lot of irresponsible children who like to play on the internet wishing that everyones website looked like the one you designed in 2 minutes using a coffeecup template. So instead of actually doing real work, you just swap your e-mail address for a PayPal account, and live off an internal tier tree where the lower people accepting bribes must pay you or else. All the while, bumping up your crappy websites with no content or even any real SEO using the power that we -- the public -- have wrongly given to dmoz.

One thing you are right about. YOU ARE NOT WIKIPEDIA ---- YOU ARE NOT THAT RESPONSIBLE, nor are you that respectful of real valid websites. We only have your directory to thank for accepting all those spammy websites with no real content falling back on keywords that exist with relation to that site only in your directory and have absolutely NOTHING to do with the landed on site.

So stick your head back in the ground, continue with your ignorance and sense of immortality, continue ignoring the ever-growing community that you have ticked off, and watch what happens to your personal bookmark system.

Also, after downloading your entire site, with a simple snap of regex, your advertised almost 5 million links, is also a load of horse-manure.

Approve or decline my application, I care not. You guys just generally suck at what you do, and are unworthy of admission into the species homo-sapien. Please do not rebutt this with "if we sucked then why are we successful" -- that answer is because you are riding on the coat-tails of a very old system which was by and for the community -- it has since changed into a money hungry factory for imbeciles who can not read, assess, or are even capable of any critical thinking what-so-ever.

With regards to the OP. I agree completely. This site is a joke, and my conversation for the last few hours has been quite enough quotations to spam several popular blogs with.

jimnoble · Mar 19, 2011

Collectively, you are a lot of irresponsible children who like to play on the internet wishing that everyones website looked like the one you designed in 2 minutes using a coffeecup template. So instead of actually doing real work, you just swap your e-mail address for a PayPal account, and live off an internal tier tree where the lower people accepting bribes must pay you or else. All the while, bumping up your crappy websites with no content or even any real SEO using the power that we -- the public -- have wrongly given to dmoz.

Your ignorance has been tolerated here and several of us have even tried to educate you. You've now descended into offensive and insulting behaviour which isn't. You've had plenty of leeway but that's enough.

Take a 1 month ban to cool off.

jeremy · Aug 18, 2011

To answer the question in the title: Yes DMOZ is the most respected directory, although nearly impossible to get listed which results in high quality listings. I've been waiting years too mr. WWW, no need to insult the volunteers. They are the only ones that can help us.

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