DMOZ importance

As my own website is "invisible" now on many DMOZ directory-dependent websites and statistics website such as Alexa ("Top websites by category"),
I was wondering how inaccurate those websites are.

What is the percentage of "non-listed" websites, let's say with an Alexa rank of at last 250,000 that have not been listed on DMOZ due to some rules that are often in conflict with those statistic websites that are thought to give a balanced and neutral summary of the top websites in a certain category ?

My feeling is that Alexa maybe only covers 20% as DMOZ does not assign a a category to every relevant website. But this means looking at Alexa is quite useless as it is "censored" and you never know what is missing......

The problem only is that Alexa has gained a big influence as many people who use the data are not aware of the strict DMOZ guidelines (e.g. one website per company, no listing of country-specific domains, only sometimes in a different language, but not even then!).


I think DMOZ editors can not shut their eyes - they need to be aware of their "power" and influence and how many things are related to having assigned a dmoz category.

Without a DMOZ category a website is "invisible"....

We're just building a directory here for the pleasure of it, and making it freely available for use by others. We have no interest in what influence it has on our downstream users or what they do with the data provided that they adhere to our T&C.

It seems your problem, if that's what it is, is with Alexa rather than DMOZ. As Jim said, others will do with the listing as they choose. DMOZ can't fairly be held responsible for those choices. Maybe Alexa, and some other entities, should build their own directory.

What is the percentage of "non-listed" websites, let's say with an Alexa rank of at last 250,000 that have not been listed on DMOZ

Click to expand...

This would be a statistic without meaning, since Alexa estimates traffic, and the ODP represents a sampling of sites with unique content.

..thought to give a balanced and neutral summary of the top websites in a certain category ?...

Click to expand...

"thought" (by whom? certainly not by me!)

"balanced and neutral summary" (balanced on what? by what? neutral? of a SAMPLE of traffic? have you never read ANY analyses of the inherent biases in Alexa's methodology?

"top websites"?

Does this expression have any meaning at all? As opposed to what? "bottom websites"? "interior wall websites"?

Alexa estimates traffic at particular points. Note well, Alexa does not measure traffic. Anywhere. Which means, basically, that an ODP editor will never care what Alexa says. What does "having traffic" have to do with anything that matters to anyone but the site owner? Alexa gives an inherently biased list of sites ordered by the amount of traffic to them through particular internet nodes.

The ODP lists sites with content. Not all sites with content--any editor can find more sites that aren't listed yet. Not sites in any conceivable order--finding sites can be as random as which tradesman's van with logo and URL an editor passes, on his drive to work. Not without bias--there is certainly a geographical bias in favor of areas where people have freedom to use the internet (i.e. Cuba and Iran are underrepresented) and in favor of areas where public service is a common ideal (i.e. Russia and probably Washington, D.C. are underrepresented). There is a topical bias in favor of geographical and avocational topics (as opposed to commercial sites). There are obviously more local biases in favor of topics that are of interest to especially active editors. There are biases in favor of demonstrably original content, as opposed to aggregators, which are notoriously difficult to analyze in terms of the ODP standards.

So the ODP can't be considered a list of "top sites" (whatever that may mean!) It's a list of sites that have (at some point) been identified as containing some significant amount of unique content.

So, taken all in all, that has to be one of the silliest statements I've seen all month.

The problem only is that Alexa has gained a big influence as many people who use the data are not aware of the strict DMOZ guidelines

Click to expand...

I'm sure many people who use the ODP itself aren't aware of its strict guidelines. But then, I'm sure many people who use Google aren't aware of ITS strict guidelines. I suspect most readers of any large news media site aren't aware of the strict editorical guidelines (banishing un-PC points of view, however that is defined by the website owners.)

In fact, I'm not sure there's any large site of which that can't be said. But I've never heard of any internet surfer that was aware of Alexa, let alone influenced by it. Whatever influence Alexa has is probably constrained to traffic-chasing webmasters, not information-chasing surfers. And therefore, it is of no interest at all to me.

To take a different example, I really couldn't possibly care whether ABC or CBS or BBC has a bigger audience. For one thing, I don't watch any of them. And for another, if I did watch, I'd choose based on what interests me, not on what interests 0.002123% of the world's population (as opposed to only 0.001745%!)

In the same way, I'd happily close my eyes to any evidence about Alexa's "influence", because (if you take a broad enough view) every site in the world is a niche site attracting only a tiny fraction of a percent of the world's population.

Total percentage of eligible websites that ODP editors have not found a category for: 0%

If many people use a legal website regularly, it is highly likely that the website has "some relevance".

Therefore I think, it would be good if DMOZ website would be cross-checked with the Alexy top-1-million websites automatically or at least top 500,000 or top 250,000 websites.

This could easily be automated and I am sure Alexa would provide you the data for free as DMOZ also provides Alexa the data for free.

You can then still manually look at the "missing" websites and decide whether to list it or not - but at least you could use this as a strong indicator.

If you create something and spread it on the internet, which is what DMOZ does, you autmatically have a responsibility what happens with it to some extend. If you do not want to carry any responsibility, you should not spread the data and keep it for yourself and not share it with anyone.

I still think Alexa is a good tool and indicator. If you follow the Alexa trends you always see upcoming treds, e.g. facebook, myspace etc....long before everyone knows it. It has its weaknesses, but in general I do not know any alternatives to finding out "which websites are popular". If I want to sell a car or look for a room, I would always go to the busiest website first, not the "best" website from an editor point of view.

DMOZ does not "spread" anything anywhere. It makes available a listing of Web sites. How people choose to use that listing is up to them, within certain guidelines and limitations, of course.

Most of the problems people have with DMOZ stem from a basic misunderstanding of what DMOZ is and what DMOZ does ... and does not.

The editors at the ODP have, collectively, reviewed tens of millions of sites. Several of the editors here have reviewed hundreds of thousands of sites--each.

If you ever want to find out what relationship traffic levels have to usefulness, you could stop speculating and--just ask. This is definitely the place to find out.

If you find Alexa useful, you probably aren't the only one. (After all, Alexa IS listed in the Open Directory!) If you want to demonstrate how useful it is, by providing a list of Alexa-ranked sites that are (1) not listed in the Open Directory under any alias, and (2) listable by the current standards, then ... it's possible some editor would review your list.

If you proved your point, it's likely other editors would try the same technique. If, as seems more likely, you fail....well, it was your idea, and you only wasted your time.

That's the way leadership works at the Open Directory: other people will follow, if you show an effective way. Dozens of OTHER people are blazing variants of ways that have already proven effective! And in competition with THAT, your uninformed speculation about something else that MIGHT work, by someone who hasn't shown ANY capacity for making it work, is not going to be persuasive.

If many people use a legal website regularly, it is highly likely that the website has "some relevance".

Click to expand...

That doesn't make that site more deserving of a listing in the directory than a site that isn't in the Alexa top whatever. Some of the sites I visit regularly and consider valuable to me as an Internet surfer don't have Alexa rankings at all. And I would consider some of the higher ranking sites pure crap. The point is that Alexa's ranking is irrelevant to what we are doing.

You can then still manually look at the "missing" websites and decide whether to list it or not - but at least you could use this as a strong indicator.

Click to expand...

I'm sure we could all find loads of "missing" sites that we could add without using Alexa or any other ranking system. We certainly don't have a lack there. But if no one takes an interest in TopicA, it doesn't matter how many nifty sites you can find. A volunteer editor has to actually want to edit that topic for those nifty, "missing" sites to be useful.

I think there needs more transparency and clear rules.

To me, some of these comments seem a but pretentious - as if a single person assumes to "know what's right" - without having to ask other people.

I think editors should always need to consult other editors and a single editor should not be allowed to do certain changes without any kind of control.

Some editors (not all!), seem to enjoy their "power" and exploit their "authority".

If editors always had to consult other editors before doing anything, we'd never get anything done.

Not for everything of course. Adding website is ok, or moving website if it is a clear thing.

But removing websites lots of other DMOZ editors have added over several years all at once without any control or consulting of those editors who have added them for a reason, is clearly not very good.

And I am sure you all agree on that!

No, I don't think we'd all agree on that at all. Editors are not required to consult the editor who originally listed a site before editing, moving, or deleting said site.

There's never any point in discussing solutions until there's a problem to solve.

In this thread, there haven't been any problems mentioned. The only issue has been one website, whose webmaster wants multiple listings for a website.

That's not something that matters. And everyone else on earth can agree on that.