DMOZ is Dead...Long Live the Open Directory Movement!
- Thread starter June Bugeye
- Start date
OK Hutch, if you think 90% is inaccurate. What percentage do you believe should be removed? Certainly 100% of the sites listen in the ODP should not be there.
BTW I tried go get a refund but the stores system was down.... seemingly it has been for a month now.
BTW I tried go get a refund but the stores system was down.... seemingly it has been for a month now.
An off-topic post and the response to it have been moved to the original thread for their topic.
Well, I hunted up several hundred symphony orchestra sites; I suspect under 5% of them die every year. They'd pass my seven-point checklist with a fanfare. I hunted up a few dozen colleges and universities in my home state. They tend to tweak their domain names around a lot -- so again, 5-10% of the URLs rot every year.
How many church websites would fail the checklist? It's almost ludicrous to expect that any would. And Project Gutenberg has gone through a couple of URL changes in six years, but they've stabilized now, and there's 20000 published books -- I very much doubt that Prudentius Aurelius or Jonathan Swift or H. Beam Piper wrote their work with a view towards selling online advertising. And there are ten million or so local "small businesses" in the United States, every one of which has the material to create a unique website (and millions have taken that opportunity! OK, so 50% of these die every year, but ... the ones that survive for one year often last a lifetime. Again, if we wait 12-18 months before reviewing those sites, the chances are that link rot won't hit 10% annually.
It's just the webmasters who are obsessed with getting into the ODP who are 90% unlistable (well, say 99% unlistable, and I wouldn't argue.) But that's a very small fraction of all website creators!
How many church websites would fail the checklist? It's almost ludicrous to expect that any would. And Project Gutenberg has gone through a couple of URL changes in six years, but they've stabilized now, and there's 20000 published books -- I very much doubt that Prudentius Aurelius or Jonathan Swift or H. Beam Piper wrote their work with a view towards selling online advertising. And there are ten million or so local "small businesses" in the United States, every one of which has the material to create a unique website (and millions have taken that opportunity! OK, so 50% of these die every year, but ... the ones that survive for one year often last a lifetime. Again, if we wait 12-18 months before reviewing those sites, the chances are that link rot won't hit 10% annually.
It's just the webmasters who are obsessed with getting into the ODP who are 90% unlistable (well, say 99% unlistable, and I wouldn't argue.) But that's a very small fraction of all website creators!
I agree with a lot of what you say but you cited very stable cats that have higher quality sites and content. I was not really talking about dead links and churn, I was talking about sites that should have plain not been listed based on your criteria. That being said I know there are varying degrees of stiffness as far as editors go. Some let in a ton of sites and some are a lot more picky. I guess I wish there was more parody. There are a lot of cats that I think, from what you have told me, that you think are less important to the ODP, that you could step into and wipe out 90% of the sites in no time flat.
I see your point but, I do think its closer to 90% than 99%. I think there are some webmasters that are knowledgable enough to know their sites belong. Its unfortunate that some of those are the ones that come off the hinges when their site is not listed, they are looked at like they are not justified in their frustration...I would argue that they are.
I see your point but, I do think its closer to 90% than 99%. I think there are some webmasters that are knowledgable enough to know their sites belong. Its unfortunate that some of those are the ones that come off the hinges when their site is not listed, they are looked at like they are not justified in their frustration...I would argue that they are.
I mention those specific categories not because I think they're unusual -- but because I've worked in them, because I think they ARE typical of the broad range of interests the ODP allows, and because those sites would be fairly representative of--could be said to be the backbone of--virtually all the top-level ODP categories.
I can't say there's not a category somewhere that is 90% spam: in fact, I think I remember cleaning up a tiny category like that ... once. But the ODP is a DIRECTORY -- which implies that, for EVERY category, we're looking for the stable sites. And I believe it shows.
Fact: link rot takes many forms, and one of the common forms is listable sites replaced by spam sites -- through no fault of the editor. When the system comes back, we can all go back to adding new sites and cleaning up old listings--and your help hunting down those bad listings really would be appreciated. I am absolutely sure you will not find four million unlistable lists. But You tag 'em we'll bag 'em: and we can all count them like this: (zap) one less spam listings, (zap) two less spam listings, (zap) three less spam listings....
I can't say there's not a category somewhere that is 90% spam: in fact, I think I remember cleaning up a tiny category like that ... once. But the ODP is a DIRECTORY -- which implies that, for EVERY category, we're looking for the stable sites. And I believe it shows.
Fact: link rot takes many forms, and one of the common forms is listable sites replaced by spam sites -- through no fault of the editor. When the system comes back, we can all go back to adding new sites and cleaning up old listings--and your help hunting down those bad listings really would be appreciated. I am absolutely sure you will not find four million unlistable lists. But You tag 'em we'll bag 'em: and we can all count them like this: (zap) one less spam listings, (zap) two less spam listings, (zap) three less spam listings....
okusi
Member
Come clean
2-3 hours to fix a technical issue, i can understand. Six weeks indicates something other than mere technical problems.
And what, exactly, are the nature of these problems? There seems to be a great lack of transparency, and a curious aggression by certain people when responding to questions about when the directory will start functioning properly again. (A closed directory is not an open directory, if you know what I mean
)
i find it bizarre that such an important site has been effectively comatose for 6 weeks.Platinax said:
2-3 hours to fix a technical issue, i can understand. Six weeks indicates something other than mere technical problems.
And what, exactly, are the nature of these problems? There seems to be a great lack of transparency, and a curious aggression by certain people when responding to questions about when the directory will start functioning properly again. (A closed directory is not an open directory, if you know what I mean
)There are a lot of editors are chomping at the bit to get their access back again. But our users have hardly been inconvenienced at all. The directory and search were up almost all the time, and the RDF was downloadable.
And as for the editing functions, I'm not sure even they've been down more this fall than in the summer of 2004 -- of course, back then it wasn't all at once. (I'm not sure which is worse.)
I understand the priorities right now are (1) making sure this won't happen again, (2) getting basic editing tools back in the editors' nervously-twitching hands, (3) closure of data recovery, and (4) re-opening the public feedback channels (editor applications, abuse reporting, etc.). As you surmise, these entail a great deal more than just technical issues. (But if you've never experienced and can't imagine a technical issue requiring more than 2 or 3 hours, you've lived a very sheltered life!)
And as for the editing functions, I'm not sure even they've been down more this fall than in the summer of 2004 -- of course, back then it wasn't all at once. (I'm not sure which is worse.)
I understand the priorities right now are (1) making sure this won't happen again, (2) getting basic editing tools back in the editors' nervously-twitching hands, (3) closure of data recovery, and (4) re-opening the public feedback channels (editor applications, abuse reporting, etc.). As you surmise, these entail a great deal more than just technical issues. (But if you've never experienced and can't imagine a technical issue requiring more than 2 or 3 hours, you've lived a very sheltered life!)
okusi
Member
ok, i exaggerated. 4-6 hours max.hutcheson said:
geoserv
Member
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2006
- Messages
- 14
Being an Editor I feel the frustration. I still dont understand myself how a team of techs from AOL after 6+ weeks still can't get DMOZ fully functional.
I am no expert so I can't really say too much, but I still don't understand what it was that crashed us.
I think they were installing new hardware, would it be similar to installing contents from one hard-drive to another?
Very frustrated/disappointed/confused,
Geoserv.
I am no expert so I can't really say too much, but I still don't understand what it was that crashed us.
I think they were installing new hardware, would it be similar to installing contents from one hard-drive to another?
Very frustrated/disappointed/confused,
Geoserv.
No, it wouldn't be anything like that simple.
Look, lots of people have never dealt with complex problems. And that's the glory of computer science. The second highest honor of a programmer is to take a job so complex that nobody else even sees the problems, let alone the solution -- and solves it for others to use. The highest honor is to take a job so complex that others can't see the problems, and write a tool that lets them solve the problem they can't even see, for themselves.
And there were programmers on the ODP staff. I'd had years of experience in various genres of database, and when I first saw the ODP I questioned their approach (to myself, of course, I don't bad-mouth professionals unless I have seen much further into the problems than I had seen as an editor!) But the fact that data recovery could even be done at all now--is a testament to their forethought and skill. I don't think any proprietary database could have survived this kind of disaster.
And again, the fact that they're dealing with databases thousands of times larger than any that most people have ever contemplated recovering ... means that most people should take the time required to solve the most difficult problem they can imagine, and multiply it by a hundred or a thousand -- and figure that's the level the ODP tech teams have been working on.
Look, lots of people have never dealt with complex problems. And that's the glory of computer science. The second highest honor of a programmer is to take a job so complex that nobody else even sees the problems, let alone the solution -- and solves it for others to use. The highest honor is to take a job so complex that others can't see the problems, and write a tool that lets them solve the problem they can't even see, for themselves.
And there were programmers on the ODP staff. I'd had years of experience in various genres of database, and when I first saw the ODP I questioned their approach (to myself, of course, I don't bad-mouth professionals unless I have seen much further into the problems than I had seen as an editor!) But the fact that data recovery could even be done at all now--is a testament to their forethought and skill. I don't think any proprietary database could have survived this kind of disaster.
And again, the fact that they're dealing with databases thousands of times larger than any that most people have ever contemplated recovering ... means that most people should take the time required to solve the most difficult problem they can imagine, and multiply it by a hundred or a thousand -- and figure that's the level the ODP tech teams have been working on.
geoserv said:
You've obviously had little experience of AOL 'high level support' ..... whose postmaster department, assured me that I was using an unallocated /24 - when asked how they thought 2,400 people were concurrently logged into my website, they said it wasn't possible - but yet, could access the website, on this alleged unallocated IP space ;-)
I know some people are seeing the problems, because there has been some fairly accurate speculation. (There are programmers outside the ODP technical staff, and some of them have side interests related to the ODP!)
But it is a certainty that anyone incapable of imagining a technical problem taking longer than a day to solve, wouldn't be able to understand any words that could be used to describe the problem.
But it is a certainty that anyone incapable of imagining a technical problem taking longer than a day to solve, wouldn't be able to understand any words that could be used to describe the problem.