DMOZ is Dead...Long Live the Open Directory Movement!

Now back to DMOZ, people submit their sites, they fill in the forms and try to do everything correctly, by doing this they expect that somebody will look at their page within a reasonable amount of time (2 weeks to a month).
Now the editor who's also a volunteer agreed to edit and review webpages in his/her free time when they feel like it.
What happens here is that the DMOZ editor doesn't show up in the "soup kitchen" because they don't look at the sites people submitted.

That's why people get mad, you don't deliver the soup, well eventually you will in a year or two or more.

Click to expand...

Though people do it frequently, it is very inaccurate to compare volunteering with the ODP with volunteering with most non-virtual organizations. ODP editors do not sign up and are not accepted with the expectation that they will review suggested sites in x weeks/months...or even at all.

You might compare the ODP (favourably or unfavourably, depending on your POV) more accuragely with Wikipedia, where people can choose what articles or what parts of articles they edit at any given point -- they can spend as much--or as little--time as they choose doing whatever they choose as long as the net sum is an improvement in Wikipedia. Today it might be updating a link or correcting a typo; tomorrow it might be writing a full article. *That* is the way that the ODP works, except that the number of people who can edit any given item are more limited in the ODP.

So, there's no ODP soup kitchen and no volunteers who promised to appear on Monday at lunch to dish out soup to the hungry.

I regard the ODP as a service run by volunteers.

But: A service for WHOM? Certainly not for the people "submitting their sites" (i.e. filing suggestions).

ODP services the internet community according to it's own standards - which where good enough for Google to (partly) rely on them. IF the ODP ever would get so corrupted as to service siteowner's needs or wishes, Google would drop it like its hot. (Not that I see a major risk for that.)

Good example, motsa, .

No, we're not a service, Kyujin, we're building a Directory for web surfers, and no one else. How other entities use our information is not our concern, and we have nothing to do with it.

Most of the complaints we hear should be directed to Google and how they use our information. We just stock the shelves, they cook their own dinners.

If you really want to use the soup analogy, then how about this...

The volunteers who run the soup place (editors) want to help hungry people (surfers) by serving them good soup (websites). The soup is largely donated by another group (webmasters). To help get donations of soup, the volunteers allow potential donors to offer things to them. Unfortunately the donors don't always read the instructions, and sometimes try offering us the same soup more than once, out of date soup, or send their soup to locations where there's already a surplus. Some even get things completely wrong and offer us soap!

The volunteers get a lot of offers, which, largely due to the low average quality, take a long time to check through. For some reason the donors get mad at the volunteers for not serving their soup, even though in most places there's usually plenty of soup (though not necessary of a gormet variety) to go round to feed the hungry people.

Excellent, chaos127 , . That's just how it is.

And, because we're volunteers, we can choose to wash the pots and pans, sweep the floors, greet the customers, clean the tables, or wash the dishes, there are many jobs that need to be done.

@Crowbar:

The funny thing is that the exact point that drives some all too eager siteowners and the SEO industry crazy (the autonomy of the ODP, sometimes misunderstood as arrogance) is exactly what makes it valuable most people AND to Google - which in turn makes it attractive to siteowners concerned with PR.

What those people obviously can't or don't want to see is that an ODP that was willing to comply with their goals, would automatically fall from grace with Google - and hence become useless for SEO purposes, shortly after having turned useless for the rest of us.

But that is a long term perspective some people don't care about.

crowbar said:

I would expect that of them and it wouldn't really bother me much, considering a lot of them have mental problems, . I would expect a little more from someone like yourself though.

I don't normally come to this or any outside forums or blogs, I'm usually busy editing, but, it's been very educational to listen to some of these rants.

I can't say that I completely disagree with some of points that have been made, and, it isn't going to change the way I personally review site suggestions, but, it has made me more aware of your opinions, and I don't think that's a bad thing, .

Blowing off some steam is probably good for you, Skeletje, but, I'm afraid there's a big divide between what you want and what we can give you, it just doesn't work that way in the Directory.

Actually, we do a lot more than just review site suggestions, there are many tasks to perform, and we're not required to do anything we don't want to. No, you're wrong, we show up, but one person can only feed just so many of the 10,000 people, and only one at a time.

That's what you're not understanding. There are only so many volunteers, and many, many site suggestions to deal with.

Click to expand...

I didn't get on your case in particular, I only pointed out some things. I know personally a DMOZ editor because she's active in the same industry as me. She does excellent work in her category. I know you have many editors and many good ones. The point is quantity related, you know about the issues, it took months, even a year to admit there are some issues with the directory. Even now many editors keep saying everything is fine with DMOZ and people need to read the guidlines so they understand DMOZ and what it represents and so on. But everybody knows that story got a bit old so now we reached a new stage. That blog article from that review guy speeded things up a bit.

Every website has to deal with structural problems sooner or later. Even I have to deal with them because if I don't my website would stop functioning in a good way. 99.999999% of the website owners deal with these issues that are related to growth, expansion, bad servers, bad hosting, new technology etc...

Year 1995 when a decent website took 100's of hours to build DMOZ was doing fine with it's approach, the editors could handle the incoming requests, everybody happy!

Year 2006 when websites are created on the fly by wordpress and any person who can boot up a pc can have his/her page online. Increase by 1500% in webpages compared to 1995. DMOZ still handles it's directory still in the same way, ok a couple of hundred exra editors were hired but not enough to take care of the masses. An overflow problem takes place and people get mad. Google becomes market leader and invents pagerank, DMOZ plays a part in the pagerank deal and serp positions? People get rather annoyed they don't get their sites listed in the damn directory.

>People get rather annoyed they don't get their sites listed in the damn directory.

There are problems with the ODP, as with every human endeavor. But THAT IS NOT ONE OF THE ODP PROBLEMS!

That is merely a personal problem of the person who gets annoyed.

chaos127 said:

If you really want to use the soup analogy, then how about this...

The volunteers who run the soup place (editors) want to help hungry people (surfers) by serving them good soup (websites). The soup is largely donated by another group (webmasters). To help get donations of soup, the volunteers allow potential donors to offer things to them. Unfortunately the donors don't always read the instructions, and sometimes try offering us the same soup more than once, out of date soup, or send their soup to locations where there's already a surplus. Some even get things completely wrong and offer us soap!

Click to expand...

Yes let's stick with the soup. To answer what you wrote above, well don't even bother looking at those links, if people don't know how to drink the soup that's their problem, you only have pour the soup in cups (look at what people submitted) and stick it in their hands.

So look at what people submitted, if it's the wrong category (you can spot this in 3 seconds) I'm sure you have a button to forward it to the correct one. If you don't know which category it should be submitted to just hit delete. If you get creative submitters who keep abusing the system ban their sites, block the url from your system.
Set up a forum on these boards "category submission help" so people who don't know what category they should pick can come over, submit their link and ask for advice. Ok this would require a bit of work but people would see you guys are trying to help them out so this would take away the annoyance with many people and it would take some load of the editor's tasks and frustrations.

chaos127 said:

The volunteers get a lot of offers, which, largely due to the low average quality, take a long time to check through. For some reason the donors get mad at the volunteers for not serving their soup, even though in most places there's usually plenty of soup (though not necessary of a gormet variety) to go round to feed the hungry people.

Click to expand...

People have a right to good soup, get more volunteers. This is important because (correct me if I'm wrong) DMOZ's intention is to provide a high quality directory for people so they should also try to offer high quality for the people who build the sites. It's a circle thing, a chain, people build sites, people submit to DMOZ, DMOZ reviews and indexes, other people come to DMOZ to look at the works of the people who build the sites.

And you know a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.

Yes, that would be irritating to most anyone who has a site, Skeletje, but, what we're trying to tell you is that we're not a listing service, for Google or anybody else.

We have a completely different goal in mind, and it doesn't mean being all inclusive by listing every or even most websites that get created.

I understand how frustrating that can be for someone who wants to be ranked by Google, and who is convinced that the only way to get that is by being listed in the ODP, but, our goals having nothing to do with your goals.

What we want is completely different and seperate from what you want.

Googles purpose and our purpose are completely different, we're two completely seperate outfits. The only connection we have to each other is that Google uses our data, just as many others use it.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but, Google doesn't tell us what to do, and we don't tell Google what to do, we're seperate entities.

Set up a forum on these boards "category submission help" so people who don't know what category they should pick can come over, submit their link and ask for advice. Ok this would require a bit of work but people would see you guys are trying to help them out so this would take away the annoyance with many people and it would take some load of the editor's tasks and frustrations.

Click to expand...

That's a good idea, but, I believe we're already doing that here, we just don't allow the actual URL to be posted. It makes it a little harder to help, but, if you tell us what type of site you'd like help finding a category for, we can most likely advise you.

That seems like a very reasonable request and something we could do here, but, I don't run this joint, I'm just a guest here, .

motsa said:

Though people do it frequently, it is very inaccurate to compare volunteering with the ODP with volunteering with most non-virtual organizations. ODP editors do not sign up and are not accepted with the expectation that they will review suggested sites in x weeks/months...or even at all.

Click to expand...

Didn't I read something they need to login and review their category at least once every 3 months? And if they don't do a thing what's the point in having them? I understand they can edit whenever they feel like it as a hobby, but if the total amount of time the editors are spending is not enough to compensate the amount of webpages that need to be reviewed you just need more editors= review time.

motsa said:

You might compare the ODP (favourably or unfavourably, depending on your POV) more accuragely with Wikipedia, where people can choose what articles or what parts of articles they edit at any given point -- they can spend as much--or as little--time as they choose doing whatever they choose as long as the net sum is an improvement in Wikipedia. Today it might be updating a link or correcting a typo; tomorrow it might be writing a full article. *That* is the way that the ODP works, except that the number of people who can edit any given item are more limited in the ODP.

So, there's no ODP soup kitchen and no volunteers who promised to appear on Monday at lunch to dish out soup to the hungry.

Click to expand...

I like this argument a lot, if it wasn't for the fact you forget about a major difference. Wikipedia allows every single person to sign up for an account and create a page about their chosen topic, even their website. If a individual feels he has made a great website he goes to wikipedia and builds a page about his site if he feels like it belongs in the encyclopedia. The page gets reviewed and if it's only spam or an advertisement the page gets deleted after a review. The person even has the right to defend the usefulness of the page he created towards the wikipedia moderators.

A total different way of submitting and getting a site reviewed.

crowbar said:

Yes, that would be irritating to most anyone who has a site, Skeletje, but, what we're trying to tell you is that we're not a listing service, for Google or anybody else.

We have a completely different goal in mind, and it doesn't mean being all inclusive by listing every or even most websites that get created.

I understand how frustrating that can be for someone who wants to be ranked by Google, and who is convinced that the only way to get that is by being listed in the ODP, but, our goals having nothing to do with your goals.

What we want is completely different and seperate from what you want.

Googles purpose and our purpose are completely different, we're two completely seperate outfits. The only connection we have to each other is that Google uses our data, just as many others use it.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but, Google doesn't tell us what to do, and we don't tell Google what to do, we're seperate entities.

Click to expand...

I know this, I also wrote in a previous post that I am not to bothered if my site gets listed in the directory or not. I have several sites listed in it and I know what it does. It increases pagerank with 1 point and moves you up a bit in the serps, nothing spectacular at all. I know how to get a decent pagerank and how to climb in the serps. Getting listed in DMOZ is nothing more than having 1 good link to your site. Value of this link about 35 to 50$
Nothing compared to the effect of several SEO techniques.

I think that the ODP editing community is aware of the Wikipedia approach.

Some people work at both. If anyone ever needs INFORMED opinions as to which approach works well in which places, I'm sure those people will be ready to help: and their opinion would deserve some trust also: after all, they DO have a proven record of being actively helpful!

And those discussions will be carried on, as always, in the INTERNAL forums -- where all the stakeholders are present, and where webmasters defending their own sites is absolutely NOT tolerated under any circumstances.

Didn't I read something they need to login and review their category at least once every 3 months? And if they don't do a thing what's the point in having them? I understand they can edit whenever they feel like it as a hobby, but if the total amount of time the editors are spending is not enough to compensate the amount of webpages that need to be reviewed you just need more editors= review time.

Click to expand...

It's once every 4 months. And what harm is there if they only do the minimum? There isn't a limit to the number of editors there can be so an unproductive editor is not taking up space that someone else could use better. And remember that the suggestion pool is not our be-all and end-all. Really.

The point is quantity related, you know about the issues, it took months, even a year to admit there are some issues with the directory. Even now many editors keep saying everything is fine with DMOZ and people need to read the guidlines so they understand DMOZ and what it represents and so on. But everybody knows that story got a bit old so now we reached a new stage. That blog article from that review guy speeded things up a bit.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you're talking about here. No one has ever said that the ODP doesn't have issues, just that, generally, editors and submitters don't necessarily agree on what the actual issues are. There has been no "new stage" reached recently (certainly nothing as a result of someone's blog post), other than the fact that we've encountered some technical problems.

I like this argument a lot, if it wasn't for the fact you forget about a major difference. Wikipedia allows every single person to sign up for an account and create a page about their chosen topic, even their website. If a individual feels he has made a great website he goes to wikipedia and builds a page about his site if he feels like it belongs in the encyclopedia. The page gets reviewed and if it's only spam or an advertisement the page gets deleted after a review. The person even has the right to defend the usefulness of the page he created towards the wikipedia moderators.

Click to expand...

Um, I didn't forget about that. In fact, I specifically wrote "except that the number of people who can edit any given item are more limited in the ODP." The fact that the two sites don't operate identically doesn't mean they aren't similar in how they function, much more similar than comparing us to a soup kitchen.

Skeletje said:

It's a circle thing, a chain, people build sites, people submit to DMOZ, DMOZ reviews and indexes, other people come to DMOZ to look at the works of the people who build the sites.

And you know a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.

Click to expand...

Yes and that weakest link is:

Why else would the next step need to reject upto 90% of all suggested sites (90% is an estimiation made by several editors who came independetly to this same number)

Skeletje said:

if the total amount of time the editors are spending is not enough to compensate the amount of webpages that need to be reviewed you just need more editors

Click to expand...

Two main errors in your thinking
1) even if the current amount of editors would review all suggested sites within a specified timeframe we still could use more good editors
2) reviewing websites is not a task the editors are doing, we are building the directory and if we want we can use the pool of suggested sites to help us fullfill this task

BTW how many times do we have to tell you the same thing. When do you understand that your opinion of how DMOZ should act is not the way it is acting and not how it is willing to act. Continuing not listening and telling us that we should do what you want us to do will not change the way we will do our "work" within DMOZ.

So look at what people submitted, if it's the wrong category (you can spot this in 3 seconds) I'm sure you have a button to forward it to the correct one. If you don't know which category it should be submitted to just hit delete. If you get creative submitters who keep abusing the system ban their sites, block the url from your system.

Click to expand...

This may surprise you, but we already do pretty much all this. Except we're perhaps a bit more lenient of sites who's category we're not sure about -- if it looks listable, editors will ask their colleagues for advice about where to send it.

Set up a forum on these boards "category submission help" so people who don't know what category they should pick can come over, submit their link and ask for advice.

Click to expand...

We already have a "how to submit" section, where general questions can be asked. When getting to specific URLs, experience shows that usually more efficient for an editor to move a site internally rather than get into arguments with potential suggesters who don't always like what they're told.

You're perhaps not realising that while suggestions to the wrong category aren't uncommon and do take a little extra time to fix, a far greater problem is the suggestion of unlistable junk and (worse) disguised sites which may appear to be listable to the untrained eye.

People have a right to good soup, get more volunteers.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure about it being a "right", but we could always use the help of more good editors. If you have any suggestions for how we could attract more people who share the directory's interests, then please let us know --- we would genuinely like to accept as many good editors as possible

The funny thing is that the exact point that drives some all too eager siteowners and the SEO industry crazy (the autonomy of the ODP, sometimes misunderstood as arrogance) is exactly what makes it valuable most people AND to Google - which in turn makes it attractive to siteowners concerned with PR.

What those people obviously can't or don't want to see is that an ODP that was willing to comply with their goals, would automatically fall from grace with Google - and hence become useless for SEO purposes, shortly after having turned useless for the rest of us.

Click to expand...

That's true, editor Kyujin, the value of being listed in the Directory wouldn't be anywheres near as high as it is, if the system were just an automated process done by a machine. It's the human touch and screening/decision making we do that makes it valuable.

It might be seemingly faster and more efficient to start with, but, a lot of junk would filter in as unscrupulous submitters figured out how to beat the machine. The human touch is unpredictable and unbeatable, making it a more valuable system.

It might be slower, but it's the quality of the listings that make it valuable and so desirable to be listed in. Very good post.

Be patienced. DMOZ will be back soon.