Dmoz is doing a disservice to the Internet

I have not been able to get my site listed for 1 1/2 years, and after reading this forum, I found out that the wait could be 3 years. The data here is so stale, why would anyone want to look into the categories in Dmoz ? Yahoo has a directory also, they charge $299 for the service, but at least they do what they claim. Given a choice between paying $299 and waiting 3 year and not knowing if your site is even in their queue, I will gladly pay the $299.

Dmoz is doing a disservice to the internet by serving everyone it's stale data and throwing a wrench in to the google search engine.

If you have examples of stale data, please post the details in the quality forum.

DMOZ v. Yahoo

I'm sorry you feel that way... I can assure you that editors truly have the best intentions. I'm a relatively new editor, so I don't know that I can adequately represent the thoughts of other, more experienced editors.

I feel a public viewers perspective will change from one category to the next. How many people submit sites, how many of those sites are those trying to abuse the system, and the number of qualified editors interested in editing the category can probably have a tremendous impact on the length of time it takes an article to be reviewed. Many categories are actually in fine condition with little to no pending reviews, all links and descriptions current and accurate, etc. While I realize it must be frustrating as a Webmaster to have to wait several months to hear word on your submission, I hope you can appreciate why that is.

The difference between DMOZ and Yahoo! and the factor that can lead to long-standing unreviewed submissions go to the very principle upon which DMOZ was created--reviewing and acknowledging truly valuable sites that will transform the Internet into a better, more useful media. An editor who breezes through submissions simply to get them done with will not be able to truly evaluate the quality of those submissions--doing you, the Internet citizen, a disservice. Yahoo!, for a fee, will ensure a site is posted, but in doing so they are disregarding the value of their directory. The very purpose of DMOZ, as I understand it, is to turn away from such practices--which is probably why even editors work on a volunteer-only basis. It's what makes DMOZ so unique.

Once again, I apologize for your frustration. I hope you can see things from my perspective and, perhaps, view DMOZ and what it does in a much more positive light.

Sunanda said:

If you have examples of stale data, please post the details in the quality forum.

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If sites have to wait for 3 years before being included, then the data is stale, it is 3 years old.

You're absolutely right, Yahoo offers a service to you that the ODP doesn't. If that service is what you want, you know where to go: the ODP cannot compete with Yahoo in that respect, and doesn't try. Give Yahoo the $299, and with it our blessing.

I think Google benefits by having some sta(b)le data -- I've certainly heard enough webmasters complain about UNstable search engine results. But if you disagree, there are certainly other search engines with results that may better suit your fancy -- give them your custom, still with my blessing. The web is large; there is room for many different services, and nobody needs them all. You may not need the ODP, and that's OK. But it's just a wee bit arrogant, don't you think, to presume that your experience is universal?

"You may not need the ODP, and that's OK. "

Unfortunately, everyone needs ODP, because Google uses it for ranking. That is the only reason people are trying to get their website listed here. If it did not, ODP would be dead. I don't know of anyone who goes to dmoz.org and looks into the stale data in the categories.


"But it's just a wee bit arrogant, don't you think, to presume that your experience is universal?"

Not at all, read the posts on your own site. Read the discontinued Status Forum.

Your unfortunate misunderstanding of the ODP is neither unique nor universal -- there are even SERP perps who claim not to share it, and there are SERP perp forums where you can find more accurate information (going back four or five years, even!) -- although I sometimes wonder if some of the SERP perps perpetuate the confusion to nobble the competition.

If the ODP was designed around dependence on suppliant webmasters, its future would no doubt be quite different. Since it wasn't, it really doesn't matter either way: your confusion is regrettable, but now that you know the ODP doesn't offer the services you want, you won't be spending any more time waiting on it -- you can proceed without further frustration to sites that do offer the services you need. And that's the service offered by this forum.

You're welcome.

hutcheson said:

Your unfortunate misunderstanding of the ODP is neither unique nor universal -- there are even SERP perps who claim not to share it, and there are SERP perp forums where you can find more accurate information (going back four or five years, even!) -- although I sometimes wonder if some of the SERP perps perpetuate the confusion to nobble the competition.

If the ODP was designed around dependence on suppliant webmasters, its future would no doubt be quite different. Since it wasn't, it really doesn't matter either way: your confusion is regrettable, but now that you know the ODP doesn't offer the services you want, you won't be spending any more time waiting on it -- you can proceed without further frustration to sites that do offer the services you need. And that's the service offered by this forum.

You're welcome.

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You did not explain, the "confusion". If you don't, people might think that I was right.

You thought the O. D. P. did serve webmasters. It did not.

You thought the O. D. P. did need webmaster submittals. It does not.

You thought webmasters needed the ODP to get good Google results. Successful SERP perps will tell you that's not so.

Now you can go to Yahoo, and spend the money you claimed to prefer to spend, and not wait on the ODP (like you claimed to not want to do), without those wrong assumptions about what the ODP offers you.

When you take the new sites added, and subtract the dead and stale ones removed, DMOZ is currently growing at an average rate of 20,000 sites per month. Each of those sites (nothwithstanding a tiny number of errors) is unique and offers quality content, no mirrors, no redirects, no spam.

When it comes to categories that editors find useful and of interest, and editors are a representative cross-section of global society from priests to soldiers and everything inbetween, sites are often added within days or weeks of being suggested. There are vast swathes of the directory with nothing at all waiting to be reviewed. Perhaps the answer is that editors are not interested in the type of site you are suggesting to us.

As to Google rankings that is something you will have to address them on - if they felt that our data was irrelevant then they would adjust their algorythms accordingly. Tell them your complaint, I'm sure they will listen.

There was a category for SARS, the Concorde Crash, the Christmas Tsunami, the London Bombs, within 24 hours of the events happening. That isn't a stale directory.

There are pages on the web that haven't been edited for a decade; because the data that was true then is still true now. The ODP lists hundreds of thousands of such sites.

Any write-up of an historical event remains valid forever, unless found to be an untrue, incomplete, or inaccurate account. Those can be added any time.

Editors log in, then choose what action to do today, read forums, look at editor applications, clean up spam in the suggestion pile, work on update requests, redirect wrongly submitted suggestions, search Google or news sites for things to add, review stuff in the suggestion pile, etc. Part of that choice is also in which category to actually work on: and for each editor that action is random within their permissions list, but highly likely to be influenced by "in which category can I make a difference?".

In a remote niche topic with two listings, adding another two sites doubles the sum of human knowledge. In a spam laden pile of hundreds of suggestions, in a category where dozens of sites are already listed, the casual surfer is unlikely to notice an extra ten sites being listed, and the amount of work needed to find ten such listable sites would exceeed most editor's patience - so you'll usually find them taking the former choice when they decide "where shall I edit today?".

There was a category for SARS, the Concorde Crash, the Christmas Tsunami, the London Bombs, within 24 hours of the events happening.

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That is a good point. DMOZ responds to events of significance extremely quickly. Because there is usually an editor or several interested in the event and almost by instinct they will build the category as a personal response.

As to using the contents of this forum to conclude that there is a problem with review times, using a rough calculation, less than 1% of our listings have been subject to a question here. Many of those were "automatic" queries - have we received it - 30 days after submission. Maybe as many as half were asking about unlistable sites - affiliates, multiple submissions, mirrors and other spam. So maybe 1 in 400 legitimate submissions have been the subject of a question over lengthy delays. Hardly a problem. Remember that the other 399 have no problem so they haven't complained. Which is why we can be dismissive of claims by webmasters that we have a problem. It isn't complacency. I don't recall ever seeing a complaint anywhere by a DMOZ user, those that actually use the directory, that they were disappointed. The complaints are always from webmasters.

hutcheson said:

You thought the O. D. P. did serve webmasters. It did not.

You thought the O. D. P. did need webmaster submittals. It does not.

You thought webmasters needed the ODP to get good Google results. Successful SERP perps will tell you that's not so.

Now you can go to Yahoo, and spend the money you claimed to prefer to spend, and not wait on the ODP (like you claimed to not want to do), without those wrong assumptions about what the ODP offers you.

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These are your thoughts not mine, please read again what I have written.

oneeye said:

As to using the contents of this forum to conclude that there is a problem with review times, using a rough calculation, less than 1% of our listings have been subject to a question here.

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How do you know ? The status forum is closed, and you have not done a poll of all people who have submitted a site.

oneeye said:

I don't recall ever seeing a complaint anywhere by a DMOZ user, those that actually use the directory, that they were disappointed.

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How do you know anyone is using this directory ? I have never seen or heard of anyone using it.

Exactly. The class of "people who have submitted a site" is not a class, as a class, we are interested in at all. We know that at least 85 to 95% of the submittals are spam. (And if you want to poll the world's spammers, slipping a tiny fraction of helpful people isn't going to change the numbers.)

But it's true (and already well known among ODP editors) that spammers in general are, like you, very frustrated with the ODP. And it is also true (and equally well known) that the legitimate submitters are sometimes frustrated with the amount of editors' time that spammers waste (because that translates directly into slower listings.)

But any idiot could have figured that out without a poll -- in every war, the adversaries are frustrated by each other, and the innocent bystanders are frustrated by the collateral damage.

If you analyze it as game theory, the spammers must block EVERY useful information conduit to win. It's not enough to spam Excite and Altavista out of existance: surfers just switch to Google. And today, it would not be enough to spam Google out (because Yahoo and MSN are waiting in the wings. That's why they so hate the ODP -- it's an alternative for surfers that they haven't yet figured out how to kill. And not only that, but ... it provides a relatively reliable source of links to offset the artificial-link spam that spammers are working so hard to create.

All the spammers can do to the ODP is make it less effective. So they go trolling in forums, physically and electronically stalk editors (committing crimes in addition to their usual information fraud and e-commerce fraud) and in general do their best to make ODP editing harder.

Most of them really aren't very bright, as you can tell by noticing (in their forums) how often they feel the need to tell each other that yes, they are SO intelligent. But this is really simple. So simple that we pretty well figure honest people will figure it out.

And the ones that can't figure it out, even after being told several times, are just trolls.

Bye, troll.