DMOZ needs ideas and assistance

I have been watching some of the forums and seen many posts that are negative. However I believe that the idea behind Dmoz is very good if it is administered fairly. I recently talked to two SEO companies about our website http://www.renovationexperts.com and both said that they thought DMOZ was corrupt. Why - because often times competitors with sites that have less content and less value are listed and other sites are not. In other words while Dmoz expects to have us follow the guidelines it appears that they themselves do not and that some sites are shown obvious preference.

It is frustrating to not have your site not listed and the wait time (months and often many months is not acceptable for any organization), however I disagree with the two SEO's and I do not think that DMOZ is corrupt. They are however seriously in need of more assistance and they need to ensure that the editors honour the guidelines as they have requested others to respect them. This is not always the case.

Perhaps they should try a paid service - I am sure SEO companies and others would be more than happy to pay a fee of $100 to have your site reviewed and to be placed properly in this directory.

Also while sites who are submitting need to show respect for the guidelines editors could tone down the abrasive nature of the responses.

Perhaps we can use this thread for others to add positive ideas on how DMOZ can handle the obvious increasing work load.

Thoughts.....

Let's try and be positive.

I think that one of the problems is that so many people don't bother to read our available documentation and are thus confused about our objectives and the way that we work.

A good starting point would be http://dmoz.org/add.html , which everybody suggesting a website acknowledges they've read and agreed, which requires that the suggester select the one best category for their website. People who suggest their sites to five different categories are merely wasting their time and, more importantly, our scarce resources. We don't mind so much when they keep resuggesting their sites to the same category because that only wastes their efforts.

The next item which is worth a look would be this forum's FAQ, which addresses some of your comments.

As to charging webmasters, our social charter, the foundation of our organisation, forbids it.

Craig Lucas]I have been watching some of the forums and seen many posts that are negative. However I believe that the idea behind Dmoz is very good if it is administered fairly. I recently talked to two SEO companies about our website [url]http://www.renovationexperts.com[/url said:

and both said that they thought DMOZ was corrupt.

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Why: because we refuse to change in an organsiation they want us to be.
Reason: if DMOZ doesn't want to do what I want they must be corrupt

Craig Lucas said:

Why - because often times competitors with sites that have less content and less value are listed and other sites are not. In other words while Dmoz expects to have us follow the guidelines it appears that they themselves do not and that some sites are shown obvious preference.

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Any editor that violates any of our guidelines will be corrected and when he keeps on violating them most probably will be removed.
Keep in mind they are guidelines not rules.
There is no guidelines that specifies that an editor must review a suggestion within a specific timespan.

Craig Lucas said:

It is frustrating to not have your site not listed and the wait time (months and often many months is not acceptable for any organization),

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It is for DMOZ. We are not here to list specific sites. We are here to build a directory.

Craig Lucas said:

however I disagree with the two SEO's and I do not think that DMOZ is corrupt.

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That is correct. As an organisation DMOZ is not corrupt. But we know that in the past (and very probably also now and in the future) a few editors have been.

Craig Lucas said:

They are however seriously in need of more assistance and they need to ensure that the editors honour the guidelines as they have requested others to respect them. This is not always the case.

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We always can use extra help from people who want to build the directory.
If you see any case were the guidelines have been violated you can report it to DMOZ. We will investigate and act when neccesary.

Craig Lucas said:

Perhaps they should try a paid service - I am sure SEO companies and others would be more than happy to pay a fee of $100 to have your site reviewed and to be placed properly in this directory.

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Never. This is against DMOZ Social contract

Craig Lucas said:

Also while sites who are submitting need to show respect for the guidelines editors could tone down the abrasive nature of the responses.

Perhaps we can use this thread for others to add positive ideas on how DMOZ can handle the obvious increasing work load.

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We don't see the number of suggested sites as a work load.
All editors are volunteers and spend as much time as they want themself on building the directory. The pool of suggestions is just one of the sources we use help us. And to be honest, it isn't one of the best sources.

I agree with your comments and I know I have spent some considerable time reviewing these guidelines. I think is confusing though when websites see other sites (posted or listed in numerous areas) - We are an Amercian Network of contractors and have over 3000 members. We have recently done work for the Dr. Phil show and where highlited along with Lowes on the episode of http://drphil.com/shows/show/476

I did not know about the charter - Interesting - would they accept donations? Similar to other organizations....either an outright donation or donation for looking at a site - website owners would not be required to but they could make a donation if they choose. Mozilla.org does this and we donate regularly. It is a pleasure infact to do so.

I have spent some considerable time reviewing these guidelines

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and do you think you followed them?

To the comments of PVGOOL -

I thank you for your honesty - However I think that likely we have a difference of ideas on how you would build a directory. Your site uses the following illustration under the heading About DMOZ

"The Open Directory follows in the footsteps of some of the most important editor/contributor projects of the 20th century. Just as the Oxford English Dictionary became the definitive word on words through the efforts of a volunteers, the Open Directory follows in its footsteps to become the definitive catalog of the Web.

The most alarming comment you make which I believe humbly does not accurately reflect the original intention of the DMOZ.

"It is for DMOZ. We are not here to list specific sites. We are here to build a directory"

That is arrogance - can you imagine a humble writer of the Oxford dictionary saying he is not there to include english language words. But rather is there to create a dictionary. It is absurd. A Dictionary is a listing of words. - I am glad that Dmoz uses the example of the Oxford Dictionary as it is a listing of ALL words....See below

"The policy of OED is to attempt to record all known uses and variants of a word in all varieties of English, worldwide, past and present. To quote the 1933 Preface:

The aim of this Dictionary is to present in alphabetical series the words that have formed the English vocabulary from the time of the earliest records down to the present day"

Thus by friend you may wish to re think your improper view of this directory - it was created to be a directory or web sites. And the obligation of an editor is to review and include these websites not for DMOZ but for the general public.

To comments of Jim Noble -

We believe that we did follow the guidelines (however i did submit a number of articles to different areas of the directory as I had seen Improvenet.com do.) I also had our SEO submit as well....However I am not posting to this board to have my site listed. I have always appreciated the Open resource model. I am possibly interested in becoming an editor but more importantly I am interested in having some of our editorial team / tech team join and requesting that they spend 1-2 hours per week on this as part of their employment.

Our company requires that each employee do something for the community.

Craig, one of the world's problems is that some people just won't think logical thoughts before they start thinking evil thoughts.

Do your SERP perp friends really imagine that we review sites in order, biggest site first? Because if we DON'T do that, then, DUH! -- some of the little sites are going to get reviewed and listed before we ever GET to the biggest sites...which is exactly what your friends are seeing.

And ... how COULD we review the biggest sites first? WE DON'T KNOW WHICH SITE IS BIGGEST UNTIL WE'VE REVIEWED THEM ALL!

Double-duh.

Which we haven't done yet.

Triple-duh.

Now, all this seems brain-dead obvious to me. But there is obviously some bit of it that people keep missing or overlooking, and I surely wish I knew which part it was.

Hutcheson -

I agree about the logical thinking - I do not think DMOZ as an organization is corrupt.

I think what people see is posts like the one by PGOOL where he clearly says the review is only for DMOZ. And in cases like ours where we have tried for many months to be listed but have no idea why we are not, and we see our competitors there with numerous listings under numerous headings and all in very short order. See (Improvenet.com) and Servicemagic.com. Improvenet is an affiliate of Servicemagic????

Anyways as I stated in an earlier post this is not about my site - it is about how some of the people here at our company could help with the work load. I need to approve all community service work and I want to ensure that they are working on something that is worthwhile.

Craig, how do you imagine the contributors to the OED reasoned? Were they interested in creating an all-encompassing resource, or would they focus on getting a few specific words, for instance "generation", "horse" and "miscellaneous", into the dictionary at all cost? The ODP editors focus - or should focus - on the categories they build. We want to build valuable resources on various topics (all topics, ideally). Of course we need the site links to do this. Of course the OED needed to include thosse specific words, or it wouldn't have been complete. But if the contributors found relevant, interesting examples for "flood", "parochialism" and "waist-coat", it wouldn't have made sense to throw them aside and keep looking for examples of usage of the word "miscellaneous".

To address another point you made: Donations will not be accepted - trying to donate money to the project or any editor will get a site banned. Forgive my bluntness, but it's better to be clear than gentle about this matter.

We take a rather dim view of people working for the ODP as part of their paid work for a company. Of course it's possible for somebody to work on the directory in a disinterested manner, for the love of the directory, and still be paid to do it, but the suspicion would always be there that they were there to take care of their employer's sites. I'm not saying that it would be absolutely impossible, but they would need to be as pure as the driven snow in all their edits, and probably not edit in any category where their employer had any kind of financial interest. Again, better to be blunt and truthful...

Nea - Good argumentation -

I appreciate the blunt yet respectful direction on Donations. If we as a company do donate it would be by having our tech and editorial staff work on the directory as part of the community service work they perform. We pay our staff to do community service work 1 - 2 hours per week. We believe that this creates well rounded employees

Nea -

First -
I would not allow them to edit our site or partner sites.

Second
We have found that many young people have never been involved in volunteer work. When we encourage this type of work and introduce them to it they often get very involved. They start to look at processes instead of money. They see people instead problems and they see how small they are and how big the world is.

There isn't and never will be anything "arrogant" about telling the truth about what you're doing.

The OED and ODP are very similar in organization, once you figure out the correct correspondences. The ODP deliverable is a "category". The OED deliverable was a "word article." So it would indeed be fatuous to say "I'm building a directory, not building a category." But it is a blindingly obvious tautology to say "I'm building a directory, not listing websites." A website is like an individual word use. Does it, or does it not, contribute to the overall category (word history)? That's the editor's decision. An OED editor would be astonished to HAVE to tell people, "I'm building a dictionary, I'm NOT looking for places to cite any specific author."!

Because that should have been obvious. And, although the OED took thousands of suggestions from volunteers, it was the editors who decided which citations (um, websites) contributed significantly to the word history (um, topical category), and which ... didn't.

I think part of the problem is caused by mislabelling. Some things are "classified ads", and other things are "directories". There is a difference! The phone company says, "buy a phone, pay the ad price, and we'll FIND a place to put your company ad--pay extra, we'll give you two listings" and that is the purpose of the yellow pages! The directory says, "where can our users find information on this topic?" And the answer may be "no information on this site, lots on that. No listings for this site, many for that."

Too many dishonest classified ads purveyors are calling their products "directories" -- and deceiving both surfers and content-creators. Those faux "directories" actually provide services to content-creators, so content-creators come to believe that is what a directory must do. But it is what a real directory must not do. It is what a classified ads service must do.

There is obviously a place for the yellow pages and the newspaper classified ads, and for other similar schemes. But it's dishonest to call them anything but what they are. And there is a place for directories. It is just not the same place.

Hutcheson -

I appreciate your comments but I do not agree with the attitude which is fine. I now understand how it is that some categories are edited so well, and have few complaints, and how others are poorly or seldom updated and the excuse for not doing so is simply that you do not need to do so....

I do not agree that this follows the original intention of DMOZ. Which I think is clearly written about under the heading About DMOZ.

Hutcheson -

I would encourage you and all other moderators to read this page...

http://dmoz.org/about.html

Meditate on it. Think of what was originally intended. I agree with some of your comments but sometimes we need to re-think what we are doing.

IF what is written at the above link is accurate then I am very interested in supporting it - but if DMOZ has changed and now the editors have decided to create a directory of convenience where areas can go on edited for months and sites receive preferential treatment then this is not what was originally intended.

We can't (and don't) force editors to edit in any category where they don't choose to edit voluntarily. Thus, if no editor feels like reviewing suggested sites in category A, then the suggested sites in category A will sit there awhile, maybe forever.

We can have the lofty goal of building the most comprehensive directory on the planet but unless we have editors who actually want to edit really obscure or really spam-ridden categories, there are going to be categories that get neglected because no one wants to edit there. It's just a fact of life.

Perfect response - Ok so if I was to request that our employees do this then they could work on some of these boxes that are not often reviewed. This is exactly what I was wondering about. Do you have any ideas of what areas of expertise this would be?

Craig Lucas said:

Hutcheson -

I would encourage you and all other moderators to read this page...

http://dmoz.org/about.html

Meditate on it. Think of what was originally intended. I agree with some of your comments but sometimes we need to re-think what we are doing.

IF what is written at the above link is accurate then I am very interested in supporting it - but if DMOZ has changed and now the editors have decided to create a directory of convenience where areas can go on edited for months and sites receive preferential treatment then this is not what was originally intended.

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Yes, I think what is written on that page is still valid and accurate.
But as has been pointed out already editors are all volunteers and they only do as much 'work' as they want themself and only in those categories they want to 'work' in.
This means that if no editor is interested a category might not be updated for months or even years. Is this a problem. No, not in the eyes of DMOZ because the directory as a whole is still developing and growing.

Sites will only receive preferential treatment when the site is worth this treatment. (remember there is a big difference between being listed more than once - which is allowed - and suggesting a site more than once - which is not allowed).