First, to the former question. Apparently your site is an adult site. I don't ever edit there, so when a site was submitted there is nothing to me. I edit somewhere else. Multiply that by ten thousand editors who edit HERE but not THERE, or mostly here, or here today and there tomorrow -- and the question of an overall "order" really doesn't arise. Every time an editor logs in, there's an order -- for the sites he proposes to review. Even if he knows ahead of time what order that will be, nobody else knows it! So the total order in which sites are reviewed is ... the merge of all the individual orders (which are always for all practical purposes unknowable, and are usually unknowable in any sense.) That's about as close to "pure randomness" as you can get outside the weather forecasts. So in a sense, it's very simple: a throw of ten thousand dice, all different shaped, all shaved and weighted differently.
Now, control freaks freak out at this point. Who controls this? How could anyone control this? The answer is, nobody, and no way. But the more important question, which few people think to ask (but which theoreticians have already answered) is: with all the variables, with all the imponderables, with all the judgment calls, how could anyone control it to to a better job? And the answer to that is: it can't be done. So I'm happy with randomness -- and to some extent my own editing is deliberately random, both in choice of categories and in choice of sites within category. If without looking, I cannot judge which site is best, then how can I do better than random? (Obviously I can't and nobody else can either.) And at least, if I'm picking at random, no clever spammer can track my trajectory and deliberately drop his garbage in front of me!
But random is not everything. A very active, very focused editor (and we have some like that) will create a small area of the directory where sites are reviewed quickly. And a group of editors will often gather for a few days or weeks to focus on some particular area that needs a lot of work. And even if I'm in a particularly random mood, I'll do triage -- see if a quick look at the apparently mis-submitted and apparently unlistable submittals can't turn "apparently" into "obviously". So "random" doesn't mean "even distribution."
I think that may indicate an answer to the next question: what does "the dmoz" consider important? "the dmoz" is only the integral cross of what each individual volunteer considers important, and how important each individual volunteer considers the ODP.
But definitely, site age is not a major factor in ODP site reviews -- we nearly always don't even know what it is, and don't care enough to find out.
And "hard-working webmaster" is no criterion at all. It depends on what the webmaster is working on! And if it were a criterion, it would still be useless for prioritization since you don't know how hard the webmaster worked till AFTER the site review. (This same issue is the bane of most imaginable prioritization criteria: obvious as that fact seems, it is seldom noticed.) I will note that we have seen many notorious webmasters who work far harder on self-promotion than on having a self worth promoting, so "urgency of SERP perping" is a pretty good inverse criterion.
The web is complicated. Anything that does a good job of indexing the web is going to be complicated. And ... this is another important and obvious fact that's often overlooked: Nothing does a perfect job. That's why it's good to have multiple indexes, each with its own unique approach: each index is going to miss something. In the ODP, stuff can slip through the cracks.
How do we deal with this -- keep the cracks as small as possible? The absolute worst way -- zombie-mindless, stark raving spittle-frothing insane way -- would be to force all editors to use the same priority. And therefore anything that slipped through ITS (inevitably huge) cracks would be lost for certain. (The straitjacket most often suggested is, of course, submitted sites. But it is surely the worst approach of all, missing the vast majority of the best sites, and an absolute majority of listable sites.)
The ODP goes the opposite direction as far as possible. Editors are encouraged to use as many different sources and techniques as they can, to find sites. (Good techniques are shared and critiqued in the forums.) We have constant reminders not to focus on the submittals, not even to focus on links found on the internet, but to spread the nets wide. That way, a site may be missed in multiple sweeps, but get caught up in the end.
Complicated? In practice, yes. In theory it's wonderfully simple. Invite public-spirited enthusiasts to contribute to the public good; give them tools; give them freedom; expand their perceptions; be grateful for what's done. And count on the "democracy of the (public-spirited element of the) web" to provide the best possible sampling of what's important to the public. Give up control, and accept gifts, even the ones that don't match your wardrobe.
And recognize its limitations: there are things it can't do; there are even things it could have done, that it won't ever do. (Figure out the difference between those two categories: help with the latter, and go somewhere else to address the former.)
