Editor Initiatives

Sometimes an editor or a group of editors will start an initiative to improve a specific area of the directory (cleaning up, increasing the number of listings, improving category structure, etc.). This thread is for editors to describe some of those initiatives.

Category restructuring in the ODP

Sometimes, when looking at the directory, an editor finds collections of sites which better fit in another part of the directory tree.

For example, the late Arts/Genres/Science_Fiction_and_Fantasy/Fandom/Costumes was split up into [cat]Shopping/Clothing/Costumes/Science_Fiction_and_Fantasy[/cat] and [cat]Arts/Costumes/By_Type/Science_Fiction_and_Fantasy[/cat], with some sites being sent to [cat]Arts/Costumes/Organizations[/cat] and [cat]Arts/Costumes/Exhibitions[/cat].

I built [cat]Shopping/Entertainment/Television_and_Movies/Animation_and_Cartoons/Anime/Cosplay[/cat] primarily from sites listed in or suggested to [cat]Shopping/Entertainment/Television_and_Movies/Animation_and_Cartoons/Anime[/cat], [cat]Arts/Animation/Anime/Fandom/Cosplay[/cat], and [cat]Shopping/Clothing/Costumes/Science_Fiction_and_Fantasy[/cat], although some other sites related to Science Fiction or Costumes or Anime contributed.

Great Florida Strive for Five Challenge

When people think of Florida, they think of Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, the mouse house in Orlando and the miles and miles of beaches.

The editors who make up Team Florida (all editors with specific permission to edit in the state) recently noticed that there were a lot of small localities with very few listings. To that end, they have started the Great Florida Strive for Five Challenge. One of the editors put together a list of every locality in Florida with four or fewer listings, and Team Florida is working to have every single locality have a minimum of five listings, but the end of the summer.

This is some of the most fun that an editor can have: hunting for sites in a category where there may not be that many to begin with. We use all the search engines and try different combinations. We look at existing sites in this locality and in nearby localities to see if one of them has a link that the search engines haven't found yet. We do keyword searches though the Yahoo/Geocities/Tripods of the world, looking for a great non-commercial site. Sometimes it may take an hour of seraching to add one or two more sites.

It is a great treasure hunt, and the reward comes from adding sites that are good for the directory and might never have been submitted.

Endangered_Kats

[Shameless plug]

There is a great project underway in K&T right now to expand two important areas of information - Endangered Species and Environment.

It's not my project; my mentor started it. It's one of those areas that is, IMHO, important to build up. As she so perfectly put it - we're depending on the next generation to take care of the planet. Yet, there isn't nearly enough information.

You don't have to have editor permissions to help get sites over there. If, in your travels around the 'Net, you stumble across a site about endangered species or saving the environment that is perfect for kids and teens, shoot it on over.

[Remember, K&T has different guidelines, so you might want to stop by the thread in the forum and see what she's got set up.]

[/Shameless plug]

In an effort similar to Florida's Strive for Five (described in an earlier post) Nebraska's editors are systematically going through every small town with fewer than five listings, trying to increase the number of good sites. There are no numerical goals in this effort, for nebraska has some really, really small towns so the effort here is to improve the quality of listings, avoiding obvious deeplinks such as the plethora of weather sites that ostensibly serve every locality in America, and semi-localized news feeds.

It is a slow process, but highly rewarding.