finding your cherry

I liked the analogy made by a ODP editor comparing a DMOZ listing to a cherry on top of a cake. The ODP project has come under massive criticism over the last couple years, and it's expected - but not fair. I can only imagine the frustration the editors must experience with endless site suggestions made by angry and desparate folk demanding their site should be on DMOZ. Everyone seems to have a webpage nowadays - and most are garbage. If your website 'needs' to be on DMOZ for PR or traffic, then you are probley not getting noticed for a reason. If you are currently getting good traffic without DMOZ then you have something good going, and don't need ODP. I had tried to get our site onlineniagara.com on DMOZ a while ago with no avail, but it was good enough for other sites to link to it.. then google, msn.. yahoo.. etc. Now if DMOZ picks it up..great, if not.. who cares. I still use DMOZ for searching though for good results, because most of these editors are selective in what they pick. DMOZ gets my vote for good content and links.

I couldn't agree more. I never even heard of the ODP until we started upgrading and optimizing our site. I was told that getting listed would be crucial to our success. So far we are doing quite well without the ODP recognition, but would certainly welcome the compliment of being added. I would suggest placing your energies into improving your site instead of torturing the editors.

May I say "Thank You! You understand!" It's so nice to see posts that aren't beating up the ODP and its editors.

I would suggest placing your energies into improving your site . . .

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Absolutely!

!

DesertJules said:

May I say "Thank You! You understand!" !

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It just seems the majority of these threads are about "why's my site not on ODP" ... or worse "DMOZ is corrupt - I want to be listed" .. very annoying.

Question to DMOZ editors: How many hours per month on average do you volunteer toward the ODP? I think people need to be reminded that your not being paid for your time.


e.

Depends on what's going on in my life. I have multiple real life "stuffs" that conflict with the ODP. Like my regular job, the Army Reserve, my horses, my granddaughter, and my school work (MBA program). So some months it might be as little as an hour (like when I was on active duty for 19 days straight - can you say tired?). Other months it might be as much as 40 hours - especially when we have our marathon weekend editing contests.

You'd have to ask my wife but be prepared for a very loud answer along the lines of "...entirely too long."

If you look at the ODP Reports you can at least see the net change in listings in each month, and the number of active editors.

One could guess that for each net increase of one, there's actually been two sites added, and one removed. So multiply the net increase by three. Then you could say that for each live edit, there's at least one edit behind the scenes (eg moving a site from one unreviewed pile to the unreviewed pile in the correct category). So double it again.

Now say each edit takes at least a couple of minutes on average, that will give you a time spent directly on edits. Now note that editors spend lots of time not doing edits, but working on category re-organsations, mentoring other editors, and discussing things in the forum, posting here. Say we double the direct editing time.

Now divide by the number of active editors, and you'll get an average over all the active editors. It's probably not very meaningful (even if the estimates I've made above were anything like accurate) since most of the work is likely to be done by a small dedicated bunch, with most of the active editors doing far less. But it's a start...

Question to DMOZ editors: How many hours per month on average do you volunteer toward the ODP? I think people need to be reminded that your not being paid for your time.

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Why not pretend to be an editor for an hour and see what you can do in that time?

Find a category (say a locality) with some sub-categories and run through checking the sites - are they still alive? are they still who they say they are? If you find any bad sites, use the 'update url' to report them. Of course, if you feel you have decimated the category as a result, you could look for a couple of good sites and suggest them.

It will give you an insight into some of the behind-the-scenes work that editors can being doing as opposed to just adding sites from the suggestion pool. It can be satisfying especially if the category has not been visited for a while.

regards

Indeed

Yes indeed indeed.

Suppose you want to get an impression of how it feels to process the submittal pool? Simple. Do a Google search for the category name. Scan down the list of results, ignoring any that are obviously from sites much more general than the category.

Treat the rest as if the site were suggested.

"Reality bites." For submitters who think all submittals are pure gold, think instead: they're mostly from SERP perps for the spam du jour -- in fact, they're from the same people who stuff Google with pure marketing doorways. Because spammers don't specialize.

onlineniagara said:

It just seems the majority of these threads are about "why's my site not on ODP" ... or worse "DMOZ is corrupt - I want to be listed" .. very annoying.

Question to DMOZ editors: How many hours per month on average do you volunteer toward the ODP? I think people need to be reminded that your not being paid for your time.


e.

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I became an editor since my last post. There are many sites submitted that don't belong in the category I work. If it was as simple as just adding or deleting sites (which I thought it was) the process would go much faster. So far I have spent hours searching the appropriate categories and moving submissions I have moved 24 sites and added 5..

I agree with the editors

DesertJules said:

May I say "Thank You! You understand!" It's so nice to see posts that aren't beating up the ODP and its editors.

Absolutely!

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(I'm not offending when I capitalize DMOZ it's just because it's like a logo, or abbreviation.)

I understand too just like what the editor said.

Remember before my past name "Hyipo" got banned I said "DMOZ your my only hope."

I don't think I have to get in DMOZ to get high rankings.

Heck I looked up a good ranking site and found out it had more pages then what it was linked to in link popularity. Also the link popularity was less then 30 and ranked good, even better then me and I submited to more sites then they did. Actually the popularity was not as good as hardly any site but still ranked high.

Sorry for being mad at you DMOZ. I was upset and confused and didn't know how to get Google to up my ranks.

I think it is content, unique-ness, and information that makes a site rank high. If all it took was to get into DMOZ to get big every hacker, and spammer would try to get their sites in DMOZ and rank high. I don't think Google would like that. It is how much information you have and how relevant.

DMOZ is just the cherry on top of the cake. Did I graduate DMOZ University?

jr1963 said:

I became an editor since my last post. There are many sites submitted that don't belong in the category I work. If it was as simple as just adding or deleting sites (which I thought it was) the process would go much faster. So far I have spent hours searching the appropriate categories and moving submissions I have moved 24 sites and added 5..

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Wow just like me. I feel your pain. Heck over 1,000 sites got submited to my directory and most submited to lame categories and some even submited to base categories.

We all (DMOZ, and Hyipo Directory) needs a technology where if you submit a site that has nothing to do with that category it scans the descriptions and if the site has nothing to do with that category then it can't be submited.

Point Made

Its been almost a year since I began this thread.. and since that time our site has risen to the top ranks of search engines... and without DMOZ!

So it proves that:

1/ You can still rank well in SERPS without DMOZ - if your site is good

2/ And DMOZ is not necessary going to add you (even after a year lol in our case)


We operate an official tourism site for our city/region, with hundreds of pages of information and content we create ourselves. But we are not listed on DMOZ.

Congratulations, , and it won't hurt to suggest it once more, we did lose a few in the crash we had.

crowbar said:

Congratulations, , and it won't hurt to suggest it once more, we did lose a few in the crash we had.

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A few??

Keep Up The Good Work!

This sort of topic is the very reason I've just stuck an application in to become an editor

I can understand and I'm sure you lot welcome criticism from those in the directory business but not from webmasters. I'm sure those that moan are only those that are tying to submit a website unworthy of the dmoz approval, and generally I'm sure as a rule of thumb their website is probably not one worth visiting.

Keep up the bl**dy good work!

The problems we have come from a misunderstanding/disagreement of our purpose by site owners about who we really serve, which is the web surfer looking for information, not the supplier of the information.