I'm completely new to this, so naturally I have an opinion:
* The Internet connects everything, making the world seem much smaller, but the Net itself is a huge and sprawling enterprise.
* Any group that attempts to organize *everything* on the Internet into a single index has taken on an enormous task.
As the old Barbara Kruger artwork says, "It's a small world, but not if you have to clean it."
* The one thing that the Internet has in great abundance is content. The one thing that it most lacks is human eyes to read, review and categorize that content. Even more rare are objective sets of eyes, attached to minds, attached to fingers. Even Google, with all of its sophisticated indexing methods, cannot duplicate this human input, which is why it relies upon sites like ODP.
* Because there is so much content, each little piece of it clamors for the approval of those so generous or foolish as to give such noisy children attention and a name.
* Because we are in a state of transition from animals who evolved through a process of natural selection to a society that evolves through its symbol systems, there are still those among us who attempt to compete in a Darwinian manner by manipulating the symbol systems that represent our more recent way of evolving. Martin Luther King called this "survival of the slickest." This complicates and aggravates the task of organizing the world's symbolic information. Hey, I like to see things in context.
* Due to all of the above, locating one's self at an informational control point such as this index is like attempting to precisely aim a firehose while fending off both pickpockets and frantic homeowners who would like to have it aimed in their direction.
So much for empathy. It's a tough job, and nobody has to do it, and paying people to do it would compromise objectivity, so that's why we have volunteers.
On the other hand, in matters involving the Web, with great power comes great responsibility. Many people are impacted by the decisions made by ODP's volunteers. The volunteers are a relatively small group that makes a large per-person contribution of time, but their efforts impact upon a much larger group of people who have invested significant effort in producing the content that is what the Web (and the ODP) are really all about.
So, from the other side of the coin, anything that can be *easily* done that would make it more efficient for this very large group to interact with the ODP (without compromising the ODP's mission), should, in an ideal world, be done. In other words, just because there are thousands of annoying people out there who will attempt to abuse every chink in the ODP's armor doesn't mean that there should be *no* positive (albeit one-way) confirmation of status for the hundreds of thousands of basically decent content providers.
I've read the FAQ on this topic at
http://www.resource-zone.com/forum/faq.php?faq=status_faq_item#faq_which_cat , and understand the objections to providing status as being:
1. Limited programming resources for providing such a facility
2. Limited server capacity for handling status requests
3. The possibility that giving a submitter a definite answer when a site is rejected, while perhaps more respectful of them as persons, might cause them to re-submit more frequently, thereby consuming ODP resources.
None of the listed objections would seem to pertain to the following suggested status facilities, which involve minimal programming, no ability for submitters to initiate status requests, and a minimum interval (to be chosen by ODP, and enforced automatically) before a re-submission can be attempted after a rejection:
* First, a new suggestion confirmation page to replace the present one, along with a matching, automatically-generated email (redundant, but providing a more permanent record) at the point of submission, containing:
1. Notice that the suggestion was received
2. A paragraph describing the average time that it has taken to process a suggestion in the past (over, say the prior year), as well as
the longest time it has taken, and also the shortest time it has taken
3. Notice that a single email will be sent when the suggested site is either accepted or rejected, that no other message will be sent, and that no appeal will be possible, but that a rejected site may be re-submitted after a certain interval (say, one year), if it has been substantially changed from when it was originally submitted. The emailed notice should come from the same email address from which the status notice will originate, so that users can be instructed to place that address onto the "allowed" list of their respective spam filters.
4. An admonishment not to attempt to re-contact ODP regarding the submission, accompanied by a brief description of the nature of ODP, and why it is necessary to limit such interactions.
The above would give submitters a general idea of what to expect, which, given the necessary lack of interaction between ODP and submitters during the significant interval between submission and an ODP decision, should help people to remain calm during that time.
My second suggestion would be:
* Automatic generation of a standard email triggered by a reviewer's decision, whenever it occurs, indicating:
1. Whether the suggestion has been approved or refused
2. A statement that it is ODP's policy not to discuss the specific reasons for approval or refusal, because of the danger that this could result in inappropriate or temporary changes intended only to garner ODP approval
3. The minimum time that must elapse before a substantially-changed site may be re-submitted
4. An admonishment not to attempt to re-contact ODP regarding the submission, accompanied by a brief description of the nature of ODP, and why it is necessary to limit such interactions.
This world of Web meta-information is just opening up to me, and I try to understand things at a deep level, so I hope the above is not as tedious for you as it is interesting to me. It would be amazing if someone with as little experience as I have in this area could come up with suggestions that haven't already been considered and rejected, but maybe the angels are too afraid to tread here, so I thought I would give it a shot.
Thanks, by the way, to all of the volunteers for their efforts in this apparently much-needed area.
