Is DMOZ dead?

Uhmm.. i think I did provide a few answers to your questions, didn't "attack" you, and was quite clear and straightforward. But you slipped out (or back) to your original question/suggestion without providing an answer to my points. In any case, I am willing to provide an answer to your first (and last) ones.

>> If it’s commercial content, it should be reviewed by a paid professional, not a volunteer (no matter their length of time in the ODP).

No, since it's simply against the very purpose of the ODP, that is being a volunteer-based community of editors. This would be the same as suggesting that Google should start ranking sites by alphabetical order and not using anymore PR as part of his algo, or Overture should become free (why not? I am sure a lot of people would like it).
ODP was founded and grew to its present size as a volunteer-based directory, like it or not, and it won't change its purpose and main structure. Also, having paid professionals reviewing sites wouldn't be a solution to the problems you outlined: what makes a paid professional less biased than a non-paid editor, if bias is the issue? What is the difference between a professional SEO who is also editor and edits for free and the same editor hired by Netscape and paid to review sites? Does he become more "professional" when he knows that he's paid? Does this eliminate abuse/bias, which looks like being one of your main concerns?

>> If it’s non-commercial then allow it to be edited by volunteers and weed out the obvious SEO’s.

Why weeding out the "obvious SEOs" ? If an editor reviews sites and his editing complies with the Guidelines he can be a webmaster, an SEO, a Web designer, or my uncle Ben, he's welcome. OTOH, no matter which is the profession of an editor and which sites are to be reviewed, weeding out the obvious *abusers* is what metas do every day. I don't want to be harsh more than needed, but the very fact that you have been removed means that you have been caught abusing, not that you have been caught as being an "obvious SEO". And you know better.

And yes, you can try to sneak in with different heads, until you are caught again (abusing, or just being a retread of an abuser), and then sneak in again, and continue this game. Uhmmm... may I ask for what reason? Is this what you call being an SEO ? Notice that your behaviour not only harmed you (in the possibility of doing a good job listing sites and contributing to the growth of the directory), but might harm your clients listing as well: sites belonging to abusive editors who tried to list doorways, mirrors, inappropriate deeplinks etc. may be removed from the directory as per our Guidelines. And this -- you should know -- is against the ethics of professional SEO.

Sorry, I didn't mean to be offensive!

>> If it’s commercial content ...

--- both you and ettore have valid points behind the free "open" aspects of DMOZ. Thus, not paying for commercial reviewers. I see your point more clearly now.

My point is that it is sad that so many quality submissions remain unreviewed / or get denied because many editors are bias in their reviews, be they SEO's or whatever you wish to label them.

It is also very sad that DMOZ is falling in popularity, steady for the last 6 mths (excluding Google).

To be honest the two cates i lost where not so much becuase of my "spamming,doorway pages, mirrors, cloaking,etc" (- ettore i have not used any of this in over two years, but i will admit to using all of it prior) rather than the other editors in like cates, the entire area(s) where cleared, all editors removed. I'm sure i was not a big help, i complained as much as i could. None-the-less, again i left being a SEO (as i finished up my 1st steps of college), and otherwise I'am rather bored with where the Internet is headed in the first place. I kind of see it (the Internet) like a new frontier a place where anyone can succeed with hard work - but that just isn't the case anymore, take Excite for instance, at one time it used DMOZ, now its all PPC, kind of sad.

I very much agree Yahoo is a poor directory, filled with poor results, but it shows you what non internet related advertising can accomplish.

If not paid editors for commercial content, how about more strict rules for edits, like each editor is required to login a min. of once a month, to help avoid placid cates.

Does anyone understand where i am coming from? Again, my biggest hope is that the big guys see this, and do something, or honestly DMOZ is a sitting victim for the next failed .ORG (rather than .Com). To me (and personal gain) it matters very little (in fact Nil), but i like the principles of DMOZ, LINUX and every other like company. I can not be alone in my belief -- not in this forum.

To make most of you happy Im going to cease now because, what this has become is a great way for others to attack me as a person.

I hope im wrong about the future of DMOZ, but if im not all the editors who read this now (and the numbers are getting very high) will remember they could have tried to make DMOZ last!

It's not my experience (pushing 3 years as an editor) that others are deleting sites out of bias (though a few do). It's unfair to make such a broad accusation, and it's wrong, too.

Fair enough - I hope Im wrong!

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr><p>I made a valid point, what i have recieved is alot of editors looking the other way at very real issue!<p><hr></blockquote>You (from my point of view) come in and say "You ODP editors are corrupt and incompetent". What, exactly, would not "looking the other way" be? Slapping our foreheads and saying "Gosh, you're right! We never realized it until you pointed it out to us! We'll right now start reforming!"?

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr><p>To all of those meta, edit all's, I say -- you know exactly what it is I’m talking about,<p><hr></blockquote>Why would those metas and edit-alls put so much time and effort into ODP if they knew what bad shape the ODP was in? Are all of them secretly SEOs, or taking bribes from SEOs?

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr><p>I SAID WITHOUT GOOGLE, DMOZ IS DEAD!!!! - Look today for instance the results on AOL, owner of DMOZ, now use Google versus the straight ODP dump, now take a wild guess why<p><hr></blockquote>Because DMOZ is a directory, which is different from a search engine. If you want to find pages which talk about, say, boycotts and restraint of trade, searching through the titles and descriptions of a directory isn't going to do you any good, nor a search on raising centipedes; Google, on the other hand, is great for searches like that. Of course, that brings up the question of what good any directory is, when Google is so great, but that's a different topic.

&gt;&gt;Honestly I am trying here but no matter how many times i read the post by Hutcheson, i see nothing written sarcastic, and i think I'am good judge of satire.&lt;&lt;

To me hutcheson's post was obviously sarcastic...and would be to you also if you read the guidelines deeply and oftent.

&gt;&gt;Not to mention if i remember correctly (on an application its not recommended that you say your a SEO, esp. if have a real desire to obtain the editoral position).&lt;&lt;

The worst thing you can do is lie about your business affiliations on the join form. Just because you have affiliations doesn't mean you won't get accepted. I am a living example of this. I had two affiliates in the cat I joined with, and even listed the one I owned myself for a while. AFAIK, that part of the form is just so that the metas don't see these sites being abused.
My2Cents

"It's not what you're saying, it's how you're saying it. Remember the old adage about catching flies with honey, not vinegar? "

That's very true, it perhaps indicates implicately, rather than explicately that apeuro recognises what the problem is.

I guess the difficulty is that catching the flies with honey takes a long time, first they have to find the honey.

If web professionals (I avoid using SEOs) find it difficult to get sites placed because of unreviewed queues and/or an incumbant editor riding shotgun over a large category, then becoming an editor in itself does not solve the problem (unless one has the time to rise to meta).

The only other alternatives appear to be to "rant" in public or to supply information about the "problem" editor(s). Trouble is that removing problem editors takes time, as someone once said !!

The root of the problem is that the web is too big for either paid editors (viz Yahoo) or volunteer editors (viz DMOZ) to keep up with the demand for reviews. Yahoo cannot afford more editors and DMOZ cannot get enough (honest) free ones

Under the circumstances DMOZ does a good job, but is by no way perfect (doubt if it would claim to be). However the unreviwed queue is an astronomically large number, and there are still too many editors with overtly vested interests.

So as for me, I'll keep filing the abuse reports (sorry about that apeuro)

If it makes you feel better, you're not alone. Fired, abusive editors have been declaring the ODP irrelevant, or on the verge of irrelevance, literally for years.

I was just thumbing through DMOZ.org, and I noticed a link to this forum. Nice Topic! I have to add my 2 cents. I think Pastedits brings up some valid points, and Ettore, and Hutcheson do as well. Although, what is the point of editors comments like Arlarson? I did not read anywhere that anyone declared that the ODP was "irrelevant", now on the verge of irrelevance that is speculation. It is my opinion if Yahoo goes down, I would be very worried for the DMOZ as well. Yahoo at least has profitability behind it to leverage its position, and from what I have read in the above posts DMOZ does not / can not. I might be wrong here, but Pastedits brings up a valid concern "Less and Less engines are using..." - it might be better said that less are using the dump as its sole source of web site data. All in all its going to be a fun ride, as with all of the Internet world, "the only guarantee is that there are no guarantees". My vote says DMOZ will prevail!

If you didn't understand my comments, perhaps you didn't read them carefully.

In any event, if Yahoo "goes down" (and there is no reason to expect that it will "go down"), the ODP will be the only remaining comprehensive, human-edited directory. It would be quite peculiar for the ODP to fail solely because the only comparable service disappeared - most enterprises dream for a day when they have no competition.

http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=monopoly

&gt;&gt;So as for me, I'll keep filing the abuse reports (sorry about that apeuro)

There are many kinds of volunteers. Well-documented, valid (or at least plausible) abuse reports are perhaps not liked but are truly appreciated. We'll take all of them you can generate.

What hutcheson said.

Why does it seem that a great amount of people that can't get their sites listed in a month or two due to backlog or it simply being inappropriate immediately think its because of an abusive editor?

So let me get this straight. We have a complaint that ODP is plagued by corrupt and/or incompetent editors, who are keeping the poor oppressed SEOs down. This complaint is lodged by a former editor who admits to:

1) Lying on application forms.
2) Creating numerous forged identities.

And he has the nerve to complain that meta editors and other high-level editors don't have time to quickly review all the sites he and others like him have submitted. If we didn't have to spend so much time hunting down and cleaning up after self-serving/abusive editors such as himself, we'd have a lot more time to spend on more constructive tasks. Funny how that works...

&gt;&gt;"And he has the nerve to complain"
- How do you know I’ am a HE?

BTW - I'm still an editor and there are many more of us. I didn't SEO, Spam or trash my cates I submitted about 95% others sites, to 5% my own - the main cate was cleared of editors, one of the positions I never even used! No responses where ever given to the reasons they where cleared, but I think I know why, other "bad" editors (that don’t exist)

Now do you think the problem exists just in my mind, considering DMOZ hosts over 50k editors, and only a very small percentage have read this post.

At best do any of the current editors really personally know the other editors more than just a few close email - (pen) pals? OWWW MASS ANARCHY (sorry, I couldn’t resist)

You all are saying this issue doesn't exist, it does! I'm proving it as we write in this forum. You’re just not listening.

&gt;&gt; 1) Lying on application forms.
2) Creating numerous forged identities.

- These are easy tasks at best, It was actually other editors who taught me how, scary!
-
- Should I list the principles, oh wait no need you have forums like this which outline the do's and don't as jokes, just read between the lines and a SEO can become an editor. VERY EASY! I did it a half a dozen times. I like my existing cates, I do not plan to lose them (I quietly hope they get some actual power) As far as breaking the guidelines goes for having multiple accounts, I could care less, I mean really do any of you self proclaimed saints every not where a seat belt, or occasionally drive over the speed limit! You guys have got to come off the holier than thou trip. I’m not abusing the cates so technically I’m not doing anything harmful (I dint say wrong I said harmful – according to guidelines it is wrong) I merely took out the approval process by big brother this way there is no need to request more permissions. ß Now that’s honesty

Look at what I have written, I thought I was subtle about it, but I already admitted I was wrong, I am an EX - SEO (a loser, or whatever else you wish to call me) Still the fact remains that this issue that by some miracle you "editors, metas, editalls" say doesn't exist – IT DOES! Stop fooling yourself! DMOZ is slow at reviews, and that fact has little to do with weeding out SEO's (I mean delancey - why weed out what doesn't truly exist according to all of the other above metas). Every meta who has posted to this forum in this post has contradicted the previous meta’s statement. The question is --- Is DMOZ dead?

Corruption is part of society, you think because its the Internet it doesn’t exist, -- no? -- What planet are you guys on? It's the Ying and the Yang. How could any of you "editors" think you’re good if you had no one bad to compare yourself to? This isn't rocket science, I'm simply attempting to fix a problem, and I think I’m going to accomplish it! Keep screaming ... but like I said less and less are using DMOZ, due to backlogs, slow erroneous results and many of the other numerous facts these treads at resource-zone.com pertain to. AND DMOZ IS FREE! Now that’s a bad sign. In the past DMOZ was the leading directory along side Yahoo! and the results where trusted as stand alone, not any longer, even AOL uses the formulas Google has created, that’s your parent company, and that is a slap in the face to anyone who thinks they are actually accomplishing something by editing a title or description, as it stands your efforts are worthless any further than rounding up URL's -- great! But I am admitting I was wrong, and from my stand point I kind of now -- want more (now I’ am demanding - funny), meaning more real power, maybe I do not deserve it, but what about the editors like you all say you are, don't you guys deserve to be more than URL fetchers!

I don’t want to be vicious here, I understand you catch more flies with honey, but this is a dense crowd! Its kind of getting fun to gang up on idiot me here, but what I’ am saying isn’t entirely out of line! It’s a very legit ODP ISSUE, posted in the correct forum, and it’s real! Address it! Forgive me for being cut throat but I am trying to make a very small point, and my character has been repeatedly attacked, and I will remind you -- you wouldn’t know me as an editor or a person, even if I were seemingly a close friend (pen pal) of some of yours.

For all DMOZ's faults, they are easily mitigated, if not outweighed, by the dedication and ethics shown by the majority of serious contributors, excluding the "once a month" editors. It appears to be editors with your lack of altruistically principled ethics and myopic vision, who can't see the forest for the trees, that worry more about their listings than the greater purpose of the ODP. Your self-centeredness and greed usurp any legitimacy in your argument. You are part of ODP's problem, and I hope they weed you out soon.

You've no right to belittle the work of so many good people you don't even know.

DMOZ is not dead, it's simply that your days there are obviously numbered. You don't fit in, pal. You're an anachronism. Live with it and move on to your next scam.

OK, you can pat yourself on the back for acheiving one more reply to your preposterous and egotistical original posting.

Now let's close this Romper Room thread!

It's a known syndrome that people who are corrupt and only care about themselves believe everyone else is that way too. Trolls tend to care less about the issues and more about how they make people react. There is no point to closing this thread because the posts made in it by pastedits make little sense and present little evidence to back up his claims. Few people have paid much attention to it, and we have no wish to silence anyone that is not being disruptive.

Consider, to keep the referenced multiple account, he will have to do very little editing and keep from attracting attention to them. Ask yourself what point there is to having multiple account you can barely edit with, when most competent editors rapidly rise within the category structure and go on to become part of a team of editors doing their best to work together civilly.

So far, pastedits' posts have lacked credibility to me, but if he wishes to continue to post his views on the matter in this thread, then he is welcome to. I will have to trust that the viewing public will get out of them exactly what I have.