This is a good example of dmoz needing to be cleaned.
While I do not think that corruption is the correct word for what's going on in that folder I do believe it shows a very good example of the flaws of the dmoz project. I can agree that it's frustrating when you can't get a great site placed in a category where half of the pages listed do not exist any longer and the ones that do have not been updated for 5 years and it looks like the site was constructed by a 3rd grader. Look below for a summary of that category and let me know if this is the quality that dmoz is trying to convey to its users. Then look at this from the user's view and let me know if you think this category will benefit the users looking for "Internet Browser Accessories."
Ad Blockers Software - Deep link to low quality shopping site (lots of missing images because instead of hosting the images on their server they hotlinked all of the software logos and screenshots. Once the site removes the images or changes them they do not show on the website.) that is nowhere close to a site like
http://www.download.com/Plug-ins/3150-2378_4-0.html
Bonzi Buddy - A epinions page that reviews Bonzi Buddy, (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonzi_Buddy) a program that was discontinued in 2004 and considered spyware. It made it to the top 10 most annoying tech products by PCWorld readers. The current link on the epinions page to the supposed Bonzi Buddy page is a spam page that has real content for users and has nothing to do with bonzi buddy or Internet Browser Accessories. It's also blacklisted from google and they have removed the page rank for the site even though there are over 4000+ backlinks.
Browsers/Gator - Is another epinions page that reviews a spyware program called gator (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claria_Corporation). This program was discontinued in 2006 and the company even changed their name to Claria Corporation because of the terrible reputation the company had. So not only does this program not exist any longer it was a program that would change the banners of the sites you were visiting with their own ads effectively taking revenue from the sites you visited. In June of 2002 they were sued by The New York Post, The New York Times, and Dow Jones & Company for its practice of replacing ads. Most of the lawsuits were settled out of court
yodlee com - Yet another epinions page that is actually for a real company that implements account aggregation and other online financial services. It's technically not an Internet Browser Accessory and they actually create solutions for banks not consumers so a better fit might be
http://dmoz.org/Business/Financial_Services/Banking_Services/Online_Banking/ Having it under "home" and "consumer information" doesn't make sense because it's not something that is directed towards consumers. It's like if I created the server structure for amazon.com and my site was listed under
http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Publications/Books/
I would like to better the directory project by removing the spam and adding quality sites that are 100% matched to the category. I think that if the directory was cleaned up and quality, relevant sites were added regularly the site could get back out of its slump and start benefiting users again. People just want to find what they are looking for and if dmoz can provide it then you might see a shift from the search engines back to the directories as directories have a human element that the search engines cannot compete with. I wouldn't mind becoming an editor and giving back to dmoz as I used to use the site daily for my searches and only stopped after a large number of searches resulted in holding pages for expired domains. Unfortunately It seems that when I submit an application it does not even get reviewed.
