I made a site submission for Dmoz inclusion on the day that your site submit came back online after your recent technical problems , i can appreciate that Dmoz submissions can and do take some time , but ive recently just noticed that the category that i have submitted to hasn't been edited by an editor for approximately five months , i was checking the Dmoz Directory on a regular basis to see if my submission had been included , but on seeing the last edit date , well , lets just say that its a hopeless effort and a complete waste of time , i have read a lot of bad press about Dmoz over the past few months , most of which are written allegations about Dmoz being corrupt , im not doubting the benefits of a Dmoz listing , but things do seem to be a little screwed up around here , inclusions are solely dependent on the editor's of that particular category and the category that i have submitted to looks like its editor's have gone into hibernation , maybe in another five months or so my site inclusion might get reviewed , ive given up all hope and i won't either bother to check the Directory from now on , anyways , it will be interesting to see what happens with Dmoz over the next six months or so , what with Aol making staff redundant , fancy Aol not giving you guys backup servers and more resources to work with , working in Aol's basement must be difficult , anyways , i wish all of you guys at Dmoz the very best of luck for the future.
My Two Peneth
- Thread starter Wref
- Start date
Can I ask you something?
If you believe the bad press (which is 100% dissatisfied webmasters and SEOs), and ODP editors are all corrupt, the system is about to break down, and the Directory will become totally useless in the very near future, why is it that so many are clammoring at the door, as you yourself are?
If you believe the bad press (which is 100% dissatisfied webmasters and SEOs), and ODP editors are all corrupt, the system is about to break down, and the Directory will become totally useless in the very near future, why is it that so many are clammoring at the door, as you yourself are?
crowbar said:
I didn't say that i believe all the things i have read , but some comments i have read seem very feasible.
crowbar said:
Neither did i say that all the editor's are corrupt , but hey , all tree's have bad apples , and your very nieve if you think otherwise.
crowbar said:
A listing in the ODP has its benefits , any fool can see that , but my honest opinion is that the page rankings and the listings in some search engines (Google Primaryly) would be much more accurate and more fairly ranked without the ODP and its intervention.
My honest opinion is that you're wrong.
Neither one of us can have an opinion that matters a whit, though: every website owner has an absolute right to decide what influences he will pursue, tolerate, avoid, or counterbalance; and what contributions he will solicit, accept, or reject. You have that right on your own website; Sergei and Brin decide for Google; the ODP sponsor has the final say for dmoz.org.
And, of course, each surfer (whether a contributor to cooperative projects or not; whether website owner or not) has the right to visit whichever sites seem skewed closest to his own interests.
If you feel the ODP isn't skewed to your interests, don't surf it -- there are a hundred million other sites to visit. If you feel the ODP exercises a baleful influence, then design your site to counteract that influence (for all the surfers who might agree with you -- and even if that's only a tenth of one percent of the world's population, it's still an audience of millions!) You'll know you're successful when people begin complaining about the influence you have.
Neither one of us can have an opinion that matters a whit, though: every website owner has an absolute right to decide what influences he will pursue, tolerate, avoid, or counterbalance; and what contributions he will solicit, accept, or reject. You have that right on your own website; Sergei and Brin decide for Google; the ODP sponsor has the final say for dmoz.org.
And, of course, each surfer (whether a contributor to cooperative projects or not; whether website owner or not) has the right to visit whichever sites seem skewed closest to his own interests.
If you feel the ODP isn't skewed to your interests, don't surf it -- there are a hundred million other sites to visit. If you feel the ODP exercises a baleful influence, then design your site to counteract that influence (for all the surfers who might agree with you -- and even if that's only a tenth of one percent of the world's population, it's still an audience of millions!) You'll know you're successful when people begin complaining about the influence you have.
I agree that in a way, the current state of odp makes it that way. I think the fundamental question is, "How to remedy the current situation?"
ODP started with great mission and worked well, but when some people started to abuse it in one way or another, together with the overwhelming growth of number of sites, then it started to breakdown.
I believe some people inside are thinking hard on how to address this... dmoz/aol will surely need time, or maybe solution is being developed, hence the extended period of "closed for editor application".
OK, it's another speculation, i know the mods don't really like speculations.
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This is the most naive and ignorant posting I have ever seen.Wref said:
Didn't you mean: "the page rankings and the listings in some search engines (Google Primaryly) would be much more accurate and more fairly ranked without SEO"
Ofcourse if you are a SEO person or webmaster and only interested in manipulating search engine rankings your statement would be true.
crowbar said:
Well , i would say that almost everyone with a listing in the ODP is a webmaster in some respect , lol.
crowbar said:
I have never had a listing in the ODP or been refused , or had any dealings with the ODP until now , and what policies have i tried to get around ? , none me thinks , im just unhappy that the category that i have submitted to has no active editor's , hence any inclusion seems very unlikely , it sounds like you yourself have lost faith and have also become very bitter with it.
simonjq said:
I thought that the editor applications were closed because they haven't been fixed yet after the recent technical issues , but if that is the case then that won't solve anything.
wref said:
This is what causes my discontent.
pvgool said:
You have completely lost me with that comment , SEO = Search Engine Optimization , that could be as little as adding a META tag or a bit of extra ALT text to accompany an image on a site , im talking about the influence that the ODP has on the results in search engines (Google Primaryly) , man this forum is funny , hehe.
Cool! Then you don't know that just because a category has no resident editor, doesn't mean it doesn't get edited. The editors in higher categories can also edit in any category beneath them.
For instance, I edit at the US level, so I have permissions in every category within the United States, in all 50 states, and there are over 200 editors who can edit in all parts of the Directory.
You would be correct,
, I'd love to have more editors working with me. In fact, I'm mentoring 6 newer editors now, to get them higher editing permissions.That's a bit backwards. We don't intervene in anything. How a data user chooses to use our data is up to them; it's nothing we control or would want to control. If you think that Google's search results would be more accurate without any use of ODP data, then you need to talk to them, not us.
Naw. If I were bitter or no longer believed in what we're doing, there's a big, red button I could push,
. None of us have to be editors, and none of us have to come to this forum and listen to some of the guff we get handed, or stand here and get insulted.I'm married, so I'm kinda used to it,
.crowbar said:
Well thats nice to know , would have been more helpful if you pointed this out in your first post.
motsa said:
Lets face facts here , 95% of the people that do submit to the ODP are solely doing so for improved results in search engines (Again - Primaryly Google) , why Google uses the ODP is hard to understand , Aol search is nothing without Google and Google sure as hell doesn't need the ODP to excel and survive , but the fact is that the ODP listings effect the rankings in several top search engines and if you oblivious to that then im lost for words.
Point taken, sometimes it's hard to remember that posters don't know as much about the ODP as an editor does.
Google is in the search engine business and doesn't want to be a Directory, that's probably why their Directory is a mirror of the ODP.
The ODP is in the Directory business and doesn't want to be a search engine.
So, the two kind of compliment each other, I think.
Most editors use the Google search, I use it a lot, along with other things.
Google is in the search engine business and doesn't want to be a Directory, that's probably why their Directory is a mirror of the ODP.
The ODP is in the Directory business and doesn't want to be a search engine.
So, the two kind of compliment each other, I think.
Most editors use the Google search, I use it a lot, along with other things.
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No, it would have been helpful if you would have read the FAQ (There's no editor for my category - will my suggestion ever get reviewed?) and other postings about the same subject before asking us a question that has been asked 100ths of times before.Wref said:
It is not that we are oblivious but that we know we can't influence how other people are using our data. And most editors also don't care about that so called major influence we are suspected to have.Wref said:
If you are having problems with how Google is using DMOZ data you must complain to them. They can change the way they use our data, we can't.
This is my last post , posting here was just a waste of my time , you guys are just waiting to flame any negative comments by the looks of it , perhaps you guys could spend more of your time editing your Directory , more action and less chat is what the ODP needs , anyways , i can't write anymore , i might get confused for someone who actually cares about all this bs.
The information is readily available in the forum's FAQs.
Where did I write anything about whether or not ODP listings affect rankings? We do what we do, which is build a human-edited directory. And Google (for example) does what they want to do with our data. We do not have control over what that is. If you have problems with how Google or any other data user uses the ODP data, then you need to take it up with them, not us. Them. Not us.