My wishes/features for DMOZ

I feel that DMOZ have a lot of lacks regarding Human Editors and programming behind.
When I say this, I based on my experience with DMOZ and as an retired editor. (but reapply soon
What I observed and I don't like it ... (probabbly most of this was discussed)

If you submit a site, you expect to have a history about what is happened with your site.
For example I submitted my site and I gived out my e-mail address (in case they needed).
This e-mail address will be never used to notify me about my page, about the status of the page, about why was rejected, or if was approved.
So nothing about feedback to site owner.

1. I think is not to hard to DMOZ to send out a mail when a page is approved with link to check if is OK.

2. To send out a mail when an editor reviewed a site and made comment (and check if is public to site owner or just for internal use.

3. To send out a mail when site was rejected, moved to another category, or delayed for some reason.

4. To send out a mail when DMOZ robots find site with problem (not work and delisted)

Opinion?
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Valics Lehel
http://www.grafxsoftware.com
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It seems unlikely that the very limited development resources would be best served by writing such routines.

You will also probably remember from your time as an editor, all the internal discussions which usually conclude that many (not all) of the things your suggest would not be beneficial to ODP editors or its users.

That is not to say they would not be beneficial to OPD submitters and watchful webmasters So here is a suggestion.

Take a weekly copy of the RDF. Compare it with the previous weeks. Email everyone concerned about changes. That way, you can do 90% of what you want without waiting 1 minute for the OPD to do anything.

Re: "everyone concerned" All you'd really need to do is maintain a list of (let's call them) ODP-watchers -- those people who want to know about certain classes of change.

This is a topic that has been discussed several times here at R-Z as well as internally. One important reason why automatic email notification is not likely to happen is the sheer volume of messages that would have to be sent out. Several thousand new sites are added to the directory every day. Every time the robot checker checks the sirectory many, many thousands of listed sites are flagged as being unreachable. And as for the numbers of sites being rejected every day, I don't even want to venture a guess. DMOZ is very popular with the spammers...

So even if there were no other objections to the suggestion, the immense amount of server resources that would be taken up by the incessant chugging out of email messages - messages that in 99% of the cases would not be of any interest to the recipient - would make it impossible.

incessant chugging out of email messages - messages that in 99% of the cases would not be of any interest to the recipient

Click to expand...

That would be "spam".

Let's not.

Exactly, it's not just emailing the submitter, it's adding an entire authentication process to ensure it's opt-in email, and dealing with the complaints of people who decide that they no longer want to get emails, and can't figure out how to unsubscribe. And all the spam complaints from those who totally forgot they subscribed to the service in the first place.

And then desling with the complaints and arguments of submitters who get a message saying their site has been declined - it's a scary thought.

>2. To send out a mail when an editor reviewed a site and made comment (and check if is public to site owner or just for internal use.

See below.

>3. To send out a mail when site was rejected, moved to another category, or delayed for some reason.

You cannot possibly imagine how absolutely and fundamentally important to the ODP's integrity that this is NEVER done.

Because ... what's the single biggest problem with the ODP? Simple. It's submitter spam. (Corrupt editors, a distant second or third, are merely the submitter spammers that slip inside.) And how big a problem is that? Most submittals, in fact, are spam. A significant number of them are inveterate repeat spammers. Quite often we can spot many of their submittals because they are so stupid. Do we want them knowing how quickly, how, or where we spot their submittals, so they'll go try to think of something more devious? It would add orders of magnitude to the effort we have to go through to reject these scum.

The day this kind of notification happens, is day the ODP dies of spam overflow. Can you imagine a rate of spam 5 to 10 times what editors can handle? Single submitters sending in 500 to 1000 pages a day just out of vicious maliciousness at a site that doesn't promote their slimy garbage? No, it is critical that spammers NOT know their sites are rejected.

>4. To send out a mail when DMOZ robots find site with problem (not work and delisted)

When the website is GONE, man: who are you going to call? Ghostbusters?

But this is the kind of service that you, or anyone, could do, IF IT WERE REALLY WORTHWHILE. Just download the RDF every week. Let the webmasters register a URL and an e-mail address -- check every week and send them mail.

Go ahead, do it. We won't stop you. In fact, it's probably a unique service, so we'd mention it in your site's listing. But most editors have many other things that the ODP technical staff could do, that would make their work easier and the directory better -- and, of course, this is obviously not a service for surfers (it's for webmasters), so it probably doesn't fall within the ODP charter.