news letter/ can it be true ?

AmokEnt said:

Some editors clearly do not follow these guidelines.

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And when they do not, and abuse is reported with factual information, they are investigated and removed. That's the point of a human edited system like dmoz with editalls and metas.

From your posts, I believe this alleged abuse has been reported previously, investigated, and determined to not be abuse.

jokaroo said:

Did I miss something. There is no nudity there? And you are talking about a user submit on a message board? Are you honestly comparing the links I sent you to this?

lol. Clearly there is something wrong.

We have 8 moderators, but we get 1000's of posts a day. There is some sort of adult aspect located on EVERY popular message board in the country. We do our best to remove ALL nudity and adult content.

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That's what you don't get, it's not about comparison, it's about your site, your content, and the guidelines. I didn't even look at big-boys.com - I just looked to see if you met the criteria or not.

I'm not an editor, by the way, and don't have any sites listed in dmoz. So take my advice for what it is, free.

The adult guidelines, for reference, are posted here: http://dmoz.org/guidelines/adult/general.html

I'm not an editor, by the way

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But you were ... and you know the whole story about the site and why it was not listed.

The question of Adult content is to some extent subjective. I have sites that I would send to Adult and other editors would disagree with me, and not consider them adult content.

For both of these sites there were differences of opinion and many editors were involved. Sometimes editors will not have the same opinion.

I would however suggest, that most editors would agree that continued spamming of the directory may be considered harassing editors and may have dire results for you.

http://www.big-boards.com/highlight/978/ Adult humor message boards

jokaroo, as for your claim that your site was removed from the ODP, anyone can check for themselves and judge your credibility. (I don't know why people tell us things they know we can check!)

As for your claim that your thread here was deleted, it still remains in the Adult forum, where all threads on whether sites belong in adult belong. If you wish to continue discussing it, you will have to continue in the original thread.

bobrat][B]But you were[/B said:

...

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No, I have never been an editor.

I believe that jokaroo was, however, and was removed.

AmokEnt, I also deleted a post of yours describing a situation. I'll say again what I told you before: You made matters worse, and are still making matters worse, by your continual exercise of every form of abuse in the catalog.

The investigation of issues you raised (that is, regarding multiple doorway-sites in Humor categories, which appears to me to at least have strong potential to be a genuine problem) proceeds apace. It will not proceed faster if you badger editors more: in fact, I'd say the primary roadblock right now on that (aside from the ubiquitous volunteer time) is your importunacy. At this point, if the meta-editors (who, by the way, are NOT competing with you) decided to remove all of your sites solely for spamming, it would be an easy decision to justify. So ... try doing what I suggested before -- the message has been heard, all you can do now is convince the volunteers that working on ANYTHING else would be better than having to deal with your spam.

<added later>Amokent, what you need to do now is ... nothing. That will be best for you, and best for us. I told you, multiple times, that the issue was going to require editor discussion to reach a consensus as to how doorway sites in Humor categories should be treated. I can tell you that the general trend is to be increasingly intolerant of deeplinks and vanity domains, that this trend is most visible in heavily-spammed categories (which you have made your personal mission to see that the Humor categories are) and that it is applied (like everything else in the ODP) in an order that seems to be random and is certainly not within your control, except that sites that distinguish themselves by current spamming behavior tend to see the new rules first.

So: stop spamming. You cannot force an editor to work to your time schedule, and that is a feature, not a problem (from the editing community's point of view). You can be enough of a pest to force the community to shun you -- and I don't know that you haven't already done that. (If so, it hasn't been implemented yet.)

You may think of the delay, long as it is, as ... a penalty box amply deserved by your persistent spamming. The less you continue to spam, the less time it will take. (We are not YET thinking of the delay that way. We're thinking, "ugh, do I want to deal with this mess tonight?" But the less mess you continue to create, the less mess we'll have to clean up.)

larryt - I agree [it was not you I was talking about] - the thread is kind of broken up right now with missing posts

Amokent, a further reply -- and it should be obvious to all why I am NOT e-mailing!

What is "bait and switch"?

In retailing, it's when you offer one product and then provide another. And obviously the same thing can be done on websites -- and it's illegal.

Nearly always, when WE say "B&S", we mean something slightly different.

We mean a website that had content, that we reviewed and listed, and then the person changed the content to something else that we obviously would not have listed, or would not have listed there.

The editors' reaction is often to hunt out and remove every listing having anything to do with the modified site. The more experienced the editor, the greater the zeal with which this witch hunt is pursued. You may not have committed the legal offense -- and if you had, we wouldn't care.

It's the other offense that gets you a reputation that you cannot live down.

larryt - I agree [it was not you I was talking about] - the thread is kind of broken up right now with missing posts

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The confusion arises from having a quote from larryt's post immediately prior to your comment about someone having been an editor.

spectregunner said:

Frankly, a lot of these DMOZ haters need to go get a life

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Silly statement considering you have no idea who you are talking to.

I'm not attacking you (or anyone) personally so there's no need for that. I'm not a DMOZ hater by any stretch if you read my original post properly. Thankfully from what i see so far, your condescnding "treat them as kids" attitude is not indicative of too many others in your position.

spectregunner said:

See, this is where some of this kind of stuff gets started. A site owner looks at his or her logs, see an etry from DMOZ that only visited one page, and jumps to some totally erroneous conclusions.

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My site got rejected with the comment "the reviews do not reflect personal views" almost immediately after that "one hit" appeard in the log! It was the only hit (at that time) in the log from the DMOZ script and while it is always possible that the editor logged on from somewhere else to check it out, the rejection comment is not in line with the facts.

larryt said:

And when they do not, and abuse is reported with factual information, they are investigated and removed. That's the point of a human edited system like dmoz with editalls and metas.

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The proof was reported several times through the abuse system several weeks ago. But the meta editor "investigating" it claims it takes weeks to investigate whether the 3 major claims against these 2 editors is true, when it takes less than 5 minutes to validate it.

In my previous post in this thread, I explained the situation without mentioning any webmaster's names, any site names, and Dmoz category names, or any editor names. That clearly did not violate the rules of this forum, and yet the post was deleted anyway, simply because the case presented in it was obvious corruption to anyone who read it.

It seems to defeat the purpose of this forum, if valid complaints are simply being deleted, even though the complaint did not violate any forum rule.

From your posts, I believe this alleged abuse has been reported previously, investigated, and determined to not be abuse.

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That's the reason why people feel the corruption goes to the highest levels. The scenario I described in my deleted post, without naming any specifics (no editor names, no categories, no domain names, etc.) was clearly corruption. I clearly and irrefutably proved that the 2 editors in question had been caught in at least 3 instances of violating Dmoz rules to favor their own sites, engaging in things that they accused others of, like "submission spam." As I've said before, I invite any meta or any other other investigating editor to contact me through private message, and I'll be happy to send direct links and screenshots to prove the things I'm saying are correct.

When a Dmoz editor has 8 deep links to content that can be found on tens of thousands of other sites ad also happens to feature a large online store, it takes all of 5 minutes to confirm that. It doesn't take weeks or months.

To confirm that an editor created a category for a single solitary site: his/her own, although there are dozens of very similar sites listed already, that takes less than 5 minutes.

To confirm that that same editor is #4 in Google thanks to quadruple repetition of te same 2-word keywords, takes 5 minutes.

Actually it takes less than one minute, because our complaints contained links directly to the offending links in Dmoz. All you have to do is click on them.

>To confirm that that same editor is #4 in Google thanks to quadruple repetition of the same 2-word keywords, takes 5 minutes.

You are partially right. It is absolutely trivial to check whether Google's algorithm takes any account whatsoever of keywords in a site description.

I challenge any readers who thinks these allegations are credible, to test this claim for themselves. First find an ODP DESCRIPTION (not ODP TITLE) that contains a word not on the page itself (for example, "includes" is in a lot of descriptions but might not be on the home page.) It doesn't matter whether that word appears on other pages on site.

Now select an odd and rare combination of words ON the page, for which that page ranks high -- this may take a bit of experimentation but usually you can find an eight-word phrase that appears on that site's home page, but (almost) nowhere else. If it proves to be difficult for one site, don't beat your head against a brick wall: pick another site on the same subject. Google's algorithm works the same for any site.

Now search for "includes" (or whatever) PLUS that eight-word phrase. If Google uses website descriptions as keywords for the home page, the home page will be found by this search. If Google doesn't use website descriptions, the home page WON'T be found.

And, of course, if the search doesn't find that word on the page at all, it's obvious that it doesn't help rank the page.

I've left the post unmodified, so I can't be accused of hacking lies INTO someone else's post.

i've gone into some detail about this particular point, even though it is a matter of Google ignorance, not ODP ignorance. But it is a COMMON Google myth, and it is a particularly abhorrent myth because .... well, deluded people think some other website is getting more keywords than they are, and the result is frequently, as here, harassing ODP editors to keyword-stuff their descriptions. And there's no point in arguing with them about whether the ODP OWES their site a particular position in Google (their belief that it does is unshakeable).

So it is more constructive, I think, to get people to do the experiment I've outlined, to demonstrate for all the world that the ODP CANNOT wield the influence they want to harness.

But the meta editor "investigating" it

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I presume from that that you've been emailing other meta editors. My reply to you did not say that I was investigating it.

Simmo! said:

I work in a very tricky area - a moral hotbed dominated by affiliates I'm sure......If it was a hobby, I wouldn't care so much in my pursuit. But as it's now become my "business", I have to care.
Simmo!

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Let me suggest a way of caring, and getting some positive action.

Background:

The ODP is being serially abused daily by spammers and such like. That's basically so-called professional marketers abusing and bullying volunteers in order to promote their products.

The usual line taken in such discussions is that the fault lies with the victims -- the editors -- for not responding to the abuse and bullying.

Suggestion:

But a much more productive line would be to focus on the lack of professionalism of the abusers and bullies.

No professional association, I am sure, would condone such behavior if it were drawn to their attention. Whether the behavior is from their members or people the members have hired.

I hope the associations make space in their Code of Conduct (if it isn't already covered by existing clauses) to outlaw such abuse. And that they introduce real and effective penalties for people who bring their profession into disrepute -- including the withdrawing of licenses to practice and hefty fines.

Effect:

Abuse in some quarters of the ODP could be reduced to a minimal level within a few months with appropriate action from the professional associations overseeing those professions. That would free up ODP editor time that is spent on flushing abuse down the toilet, and perhaps re-attract editors to work on categories in that arena.

The ODP would dramatically improve in quality in that area. And the profession will have gained by eliminating known abuse members.

So, if you start today with your professional association contacts, this could be accomplished within months.

OMG, I so don't like to see noneditors quoting guidelines to high-level editors.

Jim, I assumed he was quoting me. So you told him much the same thing, huh?

If he was quoting me, he also misrepresented me, since I did tell him that the investigation would take a long time, but did not say who was or was not investigating.

Amokent, I performed the experiment I outlined above (in relation to this post, NOT to the abuse investigation -- since the abuse investigation will not be concerned about ANYBODY'S Google position, it's irrelevant.) And if that had been the only concern, your case could indeed have been evaluated in one minute -- and closed in another.

This is a formal notice. I've said, multiple times, that the editors need to consider how much deeplinking should be allowed in Humor categories. That will require getting editor consensus, and that takes time. When that is done, we will be in a position to determine what sites (besides yours, amokent, besides yours!) have been listed excessively. If I were to speculate, I'd expect more listings to be removed as a result (some of them probably not yours).

I will say in addition that one of the deeplinks you mention, (which happens to be on an editor's site), is absolutely certainly NOT abusive by the current rules (as anyone can tell within one minute). Furthermore, that there is an obvious innocent historical explanation for the occurrence of more keywords than I would have included in the listing in its current position. From the latter fact, it obviously follows that determining whether "extra keywords" imply abuse CAN NOT BE a one-minute check, but will require more careful investigation of the history.

So much of what can be quickly checked in your abuse report either isn't relevant or isn't true (that is, you misunderstood or misrepresented the data you showed.) Because you did send me the raw data (multiple times -- every time after the first was spam!) I'm willing to believe you misunderstood, rather than were intentionally misrepresenting. But ... man, you misunderstand way too much: and your way of attacking people who try to explain things to you, is not encouraging people to want to help.

Solutions

Sunanda said:

Let me suggest a way of caring, and getting some positive action.

Background:

The ODP is being serially abused daily by spammers and such like. That's basically so-called professional marketers abusing and bullying volunteers in order to promote their products.

The usual line taken in such discussions is that the fault lies with the victims -- the editors -- for not responding to the abuse and bullying.

Suggestion:

But a much more productive line would be to focus on the lack of professionalism of the abusers and bullies.

No professional association, I am sure, would condone such behavior if it were drawn to their attention. Whether the behavior is from their members or people the members have hired.

I hope the associations make space in their Code of Conduct (if it isn't already covered by existing clauses) to outlaw such abuse. And that they introduce real and effective penalties for people who bring their profession into disrepute -- including the withdrawing of licenses to practice and hefty fines.

Effect:

Abuse in some quarters of the ODP could be reduced to a minimal level within a few months with appropriate action from the professional associations overseeing those professions. That would free up ODP editor time that is spent on flushing abuse down the toilet, and perhaps re-attract editors to work on categories in that arena.

The ODP would dramatically improve in quality in that area. And the profession will have gained by eliminating known abuse members.

So, if you start today with your professional association contacts, this could be accomplished within months.

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I had to read that twice, but it makes sense It must be very frustrating for ODP editors at times and people like those damn spammers make it harder for everyone.

What you are suggesting actually, now i come to think about it, has a lot of potential. We have, if not an appointed, certainly a respected, association who most of my market look to. If somehow, they had a link up with the ODP - by which i mean that people like me operating in that industry passed ODP submissions via them first - how much easier would that become for the ODP editors? OK so at first glance it looks like another "level" of editorship, but as webmasters, we would have some faith and trust in our "gateway" to the ODP and in turn, the ODP would know they are getting pre-scanned content, hopefully of a higher quality.

It's not without its initial instigation problems of course - identifying the right "associations" would in itself take some time, but i know for one that in my sector, most of my peers would probably agree in principle to the "association" i am thinking of becoming the gateway.

It's basically like A&R in the music industry, something i've done as a dayjob in the past. Filter out the crap then let the CEO (ODP in this case) decide. Of course, the CEO should be respected aswell, but maybe if the "association" was the editor also, the fact that they want to maintain credibility within their area of industry should ensure safe passage for those of us who treat the web with respect.

Interesting.

Simmo!

Simmo! said:

but i know for one that in my sector, most of my peers would probably agree in principle to the "association"

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As this sector is known to ODP editors as one of the biggest spam magnets I doubt your pears will agree.

I hope the associations make space in their Code of Conduct (if it isn't already covered by existing clauses) to outlaw such abuse. And that they introduce real and effective penalties for people who bring their profession into disrepute -- including the withdrawing of licenses to practice and hefty fines.
No professional association, I am sure, would condone such behavior if it were drawn to their attention. Whether the behavior is from their members or people the members have hired.

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Great concept, and I appreciate the thought you put into it.

The quandry: The real estate industry prides itself on being a highly ethical industry, it has all the stuff you mentioned.

Yet: we have had so much abuse from within the RE industry that we have had to establish very rigid rules on how we list RE sites, and the abuse continues.

Greed overcomes self-policing almost every time.