>I do occassionally suggest other urls.... anonymous donations. I might pick up a specialty mag and wonder if the urls in the mag are on dmoz and sure enough they aren't so I suggest them.
That's what submittals are for. That's how they were intended to be used. I'm delighted to hear testimonials that they are being used that way.
>What I do see is ODPers not really giving a damn about the frustrations of people trying to get sites listed.
I'd call that a fair perception but an unfair connotation. It is true that the ODP simply doesn't have a mechanism for "trying" to get sites "listed". We try to tell people that up front: "no site is guaranteed a listing."
>It seems to be a recurring theme that if a site hasn't been listed, but it is actually listable, it's because ...
Not really. It's because nobody has reviewed and listed it. Oh, true, there are many things a submitter can do to HELP the review process go more smoothly, but there is nothing a submitter can do to impose his priorities on anyone else. (Before or after a site is suggested, editors still can -- and do -- choose to do other things, either at the ODP or on other sites or offline.) But the last, critical, step of a listing happens because sometime, some editor thought that was a reasonable approximation to the most important thing in the world to do. And at that moment when the editor made that decision, millions of sites remained unreviewed because, so far, reviewing them had NOT been the most important thing in the world for anyone who was trusted to review them.
Aside: Oneeye will always be an ODP contributor -- whether or not he's active at any particular moment.
>Seeing as any description submitted is likely to be rewritten according to how the editors feel about it a good description is very difficult to guess and not necessarily going to get a site listed faster.
True. Not "necessarily," but "possibly." And don't forget: even though a listing is poorly done, it may still contain enough information to help an editor quickly send it to the right category.
>Even if you do manage to work out a category to submit to that will be agreed to by an editor it doesn't mean an editor is going to go in and see it.
Not true. It means an editor will go and see it. What it DOESN'T mean is that anybody's priorities have changed. Everyone's priorities are still exactly the same as they were before. What a submittal does is empower the editor to find a site, easily, at the moment when that kind of sites is his priority. It enables the editor to prioritize based on more information (and that also may possibly, not necessarily, mean a particular site gets reviewed more quickly...and another particular site gets reviewed less quickly. But overall, the more help we get, the faster EVERYTHING goes.)
>and seeing as the directory is continually being restructured it is somewhat difficult to keep up with the structure anyway.
True; that's an intrinsic difficulty of all indexing schemes. (Library classifications and schematizations of medical conditions are also under constant revision.) That's why (unlike many other directories) we don't discard misplaced suggestions. But again -- misplacing a suggestion doesn't place any obligation on anyone to change his priorities!
>And I don't think patience counts when there are sites that haven't been dealt with for so many years.
It's not "patience" if you put a time limit on it. It's just "another form of imposing your will on someone else by setting their deadlines and forcing them to change their priorities and activities to suit yourself." And THAT is unacceptable behavior in a volunteer community. But it's not a "problem:" people who do it are justly ostracized, and that's an end of the matter for the people who are actually doing the work.
>Submitters are going to be wondering if their site is one of the unlucky ones that hasn't been seen to.
Very likely. But the fact is, I as an editor don't know any better than you where the other ten thousand editors are going to work next! And there is no way either of us can get any more information.
This may seem like a problem, but it's actually not. What does it matter to you (or to me) where oneeye chooses to volunteer today? Anything he does is gravy! And what right do you (or I) have to tell him how much or what he must do? NONE! And how do I know whether or not jeanmanco will do any edits tomorrow?
The "ignorance" you speak of, is an intrinsic part of the design of the ODP process. Could it be designed out? No: any attempt to address that would have unacceptable costs. (I'll mention just three: attempts to impose a Stalinist priority on all reviews would consume management effort far in excess of any conceivable value; would drive away volunteers who see the ODP as a way of exploring the world on the web (that is, the kind of people to whom the current process was attractive); and would catastrophically bias the range of sites the ODP represented, to fit the "party line", whatever that might turn out to be.)
>I think if submitters understand how the system works it only means ... is not exactly what anyone can call functional.
Exactly! THE ODP IS NOT MEANT TO FUNCTION THAT WAY. And it doesn't.
>I think more of an acknowledgement by ODPers that there are some real problems would be healthier that continually blaming the submitter.
I like the way you slide from "refusing to accept responsibility for my emotions" into "refusing to acknowledge real problems." Smoothly done!
I don't demand that you accept responsibility for how I feel about your work. I don't demand that you work on my priorities. I don't even demand that you acknowledge my human autonomy.
But ... I believe my human autonomy exists. And it is not a problem, for me. (Stalin may disagree.) I work on what I think is important. I do not resent the fact that you are free to do the same.
On the other hand: are there problems with the ODP? Oh, absolutely, every edit ever made is an acknowledgement that it could be made better, and no reasonable editor would suppose he had just made the final edit.
But -- with the resources donated, could we have done something better? Probably. But, but, ... HOW?
That's the question the community is always exploring. And that's where outside help is especially valuable. Oh, you can't possibly contribute anything to the process design -- you simply don't know enough, and you CAN'T possibly know enough until you've actually experienced the process as it exists.
But what you CAN do is -- find sites that the community hasn't found yet, find bad listings the community hasn't removed yet. In other words, you can find genuine ODP shortcomings -- not just personal, speculative, philosopical fantasies about what might or might not be wrong with someone else's priorities.
And, as you provide concrete evidence of genuine shortcomings (and no doubt, there are millions that you could document!) the editors can watch for patterns, select priorities, polish procedures, review standards ... all to achieve the ODP mission. Which is NOT necessarily to "list every listable site on the web", but rather to "provide a comprehensive index of the totality of human experience as represented on the web."
So, "lucky" or "unlucky" plays a part in speed of reviews -- an essential part, I believe: any human-imposed determinism is just Stalinism writ small. But there's another important part. A webmaster is not "unlucky to suggest a site to a category." A webmaster is NOT HELPING THE ODP GOAL when he DEVELOPS a site on a subject already well-represented on the web. Now, he has no obligation to help the ODP at all: he develops that site for his own purpose! And the ODP has no obligation to help him at all -- IT is developed for ITS OWN purpose.
So, if there is intersection between the sites' purposes -- well and good. (And if not, fine: human freedom, again!) If the sites are well interlinked, even better. For the surfer, that is.
And -- it's a matter of principle here, deeply embedded in the ODP philosophy, that what the webmaster shouldn't matter. So -- you see that in practice it doesn't matter? Excellent, we're doing what we meant to do!
And the webmasters' needs can be served by someone else. It's not as if there are any shortage of sites that offer!
