ODP Editor/Non-Editor Communication Guidelines

Earlier today I posted a small list of questions and a request for editors/metas here to let me know if ODP editors would be violating any of the ODP Member guidelines by answering these questions. This information is going to be used in a website being developed to detail the ODP and the perception of corruption in ODP by many in the webmaster community.

That post was deleted by Motsa

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I think it is unfortunate that there isn't enough trust in the community to even allow me to ask what information is or isn't off limits.

As suggested by Motsa I have searched these forums and can not find the answers. Some related information is found on the DMOZ website, but it contradicts many statements by editors. I have seen statements from editors that some of the publicly available DMOZ documentation is out of date.

I realize my posting won't be un-deleted and so I won't try to re-post my original questions here. Instead, I kindly request the following information:

1) I am looking for guidelines that specify what information editors are not allowed to discuss with non-editors.

2) I am also looking for any official language that defines the current mission of the ODP as it relates to a directory for "Surfers". I do see several posts by metas alluding to this mission and if I am to use those statements, how far back in time can I go? In other words, when was the last official change to the mission made? The original mission as defined at the time the ODP public documents were created makes no reference to surfers and clearly assumes submissions by webmasters.

Thanks in advance for you help in collecting this information.

Perhaps I can help with question 2: Here is a link that explains the "surfer" reference http://www.dmoz.com/help/geninfo.html

In particular these quotes from that page:

The ODP was developed in the spirit of Open Source, where development and maintenance are done by net-citizens, and results are made freely available for all net-citizens.

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and

ODP editors are Web searchers creating a directory for other Web searches. This kind of philanthropy and passion creates a directory that is directly relevant to what people are looking for on the Web, and how they search the Web for information.

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1) I am looking for guidelines that specify what information editors are not allowed to discuss with non-editors.

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You are probably not going to find specific guidelines, but if you stop and think about it, a set of answers is pretty self-evident.

1) Editors would be extremely reluctant to publicly discuss anything that gives an advantage to spammers and directory abusers.

2) Editors would be extremely reluctant to discuss the methods we use to identify and track spammers and directory abusers.

3) Editor would be extremely reluctant to get into a detailed disucssion as to the specific editing tools we have available and their capabilities -- as that would indirectly aid the spammers and directory abusers.

4) Editors would not want to discuss the specifics of abuse investigations.

5) Editors would not want to publicly discuss the specific of editor applications.

There are probably others, which you could figure out if you spend some more time looking through our forum archives.

Thanks for the reply. Everyone will interpret the same document a little differently, I guess.

I see these quotes:

The ODP is developed and managed by a constantly growing community of net-citizens who are experts in their areas of interest. [...] there is always someone working on the directory: processing submissions, resolving dead links, culling out the bad and keeping only quality information, and discovering new topics to add.

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I have seen many quotes on this forum and in other areas where there seems to be a message sent by ODP members, that webmasters who may be intimately familiar with the category in which their site might belong are not necessarily the best judge of what sites should be included in that category. I'm trying to understand when the term "surfer" begain to be used so heavily by metas and editors. I'd like insight on if "experts in their field" is different from "webmasters specializing in their field" in the eyes of ODP. And if it is different, then what is the distinction?

Thanks again.

I'd like insight on if "experts in their field" is different from "webmasters specializing in their field" in the eyes of ODP. And if it is different, then what is the distinction?

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You can be an expert in something without being a webmaster.

You are probably not going to find specific guidelines, but if you stop and think about it, a set of answers is pretty self-evident.

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Are you saying I won't find them because I'm not an editor or are you saying specific guidelines don't exist for editors?

I have seen many editors answer informal status inquiries on WMW, SitePoint, and DP forums ... is this considered acceptable practice by editors?

Thanks for the help.

The trend is for that practice to be less and less acceptable. Several years ago, I posted some actual editors' notes online (editors' names removed, of course -- even I couldn't miss the part of the guidelines about "confidentiality of editors' identity.") There was an internal discussion, and I was persuaded (gently) that mine was a bad judgment. In fact, my fellow editors' judgment was confirmed when, several months later, that act of mine returned with obvious intent to haunt.

Later, editors started this forum intending to give status reports here -- in the light, under more strictly controlled guidelines -- FORUM guidelines, not ODP guidelines. That has changed: the FORUM community agreed it was not a productive activity, and agreed to stop it here; in addition, the EDITING community at large was pushed in the same direction by the forum experience.

And thus the guidelines have evolved as editor experience has grown, and editor judgment refined. Today, an editor who did what I did then, would be very sternly warned (and removed on a second act) -- since the community knows from so much accumulated experience how much evil, and how little good, for ANY honest person, comes from anything like that. (You don't have to take my word for it -- much of that community experience, together with submitter reaction, is available to anyone -- several years' accumulated sample status reports are available here in the archived forum.)

I don't think we're yet actually at the point of warning editors for giving merely status checks (without quotations or reasoning from other editors.) But we are, I think, fairly close to it, and, I think, moving in that direction.

I have noticed, quite often, that editorial activities which proved to be problematic, often in hindsight were predictably problematic, because they were geared towards some goal or mission unrelated to the actual ODP mission (as described above.)

Thus, "lead generation" and "real-world multi-level-marketing" sites were listed for a time, but caused problems that would never have arisen if we had asked from the beginning, "Where is the beef -- the unique content of value to the surfer?" And one of the many harmful side-effects of giving status reports was -- that, since status effects WERE obviously not surfer services but webmaster services, we unwittingly gave the impression that the ODP was a source of free webmaster services -- a pernicious, vicious misunderstanding that has contributed to the amount of frustration webmasters feel when they get exactly what the ODP was really set up to provide them -- that is, absolutely nothing.

So, once more, we've had our nose rubbed in it: WHAT VALUE FOR THE SURFER? That's how we reason, because that is what has enabled us to do what we've done, and to keep improving it.

And, to go aside and afield, putting aside all the infeasibilities and fantasies and bizarre delusions and sheer mathematical impossibilities and social nightmares and economic catastrophes that webmasters and SERP perps solemnly and incessantly propose as "suggested improvements to the ODP" -- you can nearly always tell how they will be received by asking, "what value to the surfer?"

That slogan seems both obvious and simple. To me. Now. But it took several years for it to sink in, and I shouldn't expect everyone else to catch on immediately. I won't expect you to believe it. But I DO expect you to believe that _I_ believe it, as deeply as a fish believes in water -- down to my bones. And, without even asking, I can virtually guarantee that any editor with three years and 30,000 edits under his belt believes it also.

I have seen many editors answer informal status inquiries on WMW, SitePoint, and DP forums ... is this considered acceptable practice by editors?

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It is no longer an acceptable practice in this forum.

Are you saying I won't find them because I'm not an editor or are you saying specific guidelines don't exist for editors?

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Neither. I'm saying that I do not know of a document that specificially outlines what you are asking, but that an intelligent person, who wanted to put in the time and effort involved in going through thousands of past threads and looking at tens of thousands of questions and answers, could draw a pretty good picture of what the community deems acceptable. I doubt in could be done in a few hours.

Let's try this on for size: I have never seen a "No Smoking" sign within the Church I attend, but with 6,000 registered families, I'm pretty sure the flock has a smoker or two. I've never seen anyone light up within the Church either. It may not be a posted, written rule, but anyone with a lick of common sense knows that one does not light up in church, with or without posted/written rules prohibiting the act.

hutcheson & spectregunner - Thanks for your responses.

The statement that you don't owe webmasters anything is enlightening and now I'm gaining a much better understanding of the perspective. After reading hundreds of threads here I pick up on the frustration of DMOZ volunteers having to answer to webmasters who are neither your clients nor your target audience.

Neither. I'm saying that I do not know of a document that specificially outlines what you are asking, but that an intelligent person, who wanted to put in the time and effort involved in going through thousands of past threads and looking at tens of thousands of questions and answers, could draw a pretty good picture of what the community deems acceptable. I doubt in could be done in a few hours.

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So, there are no official written guidelines for new members regarding what may be commuicated with non-members, other than to protect the privacy of other members. When new editors come aboard I'm sure they aren't told to go through "thousands of past threads and looking at tens of thousands of questions and answers" to "draw a pretty good picture of what the community deems acceptable". For new editors, they have to rely on their intelligence and common-sense to draw the boundaries of what can or can't be communicated with outsiders (other than protecting other members' privacy) correct?

Let's try this on for size: I have never seen a "No Smoking" sign within the Church I attend, but with 6,000 registered families, I'm pretty sure the flock has a smoker or two. I've never seen anyone light up within the Church either. It may not be a posted, written rule, but anyone with a lick of common sense knows that one does not light up in church, with or without posted/written rules prohibiting the act.

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I don't believe this analogy is at all relevant. The questions I posed in my post which was deleted were not so cut and dry as this simplistic example. I asked questions that I believe are in the gray area and are legitimate questions and it's unfortunate they were deleted without a response.

A better example I believe is Google. I know that a Google engineer isn't going to give me the formula for how he detects duplicate content, but he is going to tell me that he doesn't like duplicate content. He is going to tell me he doesn't like sites that attempt to manipulate SERPs with artificial link schemes. He is going to tell me he doesn't like hidden text, etc. He is also going to tell me that the ownership of a site doesn't matter (except to detect artificial links).

Right now, we have the guideline that DMOZ wants the best quality sites and from reading the messages here and elsewhere it seems "best quality" = unique, relevant content. I rarely see any mention of aesthetics or usability even though from a "Surfer" perspective, those issues are hugely important.

The frustration of some webmasters is that they feel their sites which have better quality content are not included whereas others with less quality are included. It certainly could be sour grapes. It could be poor judgement. It could be corruption. I'm just trying to understand if there are other factors that could be coming into play as well but the message I seem to be getting is that you won't answer that question because it may give spammers inside knowledge.

Nitin M said:

A better example I believe is Google. I know that a Google engineer isn't going to give me the formula for how he detects duplicate content, but he is going to tell me that he doesn't like duplicate content. He is going to tell me he doesn't like sites that attempt to manipulate SERPs with artificial link schemes. He is going to tell me he doesn't like hidden text, etc. He is also going to tell me that the ownership of a site doesn't matter (except to detect artificial links).

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And so does DMOZ. All these guidelines are available for everyone.
Read http://dmoz.org/add.html and http://dmoz.org/guidelines/

I'm familiar with those guidelines. My questions were aimed to help clarify some of those guidelines and cover some areas not addressed in those documents. My questions were also aimed at understanding what information editors and metas were free to discuss with non-members and that is not addressed in any of the documents I have found.

My questions were also aimed at understanding what information editors and metas were free to discuss with non-members and that is not addressed in any of the documents I have found.

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Anything that is already available to the public can be discussed.

I am a new editor. I became one this month. I have 3 websites 2 were already listed before I joined. 1 was declined and until now it is not listed. A year ago I submitted my first site and was rejected what I did is I made some improvements. Then somebody listed it in a locality. That improvement and being listed made me come up with my second site and was listed in Regional. I am not a webmaster, I am a businessman. Recently, I applied to be an editor and was declined the first time and reapplied and got accepted. I have read parts of the contents of this forum and have a fairly square idea of what is happening. I saw that most people who has the Most Frustration of a site being listed are the webmasters, online sellers, SEO specialists and so forth. Businesses or entities that operate within a community does not seem to care if their site get listed or not. ( I know because I found a lot of good site and was not listed and they dont care. I even found an airport and a defense contractor that was'nt listed.) You want an honest opinion from a local businessman from a locality, my opinion on webmasters, seo's, online sellers who have a lot of frustrations of their site not getting listed are ignorant of the rules, ignorant of their own site contents, vultures, sour graping, personal vendetta's, personal interest .

Why bring down the ODP but not the other directories ?
Google. Most part of it. If the people on the web who has the mission to bring down the ODP becomes succesful then God help us all. You will see a site just get listed like that. Of course there would be another directory that will arise. If it is new, the same people will take advantage of it being new. There will be a lot of bested interest. Chaos on the Web and the World. Read the Bible my friends the Revelation.

Why my site dont get listed?
The other directories have listed your site but not the ODP. Frustration. So be it. So whats the big deal. My other site is not listed in the Directory So What.It has its own rankings and I am getting business out of it by improving its contents and resource.

Crying ex-editors
I have read that of Jim Boykins. It lacks Ethics.The same reason when ignorant people get fired from their job. Lets get to reality. There are some people in the World who dont have a better understanding. They get fired from a job and drag their co-employess to form a union for their interest not the interest of their co-employees and their families. They resort to whatever means to bring down a company like Company strategies etc. Would encourage other people to apply just for their interest. L is the word.

Buying Your Way In
$3,000 on e-bay. It made me laugh. That hungry? How about some decent jobs to put food in the table. Then here's the thought. If anybody is like that it is a career for them and not a hobby. Anybody want to buy me they have to pay $ 800,000. First thats is my companies gross income this year. Second that will put food on my table to feed my family. Third you will buy my dignity of having a hobby. Fourth you are insane if you do buy me with that price just for being an editor.

My Personal Opinion
I am proud to be one of the Editors of the Directory. That there are still flocks of sane people in the internet. My family and my children are very Thankful to these people. I grew up in a third world country before emigrating to the US. When I was young and in the Elementary grade I walk 7 miles to go to school. I was very happy when I got a Slipper as a Birthday present. At that age I was carrying water to deliver to our neighbors for what is worth now of $0.10 approximately just to have my own money. This is Value. This is Learning. I look back and see the best things in life are ahead of me. I move on. I strive for my success how about you ? I encourage people to do the same. How about you ? You dont need to know my full life story but I am giving you a part of it. So some people would come to realize what Value, Ethics and doing the Right Thing means. Come on People How would you contribute to make this World a Better Place to live for my children and the other children. By being negative. By being what ? Do some positive work in your life forget about the ODP whether you get listed or not whether you become an editor or not. Its your contribution on the Web that my children and the children of my children would one day see. And I will be thankful and in your debt that you as Great Webmasters and SEO's have chosen to do the right thing. You have the ability and greatness to have your works seen by future generations. Do it by Example. Put Value in your Work.
If you guys become succesful in your mission in bringing down the ODP( God Forbid). The first thing I will do is throw away all my computers and will let my children learn without it SO BE IT. Seriously and an HONEST OPINION. Coz right now you are not teaching anything but HATE, GREED, VENDETTA, DESTROY YOUR NEIGHBORS. I do not want my children to see it.

Oh you wanna know how I do my local editing
I do it with my Family with my Wife and 2 Daughters sometimes. I also ask their opinion especially in Arts and Entertainment if other children would benefit from this site, I ask my wife if the people around our community would benefit from this site to be listed in Society and Culture. If you will ask I also listed my Business Competitions Site in my locality. Its listed same category. Non Biased.

Now what do you need to know about a new editor. Would you publish this in your site. I tell you and the readers. I Trust my Colleagues the way they Entrusted me. I Respect them the way they Respect me. I Believe in them the way they Believed in me. I have Faith in them the Way they had Faith in me. The Metas, The Edit Alls, The Moderators, The Editors and all of what comprise the ODP, No need to blame them, blame yourself for your shortcomings they are just Human like You. If you havent made a mistake in your life then let me know in this Forum. You might call it blind Loyalty but I stand by them that is my Freedom to Choose. And if one day they wont be needing my Services I will Exit with my Heads up High knowing that I have served my time and contributed to the Wellness of my Locality, The Surfers, and the Generations to Come. Somewhere along the line instead of destroying each other start having Faith, Belief, Trust, Respect and do the Right Thing for Yourselves. Make your Contribution to this World as Specialist in your Field to the Wellness of the Human Being. So What is your Real Mission. I have to Ask. Why Do this Kind of Things. Would doing what you are doing Benefit the Human Being ? Are you Jealous ? Forget about the ODP. Go on with your lives and Make the World a Better Place.

Thanks monayuki for the interesting read. I'm not entirely sure what in my posts caused that type of reaction. My sense is that due to all the criticism and allegations of corruption and abuse from some in the webmaster community, that sensitivities are exceedingly high towards any webmaster seeking information. It's unfortunate, but I think it's also understandable.

No, you're completely wrong about the source of the sensitivity. It has nothing to do with allegations in the webmaster community: as you should know well, those allegations neither require evidence, nor are the allegators interested in evidence refuting them.

The sensitivity is caused by the absolute certainty of massive corruption and abuse in the webmaster community; and to the knowledge of how the corrupt abusers in the webmaster community can use information to harm editors, the editing community in general, and the Open Directory itself.

Any experienced editor will be aware of numerous instances of spamming jerks who create and submit dozens of sites, not one of them actually HAS any kind of content, but all of which deceptively PRETEND in different ways to have content. And then those webmasters try to figure out how we detect their deceit, and how they can more effectively lie to us. The status information we used to give was extremely useful to those scammers. But that same information was not useful to honest webmasters -- any legitimate businessman knows what he needs to tell customers about himself.

So we were seeing an ever increasing percentage of status requests coming from people whom (we could tell by their history) were pure-play scammmers and spammers -- NOT the genuine businessmen monayuki describes. Today, it is simply not worth the trouble of considering whether a status request comes from a spammer -- for all practical purposes, essentially all of them do. And we can with great confidence tell anyone: "look in the mirror. Are you concerned that your site needs to be in the ODP? Then you're a spammer for all practical purposes."

The exceptions (and there ARE exceptions!) are simply too rare to need any kind of mechanism to process -- in fact, far too rare to bother picking them out of the spammers -- the real sites, we'll pick up some other way, more efficiently.

Thanks for clearing that up hutcheson. As an outsider and someone who hasn't tried to spam a bunch of sites into ODP, many of the issues you raise aren't obvious.

Do you have any stats, even if just a rough estimate based on your experience, for how many spammy/worthless sites are suggested for every one quality site that is suggested?

Nitin M said:

Do you have any stats, even if just a rough estimate based on your experience, for how many spammy/worthless sites are suggested for every one quality site that is suggested?

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It all depends on the type of category.
For the most extreme ones my guess is that over 99% is spam.
For the whole of DMOZ my guess is somewhere around 70% is spam.

The rate is at least ten to one -- that, however, includes duplicates, deeplinks, and aliases as well as purely bad (vapid or doorway) sites. I think the majority of sites submitted are spam, but it's probably not that large a majority.

But after a site has been reviewed and rejected once, then the ratio jumps to 100 to one. And THIS is the more important ratio -- because, hey, we have to weed out spam, regardless of where we look for URLs! (Do you think Google is spam-free? How about, ahem, MSN?) THIS is how often the current mechanisms fail. And, so long as we're weeding out spam accurately, there's no point in double-checking. It's where we fail that the repeat-check is productive.

Now, what do we do? Which is more productive for an editor to do? Mass-double-check decisions that are 99% right? Or ... focus on quicker reviews for sites that have never yet been reviewed once?

The answer is, of course, you have to be prepared to do both. But you focus on doing first (or most often) what is most likely to be productive (in terms of getting another good listing in the ODP, or getting a bad listing out.)

That's why detailed "abuse reports" get such quick responses: they are probably about 50% golden, and they are very quick to double-check. And that's why "status reports" are such a low priority -- well less than 1% gold, and take much longer to check out, as well as replicating work that would have to be done (eventually) in the normal course of events.

I don't really have the "spamming mentality" either, so some of the tricks aren't obvious to me. Now, I DO have a bit of "gaming" background -- so it's comparatively easy for me to see how anyone (spammer or not) could get around many of the strict (but idiotic) rules that are continually proposed by the spamming collectives around the web. (And I have done a tiny bit of reading on theory of computer security.) It really takes both the ability to see the full consequences of rules, AND the ability to think like an amoral egoist to be an effective security consultant.

Many editors don't have, or want, those skills, and they are therefore better off avoiding giving out any specific information. It's just flat too easy to be tricked into giving out apparently innocuous information.

Thanks. I got most of that, but I don't understand this bit:

But after a site has been reviewed and rejected once, then the ratio jumps to 100 to one. And THIS is the more important ratio -- because, hey, we have to weed out spam, regardless of where we look for URLs! (Do you think Google is spam-free? How about, ahem, MSN?) THIS is how often the current mechanisms fail. And, so long as we're weeding out spam accurately, there's no point in double-checking. It's where we fail that the repeat-check is productive.

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What ratio is now 100:1? You mean that if we were to categorize all the sites that are declined, 99% of them were declined because they were spammy? And I don't understand how this ties into current mechanisms failing.

Sorry, but I completely lost the connecting dots there and it seems this is the most important part of your reply Would you mind restating/clarifying, please?

>99% of them were declined because they were spammy?

Yes, I think so. In other words, the error rate (for inappropriate rejects) is about 1%.

>And I don't understand how this ties into current mechanisms failing.

We're trying to list sites with unique content. Somehow, emotionally, it's worse to have one in one's hand, and then drop it, than to have never yet seen it at all. The former is a failure--which we have no absolutely certain mechanism of catching. The latter is merely "job not finished yet." (Practically speaking, however, both errors have the same practical effect: the site isn't yet listed, although it may still someday be found and reviewed and listed.)

But the point is, a status check (as practiced in the forum here) WOULD catch the inappropriate deletes. The problem is, you'd have to do hundreds or thousands of status checks (several "not yet reviewed" suggestion for every "rejected" suggestion, then 100 "appropriate rejects" for every "inappropriate reject")

And that's simply not productive. We could find more sites, faster (probably including some of the once-inappropriately-rejected ones) by doing something else instead.