Great: some technical detail to work with.
>This would allow the owner to make whatever changes might be necessary, if he or she chooses to do so, to get an ODP listing.
There's no need to wait for a rejection note: you can do it right now, if you choose, obviating the need for a rejection note. There's no reason to burden the ODP editors. But -- see the reality check below.
>It would seem to me that a simple checkbox report form could be e-mailed to the submitter showing on what grounds the site has been rejected - no discussion required.
Here's a form:
Hi, just a note that I reviewed your website but did not list it in the ODP. The reason is one of the following:
[X] I couldn't find enough unique information to warrant a listing.
[X] I made a mistake, I shouldn't have deleted the site but I'm not going to fix it unless you resubmit.
[X] I'm basically corrupt, and I'm here just to delete my competitors.
There aren't any other reasons. And do I need to point out that the last two reasons are (1) extremely rare, and (2) not likely to be explicitly admitted by the editor?
>This would be the editor's opinion and I would certainly accept it.
Ah, you can't imagine how rare an attitude you have.
>This also applies to editor applications. Yes, an e-mail is sent giving a list of the reasons why an application "may" have been rejected. Would it not be just as simple to tick those reasons which apply to the rejection?
Think of this as a test. There is a basic requirement for editing: you have to be able to read the editing guidelines and follow them. If you can't look at the possible list of issues and tell which one applies, you aren't qualified to be an editor yet. This doesn't preclude a future application. But it allows the meta-editors to focus on the candidates that are apparently "more promising." The "triage" approach is critical to efficient and timely application of limited resources in many fields. Think of it as a "we haven't written you off, but you aren't a candidate unless you can figure this out, because editing well MEANS having to figure this kind of thing out, all the time."
>it would seem to me to be fairly straightforward to have a link to a list of outstanding submissions in a given category. As sites are evaluated they would be removed from the list and the submitter could see their submission moving up the list for evaluation.
The list isn't ordered. And we found that submitters consistently misunderstood and misused all the information we gave out. (I was an early proponent of telling people approximately how many submittals were in a category. The community and especially the submitters convinced me beyond any possibility of refutation, that that was an extremely bad idea. Been there, got the scars to prove it, ain't NEVER going back.)
>Of course, sites are not evaluated in order of submission to deter spamming.
This is so wrong in so many ways. Sites are reviewed in the order the editor thinks will be most effective in building up the category. That's all. Submittal order is (1) irrelevant because it's always invariably a very poor measure of site relevance; (2) pernicious because it is so easily manipulated by the spamming technique of "speculative pre-submittals".
>But there are two very simple ways to prevent this.
I won't discuss anti-spamming techniques here. I am a programmer, with some experience in security techniques: I will say that I think the ODP techies have amply earned the high respect I have for them; I should NOT have to say that their approaches to the spam problem are geared to the actual circumstances editors face, and are effective without violating the ODP ideals and mission. I do think it is extremely condescending to imagine that such basic techniques have not been long known and considered by the ODP techies.
>Surely, by definition, most submitted sites must adhere closely to DMOZ guidelines - otherwise there would be no point in submitting.
Reality calling: "at least 80-90% of all submittals are blatant spam, pure and simple. And at least half of the rest are of sites that obviously contain no contribution to the sum of human knowledge -- spam, and obviously so (although perhaps not blatant.) These are minimums: who knows how much higher the real numbers are?"
Reality's twin sister chimes in: "Every experienced editor knows that the really valuable sites are usually not submitted at all, and there is a very strong inverse correlation between number of times a site is submitted and site quality. If a site has been submitted two dozen times, it is almost certain to be completely worthless; and if any single person has submitted even half-a-dozen of his own sites, it is as certain as anything on the net can be, that every one of them are worse than worthless."
Reality again: "Oh, and WAY over 99% of the rejections are of sites that could not be made listable without nuking the server, burning the backup disks, shooting the webmaster and all his relatives, and starting from scratch on a different planet."
Twin: "Don't exaggerate: the different planet is not strictly necessary."
Now, I could be wrong, I very much doubt if I've reviewed more than two hundred thousand sites (counting submittals and search results and all), and I'm still working on my first hundred thousand ODP edits. But between that experience and your confidence in your assured conclusions, I trust you will not find it offensive if I suggest experience, however limited, is the more reliable? (I trust I'm not arrogant enough to set my completely uninformed opinions up against five years of YOUR experience....)
>And it follows on from there that ....
What follows on from there is that there is a serious disjunct between your ratiocination and reality. No reliable conclusions about the ODP can possibly be drawn from such a wrong assumption.
The real fact is that the core of the ODP has always been the sites its editors found by a wide variety of means. And editors' experience is that the "site suggestion" process has significant known biasses and horrible shortcomings: it is completely incapable of creating any kind of comprehensive category anywhere, and highly susceptible to kinds of spam of which you seem to be unaware, but which you may discover for yourself by trying a few Google searches for common search terms.
Try this experiment. Search Google for some term like "Las Vegas Hotels". Imagine every one of the top 1000 sites were submitted to the ODP. (They haven't been, but 1000 sites just like them have!) Now try to figure out the most efficient way to find the websites of ten hotels previously unlisted in the ODP. If you can find them in the submittal queue, you're wasting your time at the ODP, you should be playing roulette at the big-money tables! But if you want to find the real sites, not the submitted spam, and you CAN find them at all -- you're ready to be an editor.
>listing these sites maintains quality, the very core of the project.
Um, you must be talking about some other project. From the beginning, that was never the core of the ODP.
>There is no clear reason why this could not be done in tandem with editors adding non-submitted suitable sites they have otherwise become aware of.
Wrong again. There are many reasons that any particular editor may not want to review site submittals in tandem with doing the core work of the directory -- that is, using all his skills and knowledge to find the jewels of the net. And -- this is a fundamental issue -- no editor answers to me, nor to AOL management, nor to you, about how he looks for sites. This is not an oversight! This is the REAL fundamental core of the project -- to give editors tools to deal with the mundane issues of site management, and to free them to use their utmost skills, creativity, cleverness, knowledge, and effort to build a directory: the result is a directory that no single person could have envisioned, of sites that no single process could have found.
In the context of that reality, editors naturally know that the directory is not as good as it could be. And so we're always asking the fundamental questions:
(1) How can we encourage new (or temporarily-indolent) editors to go beyond the simple Google-and-submittal-queue techniques, to find the really valuable sites that aren't designed by and for spammers? How can we teach and demonstrate new techniques?
(2) How can we waste less time with the many unsuitable sites in the submittal queue? (for instance, if we WERE sending rejection notices, "stop sending rejection notices" would be the obvious first and most important.)
(3) How can we make sure we avoid giving information to spammers that would enable them to waste even more of our time? (If we were sending rejection notices, the first and most important and most critical answer here would be "stop sending rejection notices." But we're beyond that point now, and dealing with more subtle information leaks. But a sufficiently assiduous spammer can, over time, gain a great deal of information from even subtle leaks. We know more work needs to be done in this area.
(4) How can we get the message out that the ODP is not a listing service, or indeed any other kind of service for webmasters whatsoever? That our interest is strictly to benefit surfers, and people seeking site promotion are better off anywhere else, than wasting time hassling ODP editors?
(5) How can we do a better job of spotting good sites first, rather than accidentally stumbling across them, or systematically weeding through abyss-deep spam?
If you provide suggestions for any of those things -- that is, the goals we're really focused on, the important things we're not able to do as well as the project ideal deserves -- that would be a great help.
