Professional webmaster - administrator

Hi,

I'm a pro. webmaster and server administrator since more than 5 years and each time I see some sites or only features on some sites which are down, it gives me headaches further more when it happens on important sites like dmoz!
Now Dmoz has been down since way too long and seeing websites listed in there which has no real value while others not listed have some relevant content to show... I'm being very disapointed and this is hopeless!

That's leading me to asking dmoz whether they accept any help from people outside of the dmoz unprofessional team! Where should I ask, who should I talk to? Let me help you please!

The point is Dmoz has so much impact on the web and paradoxically is so much out of date!
Let's put some effort to fix these issues...

I look forward to hearing from Dmoz.
Sincerely.

Hi

You could apply to be an editor, but at the moment editor applications are not working.

So the quickest way to help is to use the update url facility to report any broken/out of date links you spot.

regards

Please notice that only AOL technical staff can work on the recovery after the previous outage. Editors have no (physical) access to the servers and software.
Also notice that DMOZ has not been down for very long. The public servers were recovered within a few days. Recovery of editor servers took a little longer. Some of the less important functions took more time to recover and some of them are not yet available but technical staff is working to get them active again.

Eric-the-Bun said:

Hi

You could apply to be an editor, but at the moment editor applications are not working.

So the quickest way to help is to use the update url facility to report any broken/out of date links you spot.

regards

Click to expand...

That's actually my intention since 6 months but well.. that ain't working...

As an editor do you delete links often?

pvgool said:

Please notice that only AOL technical staff can work on the recovery after the previous outage. Editors have no (physical) access to the servers and software.
Also notice that DMOZ has not been down for very long. The public servers were recovered within a few days. Recovery of editor servers took a little longer. Some of the less important functions took more time to recover and some of them are not yet available but technical staff is working to get them active again.

Click to expand...

I see; do you think the AOL staff spends some time on it? Isn't it their last priority to deal with dmoz?
imo that's pretty long to cover the recovery. Are there any details of the problems? How many people (technical staff) actually work on dmoz? Do we know them?

The people assigned to DMOZ do spend some time with it, we see features coming back to live all the time.

IMHO editor applications are mong the most difficult tasks for the system. They need email verification (which nothing else needs) and it needs to create new editor account on all our servers (which nothing else needs). Apparently they haven't been able to get new editor applications working yet, but I am sure it is on their list.

As an editor do you delete links often?

Click to expand...

Do you mean sites?

As a Regional editor, my preference is to list site suggestions, not delete them, and a large part of our work involves investigating sites that are down to make sure they are really gone, and that it's not a temporary thing, or to see if they have a new url that we can replace the site with.

Now Dmoz has been down since way too long and seeing websites listed in there which has no real value while others not listed have some relevant content to show... I'm being very disapointed and this is hopeless!

Click to expand...

An editor has to be impartial in his editing. We are interested in whether the site suggestion has unique content, but not your professional opinion about the quality of its design. We have lots and lots of professionals working in the ODP, but, all of them are impartial in their editing responsiblities, and follow our Guidelines, not their own.

It is extremely unlikely that AOL will be hiring from outside specifically for the ODP. It is certain that the amateur, volunteer content providers (that is, editors) do not have the ability to grant administrative access to AOL's servers.

As an editor do you delete links often?

Click to expand...

Over time sites move, change content or 'die'. There are automated tools that unreview sites they discover are missing/bad, but these have not run for a while. Often the site has not 'died' but has moved so the 'bad' link gets replaced by a 'good' one. We are reluctant to permanantly delete any site until we are sure that it will not come back so bad links with no apparant replacements are usually just unreviewed in the first instance rather than being deleted.

Processes like these are part of the background tasks involved in maintaining the directory and there is a bit of catching up to do as a result of the outage.

regards

Thanks for your replies. I understand the editor's job and I hope every editor has the same point of view.

Do editors have contact some time with technical staff?
Is there any place (forums, blogs) where we can have information from the dmoz technical staff?

For fairly obvious reasons, there's no means for the 7000 odd editors to bug the small number of technical staff directly.

There is an internal forum where editors can report problems. Also, tech staff members occasionally post in other internal forums. Unless you're an editor, you have no access to any of these.