Random dead/invalid links in ODP

I spent only about 15 minutes looking around some areas (cats) of interest to me and found quite a few links that need updating or deleting. Perhaps an editor can take a look and maybe do something about the following:

http://www.asiatravel.org/ is now closed, according to their site. Found in the category:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Travel_and_Tourism/Travel_Guides/


http://www.cybrary.com.sg/ has moved to: http://sms.stb.com.sg/default.asp in the cat:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Singapore/Travel_and_Tourism/Travel_Guides/ (Both entries are in this cat)

http://www.osinga.com/singapore/ also a bad entry in the same singapore category.

http://www.singapore-ca.com is now http://www.TourismSingapore.com/ in same cat as above.

The "Inncrowd's" listing should read The Inncrowd (no ' and no s) (Same cat as above)


The bbc Holiday - Thailand entry has nothing to do with Thailand;
it goes to: http://uk.shopsmart.com/Travel_and_Leisure/index.html in the cat:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Thailand/Travel_and_Tourism/Travel_Guides/

http://www.thailandontour.com/ seems dead (same cat as above)

Things like these really don't take long to identify and presumably to correct if they had simply been looked at now and then. I get the feeling there are thousands just like the above that need just a little bit more attention than they're getting.

Pix

PS, Do regular editors actually make changes, or do they merely suggest improvements as I hope the above are?

Thanks for the list.

For the record, regular editors do whatever they feel like doing. Some of them regularly re-review sites; others spend their time searching for new sites, or weeding the backlog of unreviewed sites, or nattering in the external forums.

There are two ways we can go with this. You can take this information as evidence of knowledge and interest in those categories, dredge up a new site or two, and volunteer to edit that category yourself, or you can hope one of the current volunteers will fix it.

For the record, if you identify specific problems (as you just did) some editor will usually fix them pretty quickly. So if you want them left as fodder for your own editing mill, best speak up quickly.

We have an automatic link checker (called Robozilla) that finds some of these problems. It runs every few months, and just completed a run. There are lots of sites throughout the directory marked in red by Robozilla that editors are busily working on. The number of dead links should decrease quite a bit over the next few weeks as they are either fixed to a working URL or removed from public view -- Foe

Well, that was pretty fast work.

Just about all of my suggestions were acted on; I guess this is a good way to get things done. I may or may not apply to be an editor, just mainly interested in seeing the ODP directory as up-to-date as possible. If there's a better way to correspond, let met know.

Thanks

For those looking for something to do, here are a few more 'problems' I've come up with.

http://www.molon.de/galleries/Malaysia/Malaysia.htm is found in 2 different
cat's:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Malaysia/Travel_and_Tourism/
and
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Malaysia/Society_and_Culture/Personal_Pages/


http://www.mmserve.com/museum/ has moved to:
http://www.gtitec.com.my/museums/index.htm in cat:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Malaysia/Travel_and_Tourism/Attractions/


http://www.members.tripod.com/bushman42/ and http://bushman42.tripod.com/
are double entries (different url's but mirror sites) in the
cat:http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Malaysia/States/Pahang/Travel_and_Tourism/

http://www.rompinbeachresort.com/ redirects to:
http://www.malaysiahotels.cc/johor.html in cat:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Malaysia/States/Pahang/Travel_and_Tourism/


http://skybusiness.com/znqigong/index.html, the last entry in the
cat:http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Malaysia/States/Pulau_Pinang/Society_and_Cultu
re/
cannot be found.

In
cat: http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Malaysia/States/Sarawak/Travel_and_Tourism/
the first entry (accommodations) is the same site as the accomodation link in
last entry, ie the Visit Sarawak site.

The Johor Community Connection in cat:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Malaysia/States/Johor/Society_and_Culture/
leads to a directory page.

Marina Beach Resort in cat:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Malaysia/States/Kedah/Localities/Langkawi/Travel_a
nd_Tourism/ goes elsewhere.

Hotel Victoria in
cat:http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Malaysia/States/Sabah/Travel_and_Tourism/
seems to be dead.

TIA for any corrections and let me know if I've made any mistakes.

Pix

Thanks.

Most of them where accurate. The last one is running now so I didnt see any need to touch it.

Btw: You really should consider becomming an editor. It looks like you would have a lot of fun being one

Yep I agree you WOULD make a good editor. Why dont you join?

Dead/invalid links .... Regional/Asia/Malaysia

Pixelator, good catch. I went through the same list and did some cleaning up of the surrounding area too. However, as windharp and blj11uk implied, we could really make use of editors willing to take care of cats such as Regional/Asia/Malaysia/States/Pahang/ . Though new editors would generally be accepted in the smaller localities cats such as Regional/Asia/Malaysia/States/Pahang/Localities/Kuantan/ and work up the tree for permissions as they gain experience.

Since I generally edits in Regional/Asia/Malaysia , if you like I could of course give a helping hand when/if you get accepted as editor. I'm sure you can describe 3 good sites and appropriate for listing in your selected cat. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />

Re: Dead/invalid links .... Regional/Asia/Malaysia

It seems to me I may be better off not being an editor - perhaps it's the feeling of being too confined in a small number of categories.

The way I'm going at it at the moment suits me without having any pressure to do anything more! Of course, my way of dumping problems into a public forum like this depends on others to make the actual corrections where deemed suitable. But the advantage is a kind of leverage I wouldn't have otherwise - what one or two editors might not care about may seem worthy to a third or fourth or more.

Anyway, here is another batch of entry misfits, redirects, dead links or other incomprehensible sites I stumbled upon during my latest travels in ODP land.

The last entry in http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Regions/Southeast_Asia/
is http://asiahorizons.com/ leads nowhere (pocket guides on Asia they say)


The entries Singapore Tourism Cybrary and STB slide library go to the same site in cat: http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Singapore/Travel_and_Tourism/Travel_Guides/

The Ben Web site, http://www.b.lhegu.claranet.fr/, in cat: http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/Asia/ is no longer available

Hot Asia, http://jirojirojirojirojiro.tripod.co.jp/, leads to a redirect in same cat as above.


The realcruelhoax.com in http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/Asia/
Has little to do with travelogues in Asia.

Solo in Uzb&amp;#8230; at http://home.msen.com/~burnett/00tash.htm has moved to: http://traveldoug.com/00tash.htm in cat: http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/Asia/

Photo sketches of Bali&amp;#8230; at http://www1.biz.biglobe.ne.jp/~kazoo/ has moved to: http://estrellita.cool.ne.jp/ in cat: http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/Asia/ (Its in Japanese, so cant be sure what it says)

K Chee's travels in http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/Asia/ redirects to a general bellsouth portal - not much asia here either.

Classic Asian Overland in same cat is off the air.

http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/Asia/ needs a complete overhaul if you ask me!


The first Hong Kong Map entry in cat: http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Hong_Kong/Maps_and_Views/ is nothing more than a single gif image from the utexas library map collection. Furthermore, the first two sites in the cat are both dead. At least those two looked like real sites rather than a site composed of one image.

The City of Life entry in http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Hong_Kong/Travel_and_Tourism/ is not in English - it should be, no?

Freeduty.com is a real joke! It's a site that just sells wine, and booze I suppose, also in http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Hong_Kong/Travel_and_Tourism/. The only Hong Kong connection is in the guy's email address.

Re: Dead/invalid links .... Regional/Asia/Malaysia

Just a quick note to say thanks for helping out.

I had a quick look at Freeduty.com

and it gives the following contact address

Free Duty
Room 607-612 Tower 2
Cheung Sha Wan Plaza
833 Cheung Sha Wan Road
Lai Chi Kok
Kowloon
Hong Kong

as well as stating on the site 'Free Duty operates 20 shops at the HK International Airport.'(with a location map which takes forever to load)

So I expect that it is probably going to stay. I must admit seems more of a business that a travel and tourism site, but there is an overlap in this particular case (certainly they aren't selling locally, but are aimed at tourists). Glad I don't have to make the call on it <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

Re: Dead/invalid links ....

Pixelator said ...
&gt;&gt; It seems to me I may be better off not being an editor - perhaps it's the feeling of being too confined in a small number of categories. &lt;&lt;

Mmm ... You can then aspire to be an ODP editall (or higher), who are entrusted to "edit anywhere in the directory, except in restricted areas". <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

Currently there are more than 200 editall+, and all (most <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />) of us started from having permission to edit in only a small cat.

I'll have a look at the "misfits URLs" a bit later, if somebody else didn't get to it earlier. It would be nice if you number them though.