Regional vs World issues

Mat1 said:

Wanted to draw your attention to the mess in italian categories.

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We have specific problems in English-language categories for countries where English is not one of the official languages.

1. Many, many sites not in English are submitted to the English-language Regional category for the relevant country. According to our Guidelines, they should be moved to the appropriate category in World. Experienced editors will do that, but sometimes inexperienced editors list the sites in Regional. (In some cases sites appear to have an English-language version, but in fact it is under construction, or goes no deeper than the menu. That could slip past an editor's guard. In other cases it once did have an English version, but no longer.)

2. Editors whose first language is not English generally prefer to edit in World. As there more sites about (for example) Italy in Italian than English, that works out pretty well. Our Italian editors are noted for their diligence and have created a large section in World. In fact http://dmoz.org/World/Italiano/ is currently larger than http://dmoz.org/World/Español/ despite the size of the Spanish-speaking population world-wide.

3. Regional//Italy is by no means the most neglected category in Regional. It has 10,817 listings currently. Several European countries of similar size have under 1,000 listings. Some countries in Africa have under 100 listings. The number of listings reflects the degree of Internet penetration in a country, the number of English speakers there and the importance/development of the tourist trade.

As for dead links, redirects, etc - you find them all over the ODP and every other directory. The Internet changes all the time. No static directory can ever be totally up to date, as each day brings new changes.

Jean, well said.

In support of comments made in number 1, I offer Greenland as a prime example. When I first joined up with the Greenland team, we found quite a few sites suggested (and some older listed ones) that were only in Greenlandic and/or Danish and also sites that had english versions that were a little difficult to find/navigate too or where they were just poorly done machine translations. On more than one occasion we missed the english version the first time around, and a few (not many sites available for Greenland as of yet ) others were forwarded on to world because no english versions were found or the machine translated versions were unreadable.

Jean, from my postings it is quiet obvious that I am one of those disgruntled, frustrated webmasters, who can't wait having his site listed in ODP. Owning a site, I figured it might create some conflict, sending out an application for becoming an editor. I trapped myself starting out to get rid of those not-working listings under Italy, what has become a European roundtrip.

Matt: It is natural for a webmaster to be frustrated waiting for a listing in a directory.

I have a non-profit site, so I would never pay for fast review in any directory. I confine myself to free submissions. Currently I am waiting to see if submissions to three directories will be successful. They were made in May, July and December last year. Naturally I would love to know when they will be processed or if they have been already rejected.

It is very easy to get impatient and blame the editors. What are they doing? Why is it taking so long? Being an editor myself I do have some insight. I know that the ODP is almost crushed with the weight of submissions. Stories have emerged from other directories telling a similar tale - overwhelming numbers of submissions, most of which are inappropriate for the directory.

Happily for commercial webmasters there is another route. They can pay for fast review in commercial directories, such as Yahoo. If they feel that directory listings would benefit their business, then it is simply a question of deciding which directory listings would be cost-effective.

Owning a site does not disqualify you from applying to become an editor, I assure you. The ODP recognises that people sufficiently interested in the Internet and in a particular topic to want to edit in the ODP will very probably have created a website on that topic before they apply. If they haven't, they may create one during their time as an editor. That is not a problem. It only becomes a problem if an editor does not edit objectively, and follow the guidelines.

jeanmanco said:

Matt: It is natural for a webmaster to be frustrated waiting for a listing in a directory.

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Patience is not a problem on my side, but it is also depending on a positive outcome.

jeanmanco said:

Owning a site does not disqualify you from applying to become an editor, I assure you. The ODP recognises that people sufficiently interested in the Internet and in a particular topic to want to edit in the ODP will very probably have created a website on that topic before they apply. If they haven't, they may create one during their time as an editor. That is not a problem. It only becomes a problem if an editor does not edit objectively, and follow the guidelines.

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Will make up my mind in the foreseeable future whether applying or not, most likely not for the category to which I suggested my site for inclusion.