Suggestions For ODP

Suggestions For ODP

You really need to create a page where the status of site submissions can be checked. It shouldn't be difficult for someone to create a script. There are certainly lots of capable folks who would gladly volunteer their time. If submissions can't be check, many sites are going to be resubmitted over and over again creating more work for the editors.

Also, you need to give submitted sites some sort of priority based on the time of submission. You shouldn't be adding sites that were submitted yesterday before a site that has not been reviewed for over a year. You really need to do something about this even if it means rotating editors to inactive categories. Perhaps, its time to start adding sites to inactive categories automatically and start some type of rating system for appropriateness so that editors can weed out the bad submissions.

We submitted our site http://www.-.com over 12 months ago and it has not been reviewed yet.

Site submissions are just suggestions that editors can use along with many other sources of sites such as Googling for them. And from recent knowledge I believe there are moves to change the term to make it clearer that this is all they are. ODP isn't a listing service for websites so doesn't offer any related services such as status reports.

If you resubmit over and over all it does is overwrite the suggestion and give it a new date stamp. If the editor processes suggestions in date order you are continually sending your site to the bottom of the pile. If you resubmit to different categories you will get a name as a spammer and the consequences are potentially severe. There is no carrot needed when the stick is so large.

The priority is to list quality sites and date of submission bears no relation to the quality of the site. So editors have many ways of identifying the best potential candidates - those who have clearly read all the guidelines by the way they submit for example - and give priority that way. As I say, it isn't a listing service so the entire concept is different to what you might expect from such a service.

You can't rotate editors because you cannot tell unpaid volunteers what to do with their time. Anyone who tried would find editors disappearing very fast. Editors are basically a cross section of web surfers and the categories they give their attention to will be those that appeal to them personally. In terms of overall productivity this works best.

Automatically adding sites to inactive categories would not work - they would quickly become spam magnets.

You suggested your site over 12 months ago. But it could be tomorrow or five years time before anyone looks at it. It is the nature of the beast and not something that will change in that respect because there is not the least bit of interest in your or anyone else's promotion and marketing - the job of cataloging the web is one that would take decades so ODP just scratches the surface. And when you look at it objectively, why should a librarian from some provincial part of Canada or a teacher from New Zealand or a postal worker from California spend their spare time doing web marketing for companies for nothing - that wouldn't make sense would it. But they are interested in cataloging the best of the Internet as a bit of fun or an interesting hobby. If you want a commercial professional web listing service they exist elsewhere!

Best of luck in your endeavours

oneeye (former editall/catmv)

It appears to me that ODP lists both commercial and non commercial sites and was initially setup to be "the directory" so I don't think your marketing and promotions comments were appropriate. Infact, the whole purpose of directories is to promote or create awareness of sites regardless of the type of content.

I can understand that you want to add high quality sites to the directory; however, at the rate you add quality sites today, you will never realize the original goal of the ODP of cataloging the web as you put it. If you were asked if the current method of finding and adding quality sites can be improved, you will more than likely say yes. Sometimes when something doesn't work, it needs to be fixed. My suggestions were just that, suggestions. There are ways to prevent spam through email verification, verification codes, limiting submisisons by IP, domain, etc. These techniques are very effective.

I knew the editors were all volunteers but I didn't realize editing the ODP is now a hobby for some. Hmmmmm? OK, now that explains a few things.

fadfusion, it's amazing how many people have had the idea you have, and how many people have worked to try to see if it could be made to work. Use the "search" to look for some prior discussions; check out our archived forum to see what would actually happen if people got such information. From the inside, editors' concerns naturally drive changes, and this is not the place to discuss them. But even from the outside, the obvious question is "what practical difference does it make to an honest webmaster?" There is no answer, and I think there can be no answer.

This is not the place to discuss spam blocking: suffice it to say that any ODP techniques would be based on the actual patterns of significant spam we see, and discussions of them would be carried out by skilled programmers behind closed doors. (If you're willing to show your public spirit by volunteering to edit, then show your integrity by a few tens of thousands of actual edits in difficult areas, then show your technical ability by contributing significantly to our editor-written tools, your input on such things would be appreciated by your peers.

On volunteerism, suffice it to say that editing has from the beginning been required to be a hobby for all editors, and violation of the policy has from the beginning resulted in loss of editing privileges.

On ODP criteria for listing sites: "quality" as an adjective is not, and has never been among them. It is much more useful for surfers, and helpful for editors, to focus on objective, well-defined attributes. "Does the site contain significant unique content of an informational kind? Does it add to the sum of human knowledge, experience or culture?"

On improving the processes editors use, any editor can try out any process for finding and sorting websites; and can describe the process and its results to other editors in the forum. The result is that there is continual experimentation on alternate procedures, and continual uptake of the ones that prove actually (rather than speculatively) productive. And anyone who has shown the ability to devise improved techniques by actually performing them, receives the attention and respect that such an accomplishment deserves -- in the internal forums.

On the utter irrelevance in every conceivable way of "submittal time" as priority criterion, you can find many thorough explanations: try using "forum search." The catastrophic effect such a draconian restriction would have on any genuine effort to improve editing processes, I leave to your imagination -- if you aren't horrified by the very idea, I commend to your attention any history of science under Stalin.

I can understand that you want to add high quality sites to the directory; however, at the rate you add quality sites today, you will never realize the original goal of the ODP of cataloging the web as you put it.

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Then you can understand the use of selectivity. The aim is not to catalog every single site. I called it quality, hutcheson prefers the long form but they mean the same. You are right of course - cataloging the entire web, even when restricted to those with copious amounts of original material, is not a task that can ever be completed. So DMOZ doesn't even try. Again there are changes in the way the mission and objectives are worded to make them more in the real world currently going through.

Sometimes when something doesn't work, it needs to be fixed.

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Trouble is, for what DMOZ editors consider to be their objectives, the system does indeed work very well. And improvements that include trying to direct editors' efforts in particular directions, e.g. towards your site, would be counter-productive. The editor listing 200 sites a month where they wanted would suddenly be listing 1 site a month where they were told to if they did not simply hand in their editor's badge.

It appears to me that ODP lists both commercial and non commercial sites and was initially setup to be "the directory" so I don't think your marketing and promotions comments were appropriate. Infact, the whole purpose of directories is to promote or create awareness of sites regardless of the type of content.

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Your final comment in your first post referred to how long your site had been waiting for review followed by a "mad" smiley, and your suggestions would be appropriate for a website listing service. That suggests, and apologies for any misinterpretation, that you would like editing resources directed towards your site and others like it. For what reason? The valid reason is because it would improve the amount of information DMOZ links to but whilst not listing your site editors are improving the amount of information DMOZ links to in other categories and since it is their choice of category they will inevitably be more productive. My most productive time as an editor was before I became an editall and felt some limited obligation to edit in areas where I didn't have a particular interest. The other reason, which is invalid, is that you want an editor to help your marketing effort by listing your site - the editors who could do that are busy elsewhere listing many other sites they feel individually are of more interest to themselves and to the directory users as a whole.

The concept relies on the premise that if there is a huge demand for information on a subject one of the demanders will succeed in becoming an editor for that subject and satisfy the demand. Sometimes that approach can result in gaps in coverage of sites. But it is a price worth paying in terms of the total productivity.

oneeye (former editall/catmv)

Sometimes when something doesn't work, it needs to be fixed.

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While that statement is absolutely correct fadfusion, the problem is that when people try to apply that concept to the ODP, they often mess up the concept.

The problem is that very often an outsider's idea of fixing the ODP usually involves changing the ODP. Much like deciding that a grandfather clock is not working correctly, and the solution is to turn it into a vacuum cleaner.

For example: if someone postulates that the ODP is broken because sites are not added to he directoy fast enough, the solution is not to do things that facilitate the addition of spam (such as putting in a feedback system), nor should we open the gates and lower the standard for the sake of addings hundreds of new exitors overnight (which would ultimately grind the direcotry down to a halt as otherwise productive, exprienced editors would spend all their time fixing the bad/malicious edits from unqualified editors).

That is why suggestions that we pay extra attentionto the submission pool, or that we review sites by submission/suggestion date tend to fall on deaf ears. Neither really contributes to improving the directory.

Still, we need to keep the channels of communication open because periodically we do hear something that is new/novel and (trust me on this) that type of idea gets grabbed by dozens of editors and brought to the internal forums for discussion and possible implementation. It is just that it is exceptionally difficut for an outsider, who does not know or understand our internal systems, to make a meaninful suggestion. Yet we wait, and we hope.

Finally, one thing that is often overlooked is the fact that, since we are all volunteers, there is an amazing sense of dedication among the editors who have been around for a while. We care about the directory and each other. We have editors who have contributed 20,000, 40,000 and more than 100,000 logged edits -- all on their free time. And anyone who read this, and has a site awaiting eventual review needs to know that we care, and that our focus is on the directory as a whole, not on any given site suggestion. If we didn't care we wouldn't edit.

spectregunner said:

We have editors who have contributed 20,000, 40,000 and more than 100,000 logged edits -- all on their free time. And anyone who read this, and has a site awaiting eventual review needs to know that we care, and that our focus is on the directory as a whole, not on any given site suggestion. If we didn't care we wouldn't edit.

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That's a forward thinking point!

How much time does it take to create a "fair" website deserving a listing?

How much time does it take to deliver a "fair" review of a website where the editor evaluate a website as a whole and not just the mainpage?

For argument sake - let's say an extremely experienced editor can do a fair review in 10 minutes/site... 6/hour and volunteers 1 hour/day, 300 days/year... [an extremely dedicated editor doing something for the joy of it]

In some cases that's 3-4 years for a single category to clear the backlog... and more being added every day.

fathom said:

For argument sake - let's say an extremely experienced editor can do a fair review in 10 minutes/site... 6/hour and volunteers 1 hour/day, 300 days/year...

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i've only been an editor for about a year... but a review for me takes some time -

20mins - 1 month review (reading the site... every page)

20mins - 1 week editing (deciding to add it to the directory or not)

It get even more interesting:

Some sites can be reviewed and listed in a minute or so. Some can take hours. Some editors do little more than the minimum (which is perfectly acceptable) some of us are in the ODP=life mode.

There are also related editing tasks that take hours and hours of volunteer time, yet do not result in a single site being listed. A case in point: Regional/North_America/United_States/Business_and_Economy/Automotive. I recently spent a lot of time there -- tens of hours. Oh, I listed a couple of sites, but mostly move more than 170 missubmitted sites (all for local auto dealerships) to the correct locality based on the actual address of the dealer). And of those, maybe 10% I guess wrong on, so they will have to get moved again by another editor (or even by me). Included in that was the time that was taken to reach out and contact the company that was responsible for the bulk of those missubmissions and give them a bit of an education on how to submit. Next step will be teaching them how to write a decent title and description -- but for now, if they submit to the correct locality, I'll be happy.

Educational institutions, municipalities and government agencies redo their websites like clockwork, breaking all their links in the process. And, since we often deeplink the heck out of these type sites -- the effort involved in restoring all these valuable links can be enormous. Thus editors with broad permissions routinely ask themselves: Shall I spend the next few hours fixing all the school district links or try to find the three legitimate travel agents in a pool of 231 heavily disguised travel affiliates?

One could almost say that the only thing average about an editing session is that it is not average.

martinpaling said:

i've only been an editor for about a year... but a review for me takes some time -

20mins - 1 month review (reading the site... every page)

20mins - 1 week editing (deciding to add it to the directory or not)

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Merely an example of time management.

For me personally... I hone in on the exotic - "what makes the reviewing site stand above the others in the category"... "what sets them apart". If they "have that" they got my full attention... if they are merely regurgatating their competition - they're not doing themselves any favors [listing or not].

Like you though - I rarely review and edit in the same session.

fathom said:

Like you though - I rarely review and edit in the same session.

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yeah i tend to spend a few weeks or months reading and then spend a manic week editing.... i only have small non-commercial cats, and i think i like it that way, i'm not so sure i'd like dealing with spam in a commercial cat... that said if the editor of my towns cat quits i might apply

dogbows said:

...there is nothing more rewarding than building up small towns in the Regional Branch. Go for it!

:dog:dogbows [/B][/COLOR]

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Ya - sometime the virtual small town 'kicks-ass' over the real deal!

Sometimes when something doesn't work, it needs to be fixed.

wow it has been almost 3 years since my original post and things are exactly where I left them.... and in the meanwhile the importance of DMOZ has waned to almost nothing ... tis tis ..... imagine what it could have been ...

As you might have noticed DMOZ had a crash end of 2006 and almost all suggestions from 2006 and before were lost. If you did not suggest in 2007 or 2008 you are welcome to suggest your site again.