the art of creating metadata

Dear community members,

What strikes me is that the ODP says so little about creating ´good´ web directories.

Here is my saying on that:

1. Directories exist because editors can determine whether a site contains useful information or not. (Search)engines cannot determine the usefulness. As a consequence, editors should include useful sites only. The difference in usefulness is the reason of existence for web directories.

2. The description of the link must describe when to choose this link. Now I see too much a general description of the information type. What I would like to see is the goal of the site (or the conditions or the users) for which the information is useful. Tell me why this site is useful? for who? when? I know this is hard work because a lot of sites are not focused. Yet, the editor decided to include it. Why? I would like to see that in the description

I would like to help the ODP reviewing this aspect of it. Can I volunteer? How?

I expect these guidelines to be included in
http://dmoz.org/guidelines/describing.html
or
http://dmoz.org/guidelines/index.html

My own site deals with this issue, look on:
http://members.home.nl/mackelenbergh/how_to_create_metadata.htm

thanks,

Marcel

Marcel van Mackelenbergh
Human Performance Engineer
P.C. Hooftstraat 20
5242CH Rosmalen
the Netherlands
telephone: +31 73 522 3022
ODP:
email: marcelvanmackelenbergh@home.nl
homepage: http://members.home.nl/mackelenbergh

First, the ODP has its particular ideas about how to write descriptions (some of which are embedded in the guidelines, and some of which have developed through community consensus.) You have some different ideas: they may turn out to be "complementary to" rather than than "compatible with" the ODP ideas.

I don't know how much you have tried to apply these ideas. Before joining the ODP, I had built a small (50,000-entry, 500-topic) specialized index covering a dozen books: which shaped several aspects of my own ODP work and my own proposals for modifying the ODP. After joining the ODP, I ... um ... learned a lot more about indexing.

You would surely benefit by building a small directory along the lines you propose: you might consider starting out with a several-thousand-entry ODP directory, and add your proposed metadata to each entry. (I'm also sure many ODP editors would be interested in seeing how such a thing could be done, and how it could be useful.)

You can also volunteer to edit the ODP. (We've got another forum for questions like that: check it out.) I'd caution you that we'd expect you to work within our guidelines and community, rather than unilaterally imposing a different set of guidelines (however excellent they might be). Really learning the ODP process from the inside will give you a different kind of insight into metadata creation, which will enrich your thinking, even if you still end up thinking there is a better way. (You could spend the next two years reading the collective thoughts of the community on issues it had never occurred to you even to be wrong on.)

I know I'm not the only ODP editor who came with a unique (idiosyncratic?) set of ideas about metadata creation. The community is enriched by discussing and selecting different approaches.

Hutcheson,

Many, many thanks for getting me into the spirit of ODP. Of course you are right, we should not hobby along but have a uniform approach to what we try to do. I will keep that in mind when trying to be an example of what I think could be done better. (e.g. usefulness of the information offered). Enough theory, I will now plunge into the practice of becoming an ODP editor.

Thanks again!

Marcel