[a] Webmasters need to get listed on ODP to compete with other sites.
If you think this is true, you have two options:
(1) get out of the webmaster business now, this minute, and leave it to someone with a clue.
(2) To to some of the webmaster forums, and try to learn something from the webmasters who have no trouble at all competing without ODP listings.
...always unfairly bias competition, conflicting with the idea of the 'perfect market' on the internet....
You really don't handle reality well, do you?
Every human technology, every archive, every model, every index, every taxonomy, has built-in biases. Every human being has biases. That your built-in bias doesn't match the ODP's -- means precisely and absolutely nothing.
I see the ODP's bias in favor of information, the arts, creativity, and other aspects of human society as an important counterweight to the enormous commercialism that influences Yahoo, infests Google, and defines MSN.
As for the concept of "perfect market" -- if someone ever figures out how to create one, and Bill Gates doesn't have him assassinated, the presence of the ODP won't possibly inhibit its implementation at all.
[d] It could be lessened by editors responding to website suggestions in more reasonable a time (over 2 years??), because in this way, webmasters can improve their content if it is subjectively not acceptable to the editor who happens to be there, and in this way, the editors can get more high quality sites to their list, and webmasters don't get unfairly penalised in the perfect market. If that isn't part of the general etiquette, change it. And;
Most people will, I think, see [d] as another unrealistic delusion.
In the real world, 99.9% of the rejected sites couldn't be made listable. They simply have nothing in relation to the ODP's goals.
In the real world, the ODP is about "cataloging the sum of human knowledge." The perfect market project is not on our agenda. We don't know how to do it, and it wouldn't be our priority if we did: we're the people who were attracted by that OTHER mission.
In the real world, a significant minority of webmasters react badly to criticism -- ranging from legal threats to physical stalking and threats of violence. So the fact is, it cannot possibly matter what webmasters want: in simple self-protection we ain't EVER going to stop recommending that editors NOT respond.
In the real world, there is no shortage of commercial sites, so any suggestions that editors need to work harder to get more of them, are risible at best.
Markos, you have a goal. We have a goal. It's a big internet. You take your site and ride your goal however you want. We have not, and will not, take the high-and-mighty holier-than-thou arrogant approach of telling you to shove your mission and turn your website over to our mission.
And we expect that same courtesy from you.
