Treat others as you wish to be treated

Greetings,

I'm not writing this post to be critical of the volunteers at ODP or even to question your integrity, but rather to point out the same thing that has and will continue to haunt the ODP/DMOZ project until the day someone there decides to set things straight.

Your policy is selfish in the sense that it has complete disregard for regular website owners of good valid websites, and ironically without us where would ODP be? Sure there are plenty of spammers out there, but why should you resort to collective punishment tactics, where you make us all suffer for the violations of a handful of spammers? This is cruel and unusual to say the least.

I understand your service is NOT targeted at us, I agree. But we are the providers, if we did not provide you would have no directory to maintain. Since we are here to provide the websites, you now have a great product to offer the surfers. See how it works? We are all supposed to work together, to be a web community.

I'm sorry to say, but the reality is these policies that you claim are "anti-spam" are in fact very destructive in the long run; they are counterproductive to the web community. It may take years but it will come out in the end and you will see the error in your ways. I mean this forum is a sign of that. This whole forum was created and is dedicated (in one way or the other) to this problem!

The lack of accountability and information that results from this zero communication policy has many negative effects: First it leaves enough void and information vacuum that anything can be open to assumption or interpretation or doubt, no one knows "what's what" except a few unreachable unknown unaccountable editors (sure you're volunteers but you're not beyond accountability). Secondly it leaves a system that is wide open to abuse, even if no one has proof to make that allegation, it certainly is more susceptible to abuse than any other system because there is no communication and no tracking of information and no response or responsibility or accountability of any type.

And finally a humble word of caution, as editors (and good volunteers) don't let the power get to your heads. I'm sure if you think back to the time before you adopted this policy and before you volunteered at ODP, you might be able to relate to the hardships we must go through to understand why we never get any responses, waiting forever (sometimes years), not knowing what, why or when? There's no need to act like big government. There are smarter ways to fight spammers. You could open up the channels of communications again and develop better policies to blacklist spammers (by domain name). Maybe my suggestion is not the answer but I'm sure there are better ways that won't earn you all the discontent and grief of millions of good webmasters out there. I mean honestly, you don't think we're all just a nuisance do you? I mean all the people voicing valid concerns here, we're not all unlistable/spammers are we?

I hope my message is not seen as ranting, I wrote it with the intent of being as constructive and helpful as possible, but also to register my discontent.

Thank you for reading and for being here and volunteering your time.

Regards,
-AYJ
Owner of http://www.inetbug.com

(Submitted April 2005 ... still waiting)

I'd be interested to know what you mean by

collective punishment tactics, where you make us all suffer for the violations of a handful of spammers? This is cruel and unusual to say the least.

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and

these policies that you claim are "anti-spam" are in fact very destructive in the long run; they are counterproductive to the web community.

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?

It would be easier to open a constructive discussion if you could tell us exactly what you refer to. If it is about the fact that we don't offer status reports any more, you should not blame the ODP for that. We here at Resource-Zone made that decision, and although we are by definition ODP editors, it was not an ODP decision, nor is it part of ODPs spam fighting tactics. (In fact, we caught some spam through status requests that we might not have noticed as early otherwise).

inetbug said:

The lack of accountability and information that results from this zero communication policy has many negative effects: First it leaves enough void and information vacuum that anything can be open to assumption or interpretation or doubt, no one knows "what's what" except a few unreachable unknown unaccountable editors (sure you're volunteers but you're not beyond accountability). Secondly it leaves a system that is wide open to abuse, even if no one has proof to make that allegation, it certainly is more susceptible to abuse than any other system because there is no communication and no tracking of information and no response or responsibility or accountability of any type.

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I have to disagree. First of all you can only be accountable for something you promised to do. I, and all other editors, never have promised to do anything for a website owner. Certainly not listing his site. And even more certainly not to do this within a certain timeframe. I only promised to do something with a certain quality to the DMOZ editor community. So I, as an editor, am accountable (if you want to call it that) to the complete editor-community only. As all editors are in the same position we can fight abuse by editors very effectively.

inetbug said:

You could open up the channels of communications again and develop better policies to blacklist spammers (by domain name).

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As spammers took over the channels of communication (I guess you mean the status requests) we had to decide to close this line of communication.

inetbug said:

I mean honestly, you don't think we're all just a nuisance do you? I mean all the people voicing valid concerns here, we're not all unlistable/spammers are we?

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No, only a small part of website owners are spammer. But those spammers are accountable for over 50% of all suggestions made these days. That is the reason we have to fight them by all means. The ultimate thing we could do is closedown suggestions alltogether (and this has been discussed by editors already).

Read any thread here and you'll see people who have submitted ... waiting ... months ... years. I don't mean to dramatize but the pattern is obvious, where there is no communication, there are people who don't know what to do! And yes I happen to be one of them. Most of the replies from editors on those threads allude to the 'spam' problem when justifying why they will not provide any feedback: Is my site being processed? Has it been rejected? When will it be processed or dropped? Anything, just don't let us suffer for months and years not knowing what to do. If we are unlistable (for some unimaginable reason??!?) then let us know, point us in some direction, help us ... it can't be all that bad to help the people who feed your directory. I'm sure there's some good karma in that!

Anyway, it is that "policy of silence" that the editors/moderators said was used to leave spammers in the dark. You'll find it in one of the "How to submit" threads, I understand the logic, but it ends up causing many to suffer at the hands of a few. The trade off is not good, and as I mentioned there must be better ways to filter spammers without penalizing or excommunicating all the rest of well-intended website owners and webmasters.

I didn't want to make an exact reference since I have been reading this forum for hours and I was speaking to the "policy of silence" in general, but if you still are not sure I'll go back and find specific postings ( ... and no I am not referring to status checks).

OK, let's take this a little at a time, accepting that you are offering this in a spirit of goodness.

Can we answer the following:

Is my site being processed?

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There are three possibilities for any given site:

It is unreviewed.
It was reviewed and listed.
It was reviewed and declined.

When will it be processed or dropped?

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We say this all the time, but people never believe us. There is absolutely no way to tell or predict. Last night I did editing in a small town in Florida, Military Helicopters, and commercial aircraft charters. there were helf a million other categories I did not touch. Where will I go tonight. It will depend upon how many peppers they put in the Pork Carnitas at dinner and where or not I am in the honeydo dog house. I may edit int he ODP, I may go over and help out with Joeant or WebSavvy. I may decide to work on my website or fiddle with my AdSense, which has made me $3.13 richer in the last two months.

Has it been rejected?

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This is the tough one.
If we say yes, 95% of the time we end up with an argument.
If we tell people, yes or no, we have opened ourselves up to argument or inadvertantly helping spammers. The ugly fact of htematter is that the spammers and directory abusers do masquerade as reguslar website suers just to try and figure out what we know and what we are able to detect.

If we are unlistable (for some unimaginable reason??!?) then let us know, point us in some direction, help us ...

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But even if we did decide to answer, any answer is going to be incomplete. Maybe slightly incomplete, potentially significantly incompelete. We don't do a compelte website review and make alist of all the reasons it is listable and all the reasons it is not listable. Once we determine it is not listable, we stop looking. There is, from our perspective, nothing further for us to review, but it may only have been the first of 12 reasons why the site was not listable, and it may never be listable.

Most of us have learned, to our detriment, that helping people out by offering the type of feedback you are suggesting generally leads nowhere good. Our experiment here with site suggestion statuses pretty well demonstrated that.

You really need to remember that the fact that the ODP allows you to suggest your site does not in any way obligate the ODP or its editors to do anything with said suggestion, let alone enter into any kind of dialogue with you over said suggestion. Yes, without web sites, there would be no need for directories but our obligation starts and ends with the user, not the web site owner and, as long as the directory is steadily growing, we're doing what we're supposed to be doing. If it's growing because we're going out and finding sites to list rather than looking at sites that have been suggested, it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Your policy is selfish in the sense that it has complete disregard for regular website owners of good valid websites, and ironically without us where would ODP be?

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Actually, it shows complete and fair regard to all site owners in that preference is not given to those who know about and suggest their sites to the ODP. Why should your site get preferential treatment over a site that hasn't been suggested at all?

inetbug said:

Anything, just don't let us suffer for months and years not knowing what to do.

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Suffer from what?
You only have to do one thing: suggest your site if you want to.
That's all.
The only thing we can promise that oneday we will look at the suggestion.
Why are you so preoccupied by wanting to know what will happen to your suggestion. Mainly as you yourself are the only one who can predict if your site is listable. Just read the DMOZ guidelines and you know if we will reject the site. It is that easy.
And keep in mind DMOZ does not deliver any service to website owners at all. Or as repeated over and over again: we are NOT a listing service.
Only if you start to understand that concept you will be able to understand why we won't tell webmasters about the status of suggested sites anymore.

Motsa makes a good point "it shows complete and fair regard to all site owners in that preference is not given to those who know about and suggest their sites to the ODP."

Thank you.

pvgool: You said "Only if you start to understand that concept you will be able to understand why we won't tell webmasters about the status of suggested sites anymore." ... but as I stated before I'm not refering to status checks, I never knew that is used to exist until today. I'm talking about the experiences we have to go through - not having a clue of what goes on in your world. I've done my best, now I just have to wait ... wait for what? I don't even know if "you" consider it listable or not. What I do know is that I've read every word on the submission guidelines a dozen times and I've done everything I can based on the ODP standards, I've even written a follow up message to the editor of the category and all this with not a single response ... nothing. I haven't asked for much, I haven't been demanding.

Sure it's easy for you to ask me to not be preoccupied, but we all know that if your website is not listed in DMOZ then something must be wrong with it. I'd honestly like to know if (A) my site has not been listed because it's still in process after 6 months - or is it (B) my site is not listed because the editors don't think it's listable - or is it (C) something is inherently wrong with my website and it's been rejected. If it's A then i have to wait, but I don't want to wait forever since I don't know for sure it's C (that's why I'm preoccupied). If it's B then my fault (again ... I don't think it's B). If it's C then I really need to find out about it somehow because it's not mentioned anywhere on DMOZ, I have checked and double-checked. Now you might be able to appreciate some of the frustration we have to deal with.

we all know that if your website is not listed in DMOZ then something must be wrong with it.

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Actually, no, we don't all know that.

If your site isn't listed in the ODP, it might just mean that no one has felt like editing in the area where your site belongs anytime recently. Editors edit where they want to and if no one wants to edit any given category, then sites that could be listed there have to wait until someone decides that they want to list those sites over anything else they could be doing at the time.

Or, if your site isn't listed in the ODP, it might mean that the site is unlistable according to our guidelines but that doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with it (plenty of sites we wouldn't list make their owners a ton of money and/or have a huge following -- the sites themselves are successful despite not being listed in the ODP).

You build the best website you can for the purposes that you have in mind. If your purposes and our purposes meet, then in all likelihood your site will eventually be listed ("eventually" being the key word). But if our purposes and yours don't meet, that doesn't mean you should change yours to meet ours just so you can get listed.

>...people who have submitted ... waiting ... The pattern is obvious, where there is no communication, there are people who don't know what to do!

Not true, not true at all.

The submittal policy tells everything that anyone needs to know about what to do. Anyone may read it.

>but it ends up causing many to suffer at the hands of a few.

Not true, not true at all. The policy doesn't harm legitimate submitters, because no information we could give them would affect their actions in any honest way.

I won't get into whether spammers are the "many" or the "few", but it is absolutely true that 90+% of SUBMITTALS are spam, and all the time wasted pandering to spammy submittals takes time away from looking for legitimate sites.

>There must be better ways to filter spammers without penalizing or excommunicating all the rest of well-intended website owners and webmasters.

The current policy is designed to provide the maximum possible benefit to well-intended webmasters. And it does achieve that goal. It achieves that goal by focussing on reviewing and listing as many good sites as possible, and avoids wasting time responding to the 90% of spam submittals, and also avoids wasting time giving totally useless information responding to the submitters of the 10% of useful submittals.

The trade-off is perfect. Everyone wins, and nobody loses but the spammers (who COULD take good advantage of the information they get, who do NOT follow the submittal policies.)

You haven't been penalized -- we offered you no service, we took nothing from you but a URL that you volunteered to give us. You haven't been excommunicated -- we have nothing useful to tell you, you obviously have nothing else useful to tell us now, and if you ever again have anything useful to tell us, then the mechanisms for that are still open.

So, there's no problem except that you are wanting something from us that we don't have and you couldn't use.

Dialogue is good, answers are better!

>..people who have submitted ... waiting ... The pattern is obvious, where there is no communication, there are people who don't know what to do!

Not true, not true at all.

The submittal policy tells everything that anyone needs to know about what to do. Anyone may read it.

- Correct. And I have read it and abided by all the guidelines listed there.

>but it ends up causing many to suffer at the hands of a few.

Not true, not true at all. The policy doesn't harm legitimate submitters, because no information we could give them would affect their actions in any honest way.

I won't get into whether spammers are the "many" or the "few", but it is absolutely true that 90+% of SUBMITTALS are spam, and all the time wasted pandering to spammy submittals takes time away from looking for legitimate sites.

- Spammers are fewer in number but the spam they generate overwhelmes us all sometimes (even me!). Yet you make us pay the price by developing policies to exclude us from the listing process.

>There must be better ways to filter spammers without penalizing or excommunicating all the rest of well-intended website owners and webmasters.

The current policy is designed to provide the maximum possible benefit to well-intended webmasters. And it does achieve that goal.

- Really? Is that why so many of us wait for months or years with no clue why we have not been listed? Yes I do consider myself a well-intended webmaster. And I am aware of ODP website & submittal guidelines.

The trade-off is perfect. Everyone wins, and nobody loses but the spammers (who COULD take good advantage of the information they get, who do NOT follow the submittal policies.)

- Again I must stress too many non-spammers who follow all the rules, and who have websites which comparable to those already listed, who have been waiting for months (or years) with no indication of why?

You haven't been penalized -- we offered you no service, we took nothing from you but a URL that you volunteered to give us. You haven't been excommunicated --

- Of course you offer a service ... to the public. I'm a member of the public and of the web community. I surf too. I have legitimate concerns as do my friends and other people who ask me why my website is not listed. You would ask too if you weren't an editor.

we have nothing useful to tell you,

- I'm not sure if you do or don't. The editors who are responsible for editing must find a way to update or clarify the criteria for listing or rejecting a website. This issue remains a mystery has not yet been addressed in this forum. People will not stop asking unless someone provides a real answer or discontinues this forum.

you obviously have nothing else useful to tell us now, and if you ever again have anything useful to tell us, then the mechanisms for that are still open.

- The mechanism is open and diolgue is just the first step, however many questions remain unanswered.

So, there's no problem except that you are wanting something from us that we don't have and you couldn't use.

- Is it so strange that I'm asking for something that ODP publicly offers? Am I not supposed to be confused when my website is not included in public directory when it actually meets all criteria and I have verified comliance with all rules and guidelines? What am I to think? ODP is not a privately owned club. If it was I would not pursue this any further.

Again I must stress too many non-spammers who follow all the rules, and who have websites which comparable to those already listed, who have been waiting for months (or years) with no indication of why?

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If a site meets our listing guidelines, was submitted to the right category, and isn't listed yet, there are really only 3 reasons why:

-- no one has felt like editing in that category
-- someone has been editing in the category but just didn't feel like working in the suggestion pile at all
-- someone has been editing in the suggestion pile for the category but just didn't get to your site

In none of the above situations does entering into a dialogue help. An editor will review the site when they get around to it. All you as a suggester can do is wait.

- Spammers are fewer in number but the spam they generate overwhelmes us all sometimes (even me!). Yet you make us pay the price by developing policies to exclude us from the listing process.

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As already been told: we don't have a listing proces, so it is impossible to be excluded from it

- Of course you offer a service ... to the public.

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Aagain. No, DMOZ does NOT have a listing service. We never had and never wil have.

- I'm not sure if you do or don't. The editors who are responsible for editing must find a way to update or clarify the criteria for listing or rejecting a website. This issue remains a mystery has not yet been addressed in this forum. People will not stop asking unless someone provides a real answer or discontinues this forum.

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We have given the correct answer over and over again. But it seems people are only interested in the answer they want to hear not in the answer we are giving.

- Is it so strange that I'm asking for something that ODP publicly offers?

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So what do you think we are offering? It seems to be the thing we aren't offering at all.

ODP is not a privately owned club. If it was I would not pursue this any further.

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The last time I checked it was privately owned. It might be that this means something different in the part of world I'm living in. For me the opusite of privately owned is a public service, and to my opinion DMOZ isn't a public service.

>so many of us wait for months or years with no clue why we have not been listed?

As has been repeatedly explained, this has no practical significance.

There are two parts to it: the first part is when will my site be reviewed? And the answer to that is, we don't know. That won't change.

>I have legitimate concerns as do my friends and other people who ask me why my website is not listed.

That concern is not legitimate within the ODP frame of thought, and acting on it is intolerable within the ODP community. For instance, if you as an editor started pushing THAT concern to other editors, you'd become an ex-editor pretty quickly.

But you should explain to your friends how they can go to your site by typing its URL into the browser address bar. They don't need the ODP to find it.

You might also explain to your friends that the ODP isn't QUITE finished yet, that we do keep adding sites to it, and there could be a million or so good sites we haven't added yet. Obviously, there can be no possible reason why yours shouldn't be among them. There needn't be a reason yours SHOULD be among them -- that's the default state!

>The editors who are responsible for editing must find a way to update or clarify the criteria for listing or rejecting a website. People will not stop asking unless someone provides a real answer or discontinues this forum.

You're wrong. People won't stop asking ever. But that's OK. The answer doesn't change. It has been the same since the beginning of the ODP, to "index the sum of human knowledge on the internet." We could quibble about words: I personally prefer the more general expression "sum of human culture" or "human experience." And in place of "unique, relevant information", I prefer to put it in the form, "Who are you, what do you know, what happened to you, what have you done now, what would you do for money?"

>This issue remains a mystery has not yet been addressed in this forum.

There's no mystery. All follows directly from that.

>Am I not supposed to be confused when my website is not included in public directory when it actually meets all criteria and I have verified comliance with all rules and guidelines?

No, you are certainly very very confused. I can't imagine what you mean when you talk about "compliance with all rules and guidelines", let alone that you have "verified" that compliance. Whatever you're thinking about, it cannot have anything to do with the ODP in reality. And whatever it is you think you know, obviously it is what YOU think you know, and NOT something an editor CAN know: so it's pretty unreasonable of you to expect an editor to act on it.

I might hazard a guess that you really have no desire to be included in the Open Directory Project, but you wish to improve your ratings and search results within Google. You have read many posts on other forums or websites that getting into Google is improved by getting into ODP. (The validity of much of this information is questionable). So what makes me very said is that we have to spend time on these posts, since you actually do not care about DMOZ for it's own sake.

Well the truth is that ODP is a private organization, that has a number of rules and guidelines. It is not accountable to the world at large, and does not have to divulge internal processes. It does make strong attempts to prevent editor abuse, and prevent submission abuse. It does not have to divulge how this is done. It does not have to provide a "submission status" or provide feedback on whether sites are accepted of refused. It does not provide a submission service.

Google also is a private company, and operates in much the same fashion. If it bans your site, it will not tell you way, if it reduces your PR, it does not tell you why, it has ways to trap spam and find abuse in AdSense clicking, and does not explain how this is done. The only difference is that Goolge does not provide a public forum where you discuss you site and the Google procedures.

In response to you first post in this thread:

...and before you volunteered at ODP, you might be able to relate to the hardships we must go through to understand why we never get any responses,

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Yes I do remember, I submitted several sites at different times, I submitted each site once only, and got on with my life. I did not obsess about getting listed in DMOZ. Eventually I noticed in my server log some new referrers, and found my sites had been listed.

The same thing applied after I became an editor, I have submitted sites, some have been accepted, several still wait to be reviewed. The only difference being that if one is refused, I will know that has happened, if I ever took the trouble to look it up. But it does not mean that I can force it to be accepted.

Statements about "hardship" "waiting forever" etc. are really totally inappropriate, these things are not something we impose upon you, these are states of mind you decide to take on by yourself.

Ok, I can see we're going around in circles here and several of you keep repeating yourselves - sometimes is almost like you really don't comprehend our frustration. Look! You are what you are we didn't make it that way. Just because you happen to be the de facto directory of most major search engines doesn't mean that everybody out there is here to suck you dry. That's a very cynical way of thinking, and you should know that most people don't think like that. As a matter of fact I was one of the first people to promote ODP when so many others didn't even know what it was back in 1997, I was attracted to the concept of "open source" and I felt that ODP had something genuine to offer. I even had a website listed in ODP in 1997 and another in 2001. Now I feel like the culture there has changed. Some of the attitudes here are elitist if you know what I mean (not all), and the impression is that ODP is like an exclusives club.

I admit this conversation has helped me see a few things and has clarified some misconceptions on my part.

But I would like to remind you all of something (and I'm sure I am not the only one thinking this): The same people that lifted you up on their shoulders can give way any day to let you fall to the ground. It's the confidence of the people that does it. Remember most of us are not just website owners. We are also users, we are also the supporters, and we are also people just like you. If ODP has in fact evolved into an exclusive club of some sort, with total indifference and disregard, where often it is said "maybe we'll get around to it maybe not", and the web community starts seeing this frequently in public forums such as this ..... anyone with minimal foresight can predict what will happen next.

If I were in part of the ODP (volunteer or not) I would try to get back to the original reasons and circumstances that brought about the ODP. Certainly (and I can remember) it wasn't this bad. I have read (as I'm sure you have) thousands of complaints regarding your "policy of silence" – here and elsewhere, although I respect and agree with some of the responses made here, none of them justify the discontent of huge numbers of people on a grand scale (unless you were government of course – then you can brush them aside). I wouldn’t be here posting this message if I thought I was alone in my grievances, which is why I believe I am not obsessing – as you insinuated in you snide remark.

inetbug said:

If I were in part of the ODP (volunteer or not) I would try to get back to the original reasons and circumstances that brought about the ODP.

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Yes, let's do that. The original reasons were to build a directory of good stuff that is out there on the Internet, and to make the resulting data available under a free license agreement. And human-edited by volunteers doing what interests them, owing their allegiance only to building a good directory. That's it. If we have got away from that, lets' get back to it, and do what it takes to do that.

So let's not be bowed by the shrill needs of web site promotion experts, who get frustrated because they can't "game" the ODP like they game the rest of the search engines.

Let's make the life of those volunteer editors as simple as possible, so that they can go about finding sites and listing them in an environment that makes them want to volunteer, because they enjoy it. This means weeding out all of the malicious submissions that are trying to pervert the ODP into what THEY want it to be - a marketing tool. Yes, they are a minority, but they take up a vast majority of editor's time.

In an ideal world, those people wouldn't be out there. We wouldn't have to stay silent - we could open our doors and reveal all the methods we use to thwart the "baddies".

Have you wondered why such internet superpowers such as Google have a "closed door" policy and won't reveal the algorithms they use to arrive at search results? Is their "policy of silence" just as wrong as the ODP's? Do you know how frustrating that can be for someone who is trying to get on the first page of results for a particular search term? Why isn't Google recognising that without the people that build the web pages they wouldn't have a business? They should be servicing their needs, and be accountable to them for search engine placement.... (that is using similar logic you are using, but on Google)

"Ah, but the ODP is supposed to be Open - it's even in the name," I hear often when I bring this up. The DATA - the RESULT - is open, not the process. Never has been.

You use the phrase "the discontent of huge numbers of people on a grand scale". Let's try to put some numbers on it - how many sites have owners who are pleased to have a listing in the ODP? I think we can assume that they won't be motivated to go out to the webmaster fora and post about how happy they are. So we just have to count the listings in the ODP - several million.

In contrast, how many people post to the fora that they are upset at the ODP? Take THAT ratio, and work out an "approval rating" if you will. Even if it were a thousand people, that still gives over a 99% approval rating.

Of COURSE the ones that are upset are going to be vocal. That isn't just the case when talking about the ODP but in many other walks of life.

Yes, I understand you are upset. I understand that, in this day, people feel that people with some degree of decision-making have to be publicly accountable for their actions. And you are turning to the ODP editors for this, and are frustrated when nobody steps up and takes responsibility for giving you the answers you feel you deserve.

The ODP has its metaphorical drawbridge pulled up for a reason. There are a small number of highly unprofessional web site promotion people who, because of the perceived effect an ODP listing has on the SERPS, try to manipulate us. Tools have been put in place to try to thwart them, and yes, this leaves some innocent webmasters "outside the moat". I don't like that either, but blame the manipulators, not us for having to take action against them, please.

One more comment I need to make, added later than what precedes... you say

The same people that lifted you up on their shoulders can give way any day to let you fall to the ground.

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You mean people are going to stop hosting or designing websites in order to bring us down? The ODP is trying to document what is out there on the internet. While there is still content, and still editors wishing to catalogue that content, there will be an ODP. I guess I'm not sure what you mean by that statement.

Oh, we understand your frustration. You're looking for something that we simply can't give, and still accomplish our mission. And our mission is more important to us than whatever it is you want.

That's OK. Your website is a reflection of what you want to do. It's a big web, and there is room for many missions.

You keep going on about this "conspiracy of silence" as if there were something WE knew about YOUR website that you don't. That's nonsense. You know everything about it. It is completely under your control. And that's OK. It's a big internet, there's room for both you and lots of other people to work towards their goals.

Now, I've been part of the ODP for almost 7 years. I remember what it was. And it's still the same mission, only we do it much much better, in the face of much much more determined and malicious opposition. There's much more difference now between search engine results and ODP results: the ODP results are always an least an order of magnitude more relevant, and often three or four orders of magnitude better.

But you see, the "discontent of a large number of people" -- the easiest way to pick the spammers out of the general population with 90+% accuracy is to pick up the vociferous discontented webmasters. The fact is, 90% of them are spammers pure and simple. So if you want us to sympathize with you, you must to something -- ANYTHING -- to DISTINGUISH you from the Grande Horde of Whinging Spamming Pests. You hide yourself in THOSE numbers -- that's the enemy, man, and not just of ODP editors: they don't deserve ANYTHING non-painful from us or ANY segment of surfing society!

No, stand out from the enemy, or get tarred with the same brush. Your choice, I really don't care.

As for complaints from users: you know how many complaints we get from users as users: that our categories aren't comprehensive enough -- hardly ever. that we have some bad listings? -- we get dozens of those daily, and most of them are fixed before the sun goes down. THAT'S how we care -- passionately, top priority, instant response -- for our customers. That's the same as it's been from the beginning. And that's a good thing.

But what I do not and cannot understand is this arrogance that YOU made us. Where were you in 1998? What had you contributed to the internet -- How many thousand pages of original content? That's just nonsense.

Alucard and Hutcheson have said lots of excellent things, and I am not going to try and improve on their arguments. Let me just say this one thing: there is a difference between treating others as you wish to be treated on the one hand, and trying to be everything to everybody on the other hand. Please don't mix those things up - we have never wanted to achieve the latter.

As to the frustration bit, let me approach it from a different angle.

I volunteer at Project Gutenberg. I go to a lot of work to scan or proofread a book -- and then I have to wait until someone else "may or may not get around" to taking the next step of the process. I put a lot of work into that book! And there's no question about it being a "contribution to human culture" -- someone was convinced enough of that to go to enormous effort printing and distributing it. (This is a level of validation that hardly any websites can claim!)

And yet, and yet ... I still have to wait on other volunteers to have my work distributed.

So what am I going to do? Complain about the fact that the thousands of other volunteers don't each personally account to ME for every minute of their time they spend NOT accomplishing MY goals? Fixate about some fantastic notion that my book isn't legitimated until some other volunteer works on it? Obsess about how much Project Gutenberg is straying from its original goals? Boast about how I'm going to pull the whole site down if the other volunteers don't start giving more concern to my priorities?

Or ... let the other volunteers do their thing, and continue to work toward my goals, either under the PG aegis, or on my own, whichever seems more effective at the moment?

It's my choice. Hey, I want my content handled now. I've been waiting months. I know what it feels like. Before that, I remember waiting for the webmaster at CCEL to post my content. Before that, I remember waiting for my latest ODP edits to show up on Lycos. I've got a long list of things that I plan to do in cooperation with someone else, and therefore on their time schedule. And there's another long list of things other people may be waiting for me to do.

That's life on the volunteer internet. We're creating some of the grandest monuments in human history -- one page at a time. So rather than whining about some page not having been done yet, _I_ pitch in and do a page or three myself--maybe my first choice, maybe SOMEONE's first choice instead. Eventually we'll get around to my choices, I assume. And in the meantime, ten thousand pages here, ten thousand pages there, adds up to a significant contribution.

Focus on what you can do -- there is a lot you can do, somewhere. And don't worry about what other people are doing, and whether you have as much control as you like over their very existance. Because you don't -- get over it. I don't either, even in sites where I help out regularly. And that's OK. These are big projects, there is room for lots of people to help out.