hi everyone!
i am completely unhappy with dmoz....and i would like to tell you why..in the hope these things could maybe change some day:
- dmoz has a big influence on the web, but it is not organinzed well enough to be able to handle this responsibility.
Some of these influences are:
- influence on whether websites are found on search engines and whether they are indexed and how fast. You can say that is none of your business, but that's the way it currently is and therefore you have a great responsibility.
- influence on whether websites are ignored or considered on websites like Alexa. Sometimes people are curious what the biggest website is in a certain category and what its competitive websites are and what the general traffic posistion is. I would for instance only place ads for selling a car on a busy classifieds site...so I look for a big website on Alexa and then see whether there are any website in the same category with smiliar traffic....
However as Alexa uses DMOZ data, often websites are not shown as related website as they did not receive a DMOZ category. There are so many website that are not listed on DMOZ although they are BIG.
- in my theory dmoz only got so much power, as people working for search engines were too lazy to start something similiar themselves. And it was easier to just take all the URLs and categories from an existing project.
- i think there should be a small fee for adding urls, but a guarantee of inclusing and precise reason why a website has not been added. And unlike Yahoo a sort of system to ensure that all websites are added unless they are against the rules or belong to dubious webmasters. Everyone should have the right to have his/her website listed withint 1 month. No "DMOZ mafia" of webmasters who want to get rid of competitive websites or who want to hide potential competitive website for search engines and alexa.
- I think DMOZ editors are always afraid of adding to many websites or too many pages of the same website....the dmoz categories do not have to be "one-page" directories with only the "best" websites. It is up to other websites/search engines/methods to deterine the quality of those websites, but at least every system should be able to notice that a website exists and to find out its category.
One example: Imagine a website with subdomains for every USA state. A typical DMOZ editor would only add the main website to some general directory (e.g. car deales) and not all 50 subdomains for "joe's cars in arizona" or even if it had its own domain name.
However if someone browses a directory of website of Arizona only he would never come across this car dealer....just as an example.
Or imagine a dating site with gay.somedomainname.com or lesbians.somedomainname.com and domainname.com or 3 completely different domain names.
It would be necessary that all subdomains are added to the directory, simply because people who are looking specifically for a gay dating site or a lesbian dating site would usually not look for general dating website....so they would not see that this website exists. And if someone looks on Alexa in the category "gay" or "lesbian" dating sites for the busiest websites, they would only see those with a DMOZ category. If it only has one entry, it would only appear under the busiest dating sites maybe but not the busiest gay websites.
- There are some dmoz categories in some languages where people add your website really quickly (and they do only allow good websites)....but there are some categories, where editors just refuse to add your website for whatever reason ("dmoz mafia") - and this is so annoying. There is no proper control system to avoid such misuse. There is no way to complain. Nobody listens and you do not get any feedback. if you now say it would be expensive to do that, just charge a low fee for adding URLs. This would still be a non-profit thing as it would be used to pay for the infrastructure
i am completely unhappy with dmoz....and i would like to tell you why..in the hope these things could maybe change some day:
- dmoz has a big influence on the web, but it is not organinzed well enough to be able to handle this responsibility.
Some of these influences are:
- influence on whether websites are found on search engines and whether they are indexed and how fast. You can say that is none of your business, but that's the way it currently is and therefore you have a great responsibility.
- influence on whether websites are ignored or considered on websites like Alexa. Sometimes people are curious what the biggest website is in a certain category and what its competitive websites are and what the general traffic posistion is. I would for instance only place ads for selling a car on a busy classifieds site...so I look for a big website on Alexa and then see whether there are any website in the same category with smiliar traffic....
However as Alexa uses DMOZ data, often websites are not shown as related website as they did not receive a DMOZ category. There are so many website that are not listed on DMOZ although they are BIG.
- in my theory dmoz only got so much power, as people working for search engines were too lazy to start something similiar themselves. And it was easier to just take all the URLs and categories from an existing project.
- i think there should be a small fee for adding urls, but a guarantee of inclusing and precise reason why a website has not been added. And unlike Yahoo a sort of system to ensure that all websites are added unless they are against the rules or belong to dubious webmasters. Everyone should have the right to have his/her website listed withint 1 month. No "DMOZ mafia" of webmasters who want to get rid of competitive websites or who want to hide potential competitive website for search engines and alexa.
- I think DMOZ editors are always afraid of adding to many websites or too many pages of the same website....the dmoz categories do not have to be "one-page" directories with only the "best" websites. It is up to other websites/search engines/methods to deterine the quality of those websites, but at least every system should be able to notice that a website exists and to find out its category.
One example: Imagine a website with subdomains for every USA state. A typical DMOZ editor would only add the main website to some general directory (e.g. car deales) and not all 50 subdomains for "joe's cars in arizona" or even if it had its own domain name.
However if someone browses a directory of website of Arizona only he would never come across this car dealer....just as an example.
Or imagine a dating site with gay.somedomainname.com or lesbians.somedomainname.com and domainname.com or 3 completely different domain names.
It would be necessary that all subdomains are added to the directory, simply because people who are looking specifically for a gay dating site or a lesbian dating site would usually not look for general dating website....so they would not see that this website exists. And if someone looks on Alexa in the category "gay" or "lesbian" dating sites for the busiest websites, they would only see those with a DMOZ category. If it only has one entry, it would only appear under the busiest dating sites maybe but not the busiest gay websites.
- There are some dmoz categories in some languages where people add your website really quickly (and they do only allow good websites)....but there are some categories, where editors just refuse to add your website for whatever reason ("dmoz mafia") - and this is so annoying. There is no proper control system to avoid such misuse. There is no way to complain. Nobody listens and you do not get any feedback. if you now say it would be expensive to do that, just charge a low fee for adding URLs. This would still be a non-profit thing as it would be used to pay for the infrastructure
