Unimportant Categories

Bring it something to suggest, a site into a category, where in the last 2 years was no updates?

For the suggested site, it is the right category.

Suggesting the Url in a wroing category will only result in the request being moved (which consumes the time of an editor who could do something more productive) to the right queue eventually. Over a lot of suggestions it doubles the time from suggestion to listing.

Thanks, that was not in my mind to suggest the site to a wrong category, where the last update was some days ago.

But are there some dead categories in dmoz, where no new updates made? Is this only in the view of the editors, which are the important categories to upadte more frequently and which are unimportant?

Ah, okay.

First of all please note that the "last update" date is bugged currently, and in most cases not reflecting anything usefull.

Apart from that, no categories have been "given up". Editors (especially those that are being allowd to edit in a large area of the directory) are free to move their work to the areas they currently prefer. That will at any given period in time of course result in categories being updated more frequently, and others less. Due to the voluntary nature we can never predict which categories these will be in the near and/or far future. So suggesting sites to any given category may or may not lead to a listing in near future, regardless of past activity in this category. Which is the main reason we do not publish any "activity statistics" or something, bescause acc. to our experience they have no meaning for the future.

Thank you again for the quick reply. That's a nice info with the "last update" bug.

I understand that every editor, doing all the dmoz updates and work in there free time on the due to the voluntary nature. But if I get it right if no actual editor is interested in some categories, or in the future because the interessts are on something else. It can be happen that for several years, there is no updates in these unimportant categories.

Or is there a chance, that maybe every three years some categories are checked by some editors? Because of the lag of updates. Or could it be that this categories could be overseen because of the interests?

Yes, it can happen that no editor is interested in a specific category for quite some time, even for years. Its maybe not to common, but since the timeframe is totally unpredictable... There is no "regular" shedule of any kind in which editors visit categories, because that would not matchwith our concept. But one point to remember: At least at one point in history, at least one editor has been interested, otherwise the category would not exist. In most categories, even in the obscurest ones that I edited in, I have seen edits by several different other editors before me, so obviously over time even obscure topics attract editor activity.

Coming back to your initial question, let me ask back: Does it hurt to suggest a site? What does it "cost" you to suggest a site you think should be listed? In the time you were discussing here with me you could have easily suggested half a dozen sites I suppose. It's not consuming to much time, especially compared with reviewing the site whch in many cases takes considerably more time. And to think further, if you are suggesting a site to a a field that is so obscure that you imagine no editor will be interested in it for years, you might want to think about becoming an editor for that area yourself. See the linked resources in our "Become an editor" forum for more details.

No it does not hurt to suggest a site, but with the knowing, that it is very rare that some editor is interested in this category. Made the decission not very easy.

By the way, I used the time to suggest a site and also report some dead links in this category. But then this feeling come back that it is almost impossible that some changes was made, if there is no editor with this interests in this category.

I really enjoy the discussion with you and I'm happy about the fact you take the time to answer my questions. I look forward to the requested forum to get more informations on it.