Webmasters complaining

I do refer to "Categories", such as THAT scorpion pit, with only 5 listings which you are protecting.

Catch me if you can

hutcheson,

I would never work for the ODP if I knew that I would have to join America Online in the future. I work with the ODP under the belief that we will never faulter from the social contract specified at the ODP.

- Kyle Korleski Out

Vaddy said:

I do refer to "Categories", such as THAT scorpion pit, with only 5 listings which you are protecting.

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http://dmoz.org/Sports/Hockey/Ice_H...eague/Central_Hockey_League/Teams/New_Mexico/ ?? Whoda thunk it.

kkorleski said:

I work with the ODP under the belief that we will never faulter from the social contract specified at the ODP.

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The day we abandon that is the day most of us are leaving the ODP, I think. I'd definitely not stay aboard if the social contract was scrapped - it's what makes the ODP what it is.

You don't have to join America Online. But you can't give something away free, and still keep it for yourself. AOL is a "sponsor" of the ODP -- that is, they provide the hardware and software support. They are also a "licensee" -- that is, they publish the result. So does Google. (That is, both of these Wall Street Corporations provide disk space and bandwidth for our customers to see our data.)

It's not about joining any corporation. It's not about hurting any corporation (although you could say that in reality we hurt the corporations that try to foist off their own proprietary inferior directories. But that's just a side-effect: you could say just as well it is their own stupidity hurting them, since they don't distribute the cheapest and best product to THEIR customers.

Vaddy, which scorpion in that pit should be stomped first, do you think?

Posting removed

This has become a most interesting thread. Interesting, not entertaining.

As an editor, I am naturally infuriated by the insulting, taunting remarks by one of the posters. The blanket accusations of dishonesty leave a bile taste in my mouth.

I am, however, not willing to risk losing the priviledge of remaining an editor, just so that I can respond in kind. Because I view being an editor to be a priviledge -- I was amazed when they accepted me and I am delighted every day that my log-in continues to function.

Part of me would also like to have this thread and/or the poster shut down by one of the meta editors, goodness knows other threads and posters have been shut down for less -- but I'm fully aware that if we shut down this thread we will have completed a self-fulfilling prophecy and will be labeled racist, censorist bigots as opposed to just plain garden variety racist bigots.

Nor, would I want to respond to the "Catch me if you can" taunt. I graduated from 3rd grade a long time ago, and have no need to go back.

So, my fellow editors and lurkers -- the next time you see one of us get a bit testy with a submitter here in the R-Z, please remember this thread, and the other threads where this poster is taunting us and playing games, and grant us just a touch of forgiveness.

Heh, I graduated 3rd grade a long time ago also. But I'm filled with a burning desire to get ahold of the poster's IP address, and start doing some hunting. I think I musta been a P.I. in a past life, because I really enjoy tracking these people down. Of course, that gets expressed in a modern sense by ferreting out these self-righteous expletives and posting their personal information on public forums out of a perverse sense of retribution.



Nareau

Let it rest, if possible. I don't think it was ever anything more than a spammer unable to get at the target category.

I believe this ODP is just like anything in life. You have good editors and you have bad editors.

It is no different than a good cop and a bad cop.

You have some editors that really want to maintain the directory as being one of the largest and well respected directories in the world, while others just have their own personal agenda.

I don't really think there is a whole bunch you can do about it. If a bad editor has a site in a competitive category that he is the editor of, and he feels the submission of your site to be a threat, then it will be declined. That's the bottom line.

>The way some search engines produce results, means that words such as accommodation in the ODP description, can give an unfair advantage to the edits that include that word.

This is really really no biggie, because search engines can do whatever they want with our data. But the simple fact is that for years now, there has been no major search engine that works as you describe. On all of the major engines today, extra occurrences of "accommodation" merely make the ODP PAGE more likely to come up in the search, and benefit all listed sites equally.

Not that we would care if it were otherwise. But this is one ignorant pre-Google-era myth that needs to be killed off.

Not that we care how SERP perps waste their time, but we very much would like them not to be bugging us at all, and for them to be bugging us about something that cannot possibly help them -- is especially intolerable.

spectregunner said:

So, my fellow editors and lurkers -- the next time you see one of us get a bit testy with a submitter here in the R-Z, please remember this thread, and the other threads where this poster is taunting us and playing games, and grant us just a touch of forgiveness.

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You are not only forgiven, but many of us are cheering you on!

Remember editors..... "no good deed goes unpunished". I'm afraid you will always have those who attack the system when they don't get what *they* want.

No system is perfect. I assume that ODP has its share of internal problems. But as a outsider, it is quite apparent to me that there are significant internal checks and balances that have been put in place to minimize potential abuse.

More important, editors know of the checks and balances, and that seems to be important to keeping good editors.

thehelper said:

If you think an ODP description has any type of effect on search engines you are wrong. If the description were anchor text that might have some effect but it is not. As far as the search engines are concerned - an ODP listing has the same effect as any other link. You can verify that in any of the Search Engine forums from the people there that know. Have a great day!

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I disagree with your statement. I may not know ODP, but I do know a little about seo. I can tell you using Google as an example. Their algo does give weight to the text surrounding an anchor text.

As a matter of fact anchor text links with text are given more weight than anchor text links without text. As proof the links with text surrounding the anchor text are listed in google with the text as a description, where links with no text description are listed either with the pages meta description or a sniplet close to the anchor text link from the page it is pointing to. Google is looking for the theme surrounding the anchor text and the content from the description along with the page title tag along with several other factors is what is believed to be a relevancy factor in googles algo.

Not the place to discuss this. Why don't you go to one of the many SEO forums out there and put your hypothesis out there and see what happens.

Yeah -- and whatever Google did yesterday, they may not do tomorrow. But whether Google does or doesn't do it, oughtn't to affect the way we build a directory (the D in "ODP" doesn't stand for "Search engine fodder" -- but we give the content away without constraints or concerns relating to how it is used.

thehelper said:

Not the place to discuss this. Why don't you go to one of the many SEO forums out there and put your hypothesis out there and see what happens.

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TheHelper..I am not trying to point fingers at you. I am simply stating that I dont agree with your comment is all. You brought up the issue pertaining to search engines I only responded to that. You ask for respect as an editor, you should give it as well.

Vegas Wayne - What you submit as proof may not be seen as proof by everyone. The way that Google displays results is one thing. The algorithm is another. I have seen no convincing proof from research that Google pays attention to the ODP description in its ranking of the sites we list.

One way to test this would be to find an ODP description with a unique word (perhaps the result of a typo. The best of us can forget to spellcheck now and then.) Then search Google for that word. You will find that the ODP category containing it shows up, along with any clones. The site the ODP listing is describing does not come up.

The basis for my statement was experiments that I had performed along the lines JeanManco describes. But granted -- that is history, not to mention hermeneutics.