Website Listing

Why isn't somebody who already has the knowledge working on it? Or somebody maintaining an upper level category that contains it?

If you are such a person, you probably are not an expert. Any Ph.D. Behavioral Psychologist can still tell an undergrad everything he wants to know about psychodynamics. Those people are experts. I am an expert on roleplaying games, but I know probability theory, statistics, game theory economics, fantasy and science fiction from 1860-present, and the literature surrounding Merlin like the back of my hand. I do this so I can do my job well.

You can't tell me that with 3000 so-called experts there isn't a guy who can take care of a maintenance issue. On my site, I clear up maintenance issues the second I find them, or they are reported to me.

Literally. I wrote a miniature z-score table on the back of my hand so I could study my intro to stats work my freshman year. I can now convert them to a percentile from memory.

Why isn't somebody ...

Click to expand...

Ah yes, a familiar refrain.
What it means is "I do not want to offer my time to help a volunteer project, but I have plenty of time to insult and berate those that do."

If you had actually read the FAQ and public documents to which you were very politely directed, you would understand. As you patently do not, we can safely assume you did not. Or perhaps the concept of volunteering is merely incomprehensible.
Either way, being rude to people about how they spend their hobby time seems like a strangely pointless activity. But each to their own, I guess.

Why isn't somebody who already has the knowledge working on it?

Click to expand...

This is the sort of question that is hard to answer. Do YOU have a list of all the people in the world with "that kind of knowledge" on each of half-a-million topics? And do YOU know why each of those qualified people does whatever it is that they do?

To the best of my knowledge, no ODP editor (or AOL employee) has such a list. But without that list, who could answer your question?

Or somebody maintaining an upper level category that contains it?

Click to expand...

Most high-level editors move around a lot--rather than focusing on one single (medium-to-large) category, they work a lot on specific topics that interest them, and a little bit on topics that don't deeply disturb them, and not at all on the rest.

A high-level editor isn't "assigned" to do a set amount of work on a particular category -- he's "trusted and empowered" to work "anywhere he thinks he can do a good job."

Sometimes the "place I can do a good job" is something I already know well. Sometimes I don't know much about it (but I want to learn). Occasionally it's a subject I don't really care about at all, but I don't mind helping out a bit.

With a few thousand active editors, and a few hundred thousand categories, the majority (70-90%) of categories are, at best, in the "don't mind helping out a bit" class -- for all editors.

Pot calls the kettle black. More like teacup, we already discussed why this is so unacceptable and how I already tried to become an editor. Several times. I received no replies. That's pretty rude, too, huh. Ever. And in the meantime, 'volunteering' and 'hobby' are at least words that imply interest in the activity.

The good news is that what you want the editors to do, is what the editors actually do, and therefore there's no need to suspect corruption.

Click to expand...

Also, anyone who uses circular reasoning like this deserves to be insulted. It is the only way I can think of to make them distrustful enough to be critical of those kinds of statements. I'm doing this guy a favor.

Why isn't somebody who already has the knowledge working on it?

Click to expand...

Because we do not have people with knowledge of all 600,000 categories on tap.

Part of the challenge (to me) of being an editor is to look into a subject I have little knowledge of and learning about it. It is actually suprising how little one ctually knows about things one takes for granted.

so-called experts

Click to expand...

Being an editor is not about being an 'expert' - I can competantly edit in any category including foreign languages in unfamiliar scripts by limiting myself to only doing things I know are correct (e.g. unreviewing a dead site).

there isn't a guy who can take care of a maintenance issue.

Click to expand...

By maintenance, you are probably thinking of something broken that needs fixing which in a way is the case. However what is broken in this case is the concept which relies on the knowledge of the topic of the category, how it relates to all the other connected categories in topical and regional and whether it is producing a useful resource for surfers as opposed to just a collection of links.

How we arrange the data is more important than the data itself. One often starts with a tentative idea on how it is to be organised, present it to the other editors who provide their experience in similar areas, pointing out aspects that have been missed or might be relevant. Except at first glance, businesses are never arranged in clear cut divisions that lend themselves to creating categories clearly.

I already tried to become an editor. Several times. I received no replies.

Click to expand...

Unsuccessful applicants receive a detailed response which provides advice and assistance for preparing a more successful application, so perhaps you need to check your email spam filters before making further accusations about how we are not doing what you think we should.

being poor works just as well(at finding out the details of things you take for granted). Why not quit your jobs and stop editing altogether? It's not a justification to say that you want to learn how to do a good job. That is the guy using the directory's goal. You need to help him do it.

You have yet to produce a logical leg to stand on. All you have is an admission of laziness and the project's policies, which, every time they come under fire, exclude any disclosure or accountability. Kind of like now.

Laziness??
This is a hobby, for us, that's all. We are free to spend as much or as little time on it as we choose. One edit every 4 months is enough to keep an account active, and even if an editor is too busy with other things to maintain that level of activity, they can always ask to be reinstated.

And yes, of course we keep referring to the guidelines and policies of the directory, because they are what all editors are expected to follow. You are free to disagree with them, naturally, but if so, why on earth would you apply to join us?

being poor works just as well(at finding out the details of things you take for granted). Why not quit your jobs and stop editing altogether? It's not a justification to say that you want to learn how to do a good job. That is the guy using the directory's goal. You need to help him do it.

Click to expand...

Seriously, I think you need to find out the details of things you take for granted - like the directory.

Our 'job' is not to list sites. Our hobby is to produce a useful resource that allows people to find a collection of sites on a topic.

Extrapolating from your arguements so far, it would not matter how much editing I or any other editor has done or is doing, or how much explanation we give about the workings of the directory, you would still not be satisfied because your site is not listed.

It is past midnight here and I shall commit the unspeakable crime of not staying up all night to edit, as I need some sleep.

regards

To make a difference.

Assuming that it has been at least 14 days, you're more than welcome to post in the Becoming an Editor forum, and check about your last application. You'll need to post information given in the Forum Guidelines.

At the moment I'm working in a particular area so sites suggested there will be added in a matter of days or weeks. But in a month I'm planning on moving to nother area where there are sites that have been waiting for more than 2 years.

Regards

Olympus

____
-

How can i suggest a website to the Dmoz.org.

The message I got while suggest a url as follows :

Proxy Error

The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request GET /cgi-bin/add.cgi.

Reason: DNS lookup failure for: core.dmoz.aol.com

When do you think its possible to suggest us the url to dmoz again?

Satya said:

How can i suggest a website to the Dmoz.org.

The message I got while suggest a url as follows :

Proxy Error

The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request GET /cgi-bin/add.cgi.

Reason: DNS lookup failure for: core.dmoz.aol.com

When do you think its possible to suggest us the url to dmoz again?

Click to expand...

Sorry your post didn't show up at first. The DNS problem was dealt with on the day you posted, and there haven't been any new reports about problems with suggesting sites for review.