What is the point of DMOZ?

The stakeholders in the project are (a) the users of the information we provide, those who browse the directory and those who use our data to fill their own directories; and (b) the editors who contribute their time and energies without pay because they are doing something that to them is important and worthwhile. Submitters are not stakeholders, though they try to convince themselves they are - their sites are our materials. In the same way that trees are materials to a paper mill, and the stakeholders are the people who operate the mill and the people who use the paper produced.

If trees could talk they might be promoting themselves as the best thing since parchment but we would have to say to some, sorry you have Dutch Elm Disease, and you are just a little acorn, come back when you're a real tree. To the rest we say, there is a forest out there, be patient, if you are big enough and disease free then one day we might turn you into a writing pad, but we can't make any promises.

Dmoz is the best human edited directory listing, but still have to watch how you treat your stakeholders.

Click to expand...

We do, our users are foremost in our minds whenever we edit, and our editors are part of a real community.

People submit their site to dmoz is your stakeholders.

Click to expand...

Not by any stretch of the imagination. If no-one submitted their site starting tomorrow it would have absolutely no detrimental effect whatsoever on the project. In fact it would probably become more efficient at rooting out the best sites to list because editors would not have to look at, investigate, and deal with the spam that constitutes two thirds of the submissions. For every site waiting for a review as a result of a submission there are 2000 that haven't been submitted and that is an awful lot of raw material to work with. An organisation has a duty towards its stakeholders or they are not stakeholders, since we have no duty to submitters, they are not stakeholders. Simple. Put it another way, if all submitters withdrew cooperation what is the effect? Nothing whatsoever, we can list their sites anyway should we wish to, and in two thirds of cases we wouldn't want to. Again, submitters are not stakeholders. When that fact is understood and submitters realise that the only thing they are doing are making a suggestion as to a potential addition to the Directory which editors can choose to pick up or reject or leave till tomorrow, they will be far less stressed about the whole thing.

Submitting sites can be a kind of help -- I've found (and therefore reviewed) thousands of good sites because they were submitted. And submitting sites can be a tool for causing irritation. But ... we all have to keep that in the context of the actual processes that drive the ODP, of which submitted sites are only a small part -- and probably ought to be even a smaller part. (This last is why editors -- who are acutely aware of the need for REALLY GOOD sources of links -- are so fanatically disinterested in anything that would accentuate the importance of the unreliable sources, like submittals.)

It's sad that my idiomatic statement has more then one misunderstanders, and caused my point disappear.

I only wanted to notice peterpan that if a "log for sites waiting for reviewal" happens to come true, then the superiority of the ODP will happen to vanish. Because such a log only means the preference of quantity over quality, and that is basically a bad thing.

I cannot see what part of my point is ununderstandable, and deserves to get blamed...

Your point is that you have a vision of submitters as people who, AS A CLASS, deserve special consideration.

Your vision is out of touch with reality as we have experienced it. Oh, certainly, a few submitters are genuine benefactors of humanity, touching the ODP with grace as they pass; a few more are trying to live up to the image of the Open Directory by finding and posting good sites; many more are just submitting their own sites for their own crass material ends (an ulterior motive hardly deserving or earning sympathy, but tolerated so long as the result is helpful); many are spamming jerks deserving of nothing more from society than a quick hanging; a few are malevolent fiends who delight in deceit for its own sake.

It is not not practical, it is not right, it is not fair, it is not even nearly sane, to treat all these submitters the same: as if they were all "stakeholders" or "stockholders" or "schtickholders" or holders of anything else worth holding.

That is our point. Forged and tempered by experience, it is not subject to change by precatory comments. And if you had survived a mile's trek in our moccasins, you'd feel the same way.

To respond to the original post, it could be worse. I've been waiting over 9 months now for inclusion.

I also attempted to become an editor in a couple of categories (not even the ones I attached a site for) and got the same rejection. If a site doesn't want to make use of those wanting to voulenteer, that is their choice.

dogbows][COLOR=Teal][B]Although it did take me a little while to understand what you posted said:

[/COLOR]

Click to expand...

Thank God.

Yes, dogbows, you are right. I was only trying to tell that.

:lightbulb :thumb2:

erkin said:

I only wanted to notice peterpan that if a "log for sites waiting for reviewal" happens to come true, then the superiority of the ODP will happen to vanish. Because such a log only means the preference of quantity over quality, and that is basically a bad thing.

Click to expand...

Absolutely.. although there is some value in the unreviewed queue to end users, the ensuing avalanche of spam that would happen would easily take that value away and cause greater problems.

ByeBye said:

I listed 3 websites on September 2004, yes, I said Sept 2004. After waiting one month, I decided to apply to becoming a editor. I though if that category goes slow, it is because there is not enough editors to process applications.

Click to expand...

You'll just have to trust me when I say that six months is no wait at all in ODP terms. Although we like to get sites reviewed within a few weeks, there are some corners of the directory where sites have been waiting much, much longer than that. But.. if your site is eligible and content rich, and you have chosen the correct category then it WILL get reviewed in time.

For the record, I understood erkin's meaning also. (I've gotten used to Hutcheson's interesting phrasing - I guess the skills translate. )

I think that in responding to ByeBye's two conclusions we've overlooked the underlying request for information. The conclusions are wrong because

What is the point of DMOZ? well, I really don't get it.

Click to expand...

So let me try to answer.

Is this a public service supported by volunteers, is this a paid site, or is this a site where editors are monopolizing the process?

Click to expand...

None of the above. This is essentially a site created by a bunch of hobbyists. Instead of collecting and organizing stamps or bugs, we collect and organize websites. We are proud of our work and think it is useful so we make it available for free to everyone. It doesn't bother us that other people benefit financially (people with sites and people who use our data) from our work - we knew and agreed to that when we decided to help. However, we are under no obligation to people who benefit financially or want to benefit. We are free to do our own thing with our own site.

After waiting one month, I decided to apply to becoming a editor. I though if that category goes slow, it is because there is not enough editors to process applications.

Click to expand...

Thank you. This is how we get many editors.

Feel free to reapply by submitting an application in another area.

Click to expand...

What the reviewer was trying to tell you is that they thought your application was pretty good, except that you applied to a category too big for a new editor. They wanted you to reapply to something smaller (say between 30-60 listed sites).

Well, now is Feb 2005, almost 4 months after this email. The sites are still not listed

Click to expand...

This is not uncommon. We have very large backlogs of suggestions across the directory. The time to review can (and does) range from 3 minutes to 3 years. You can read more about the unpredictable editing behavior of editors in other threads here.

the answers when asking for status are soo vage

Click to expand...

Partly because there isn't much to say and partly to not give too much information to spammers.

no to mention the lack of ethic is seems in this website.

Click to expand...

If you come to this forum thinking it is supposed to be the customer service center for a listing service, that would be the impression. However, since this forum is actually a volunteer run place to share some information about our hobby with people interested in our hobby, and since many of the people on this forum are here to benefit from our hobby by abusing it, the tone in many of the discussions may seem brief, blunt, or harsh. There is no way we can assess what assumptions each poster has in order to tailor our responses. We have to assume they understand the basic purpose of the ODP and have at least read the forum FAQ. Beyond that, not much else we can do.

o get my sites in a high position rank, I have a full bag of resources I can employ without the HELP of DMOZ.

Click to expand...

Good. We are the first to say that a dmoz.org listing does not make or break a site in the search engines. It is just one more link factored by the search engines in whatever fashion they choose.

But what I really hate, feeling like an stupid is the time I spent filling applications, submitting websites, posting messages, even using the bandwidth of my connection to get this site, just to realize at the end that everything here is a lost of time.

Click to expand...

The time spent filling out the site suggestion form has the same value now as it did then - perhaps it is just that your perception of that value has changed? The time you spent filling out the application to become an editor can either be considered as a waste of effort, or as the start of learning to become an editor. Many editors apply more than once before being joined as an editor. I did, and for the same reason, too big of a category to start with.

Hope this experience will change minds in the future.

Click to expand...

Perhaps yours?

It took four years for me to get my site listed in ODP. It was my fault. I thought my site was great. I was wrong. My original content was hidden. My site was hard to navigate and the site had many other problems. My site was listed on the first page of all of the major search engines before it was accepted into ODP. Why did I continue to submit to ODP? Free editorial service. I thank the volunteer editors for forcing me to make my site internet worthy. ByeBye, I think you should stop pointing the finger at someone else and take a hard look at the sites you submitted.

take a hard look at the sites you submitted

Click to expand...

Now last time I suggested someone do that they took offence!

I thank the volunteer editors for forcing me to make my site internet worthy.

Click to expand...

Well that isn't part of our brief but personally I hope in some small way we do force up general standards across the board. At least people using our data can be reasonably assured (nothwithstanding errors and hijacks etc) that they are looking at original good quality content. Compare that to most search engine results... I know what I find more useful.

Thanks to kelkid for one of the best posts about this subject ever.

It was my fault.

Click to expand...

Of course it was. Now if more people would just take responsibilty for their actions instead of blaming others, the world would be a much better place.