When does a Category is abandoned by Editor?

Are there any kind of time frames when a category can be considered abandoned by an editor? I made a website submission and the category does show to be edited the last in December of 2004.

Before I start inquiring about my submission I'd like to find out what DMOZ's standpoint on this is (if there is one)?

Thanks.

Chris

Are there any kind of time frames when a category can be considered abandoned by an editor?

Click to expand...

No.
:tree:

No editor owns a category. There are hundreds of editors who can and do edit throughout the directory, so a category can not abandoned.

Read the FAQs for more information.

You have some strange image of the ODP, far from reality, and I haven't managed to figure out what it is enough to respond to it. I'll start from the bottom.

Here's how the ODP works. Volunteers ask for editing privileges in a category. If they get them, they are allowed (but not required) to edit in that category and all its subcategories. They can add, delete, and modify listings. But they do not own the category, their privileges are not unique, and they are not required to do any specific amount of work there. (Obviously some people don't or can't work in categories where they have privileges. That is their choice.)

If volunteers don't do anything ANYWHERE for several months, their account is inactivated as a security measure. But even then they can request it be reactivated, and reactivation is "almost' automatic.

There are several class of editors, "meta-editors", who can give out editing permissions. Some can give editing permissions anywhere, although obviously metas who don't read Hebrew aren't going to be handing out privileges in World/Hebrew categories. There is a list of meta-editors; they may also be listed as category editors, but those are two completely different sets of privileges. Category editors are usually not meta-editors; and meta-editors often grant permissions in categories where they are not listed as editors.

In the context of that organization, your questions really don't make sense.

I think all that can usefully be said is that there ARE multiple editors named in high-level World/Hebrew categories who have logged in recently. Whatever category you're talking about, there are still multiple editors who COULD edit there. But what they just did, we don't tell you. What they're about to do next, we don't even know ourselves.

Do you have other questions that might make sense in this context?

Well, you know - I just think it is strange if a category has not been touched in over 5 months. In my opinion this means that an editor is not looking at the category or is no longer active for ODP. But you are right - I don't know anything about ODP. How can I dare to ask?

If you bring your car to a repair shop and leave the key in the key drop box overnight you would expect someone at least take the key out of the box the next day. If your car is still parked where you left it 4 weeks later, wouldn't you think that someone is making a booboo?

I am not complaining about the long delays in getting listed. I know you guys have a lot of work and many people complaining. I am just surprised that 5 months of inactivity don't even raise at least a question if that editor or several editors are still active? The integrity of the ODP system seems out of sync if you don't check on activity along the lines.

I wait a few more months to see if you are still think that everything is just fine in a non-maintained category.

Take care.

Chris

Well, you know - I just think it is strange if a category has not been touched in over 5 months.

Click to expand...

Therein lies your error.

Just because the date on the bottom of the page has not changed in 5 months does not mean that the category has been ignored.

There are any number of valuable, important to the directory, actions that an editor can take that do not change the date.

There are also a number of automated system that can run within a category that do not change the date.

Your automobile shop analogy fails. The huuuuuuuge difference is that when you drop your keys in the box, you are a customer. You are the reason for the very existance of the service establishment.
When you suggest a site to us, you are not a customer, simply a net citizen who chose to offer a site for us to look at. We make no commitment as to when we will choose to look at it. You are not the basis for our existance, we exist to serve our customers -- the surfers -- not the webmasters.

Enjoy your wait. In some categories sites have been patiently waiting for mroe than three years. For that you can thank the spammers and directory abusers.

Think of it as the volunteer car fixers yard. A bunch of mechanics who just love fixing cars invite you to leave you car and we might get around to fixing it up. But our yard has a million cars, and we suggest you don't take a number. Come around every six months and see if we got around to it. We won't call you if we did fix it.

Ah, the question! And there is an easy answer, which anyone may calculate for himself. It is not "strange" at all that a category not be edited for five months. It is the NORM! Just do the math:

There are 600,000 categories. Say 3000 edits per day (both numbers are pretty close to correct.)

Assuming edits are evenly distributed, what's the average wait between edits in a category? 200 days, or, lessee, over, um, SIX months?

And that UNDERESTIMATES the actual time, since edits aren't evenly distributed. For instance, if editors do an average of 2 edits in the same category when they work, then the average number of days between category visits will double -- and so on. I don't have a good feel for what that average is -- I'm sure the actual data varies all over the map -- from mass multi-editor onslaughts to long-unedited categories resulting in dozens or hundreds of edits in a week, to cross-category crusades to root out spelling mistakes scattered over many categories. My guess is that the REAL average is approximately one year, but obviously that number is a much poorer approximation than the other.

I'm glad you persisted with your question, so that we could finally get you the definitive answer to alleviate your real concern.

Say 3000 edits per day

Click to expand...

I think that number is a little low.

Using just the names that appear on both of the editall lists (see sources below), I come up with a total of 623530 edits done between the dates of 5-Nov-04 and 7-May-05. That's 183 days. Or 3407 edits per day. And that's only for editalls.

Sources: http://web.archive.org/web/20041108032759/http://dmoz.org/edoc/editall.html and the current http://dmoz.org/edoc/editall.html

(Excel document, or exported html web address available to editors upon request.)

Yes, but ... those stats include "unreviewed" edits, do they not? I thought about those before I posted my estimates, and my thinking ran something like this:

I suspect there are more edits in unreviewed than there are site additions -- the logic being that about half of all submittals are rejected -- so figure 1500 - 2000 edits daily that do not affect category edit dates. This is deleting spam as well as rerouting missubmitted sites. (I also suspect that editalls as a class have proportionately far more unreviewed edits than most editors, so you couldn't just extrapolate that particular number. But I'd buy a total of 5000 edits daily (from all editors) of which 1500-2000 did not result in category changes, as a very close estimate.

Obviously there's not much difference in an "average" of four months versus 12 months -- in either case, there will be hundreds of thousands of categories with no edit in the last 6 months.

I'm not arguing with the number you come up with. The post was just to show that *anyone* could estimate the edits per day that the ODP does, and with the number of categories listed on the front page, come up with a number for the time the "average" category updates.

Ah, yes, a very good point....and I forgot to mention it. I was THINKING that, I really was!

spectregunner said:

Therein lies your error. You are not the basis for our existance, we exist to serve our customers -- the surfers -- not the webmasters....
Enjoy your wait.

Click to expand...

In any case, spectrgunner has hit the nail on the head. You have suggested a site for which any one of hundreds of editors that visit that category can review. That is all you can do. The best advise now is just let it go and forget about it. And good luck.

I honestly think, (and this is not in any way a go at the editors on this forum because they are all taking time out of their day to work on ODP without being paid), but this forum although a good source to ask how your site is doing is just wasting precious time that editors could be reviewing sites to be included.
Let’s face it, the editors must get so bored with having to reply with the same answers to people requesting a status report
"It has been received please ask for a request in 6 months".

One thing that does surprise me though with the whole review process is that it is done in a very random manor for such a big organisation. E.G your submission is added to a list but not added to an orderly queue as such, which seems very unfair that some people could be waiting for years and some people could be waiting weeks to be approved. Is there any reason for this?

Anyway, keep up the good work :thumb2:

E.G your submission is added to a list but not added to an orderly queue as such, which seems very unfair that some people could be waiting for years and some people could be waiting weeks to be approved. Is there any reason for this?

Click to expand...

Yes, a simple one: We don't consider it our responsibilit to process site suggestions, but to list sites. The "suggestion tool" shall just help the editor find sites to list. So instead of searching sites by himself, the editor may choose to take some of the site suggestions the category received. As a direct result from this point of view, we don't care if some suggestions have to wait much longer than others.

Yes, there are many many good reasons for this, and many many good reasons for not doing it the other way.

But most of them will probably occur to you if you think of the ODP as if it had no outside submittal process at all -- that is, the editors went out and found every single good site, instead of just most of them.

Imagine a whole community built around this concept -- with nobody even allowed in the door unless they proved they could do this; nobody staying at the party unless they enjoyed doing this well.

Now imagine that approach has been so successful that it supplanted all but one of the many major web directory projects that existed six years ago.

Now imagine that the editors not only remember how much better this was than any other approach to directory-building ever attempted, and further imagine that they want to keep on finding good sites ... and fulfil their sole responsibility -- to the surfer to find good sites -- but they would be willing to accept helpful suggestions. Not requirements, not orders, not demands, not peremptory insistance on receiving special service ... just suggestions that they could use or ignore, whichever seemed better to the people who knew they had built and were building the world's best web directory.

Finally imagine that these editors know how many submittals are made months before a website is even created, because rude idiots thought they could manipulate the editors into giving them a quick review if they ever actually got around to creating a site. Imagine that they aren't total idiot, and can easily predict how the scheme you propose would place editors altogether in the complete control of those same idiots -- and more like them, as soon as the unholy power of the untimely submittal was appreciated on the dark and seamy side of the internet.

Now, open your eyes. That's the way it really is. Reality isn't always a NICE place, but it has a solid feel about it.

From another point of view, it's unfair that there are people out there who have created great sites, and never heard of ODP, and therefore never even submitted their sites. Those sites could be much more important that those that were submitted.

I'm afraid there is some feeling that the fact that a site was submitted makes it important to review it, and that those that were submitted earlier are more important than those that were submitted recently, but this is totally incorrect. Until a site is reviewed there is no way to measure how valuable it is to list.

Sites that were submitted three years ago, may be outdated and no longer worth listing. Sites that were submitted last week may be under construction.

Although sites may appears to be reviewed in a random order, an editor usually has a method to how he/she reviews sites. In some categories, I might start by going through the sites in submission order, if there is no reason to do otherwise, however, that soon gets dropped. As I work through the list, I run into problems with some sites, and set them aside, to deal with easier ones first. If there are a lot of unreviewed sites in that category, it ends up with several sites that were submitted earlier still waiting for review, while ones submitted recently have already been reviewed.

In other areas, I might be working through a whole lot of related categories at different levels, it really makes no sense to go in submission order, I could be concentrating on categories that are fairly empty and only reviewing sites in those areas. I might be re-reviewing an existing category for quality control and while I'm there review all the unreviewed.

EDITED to correct missing sentences [oops]

One thing that does surprise me though with the whole review process is that it is done in a very random manor for such a big organisation.

Click to expand...

The directory is a very large place, the editors have a very diverse set of interests, and over time the set of actively editing editors changes (new editors come in and old editors stop editing.) Within a particular topic of interest, any editor editing there is probably using some sort of consistent logic to handle suggestions (anywhere from ignore them completely to process them in date order.)

However, at any given time, the topics across the directory are being edited (or not) based on the interest levels of the currently active editors, and this really is random. Often, a topic gets built up because a user noticed it was lacking, joined as an editor, worked hard on it for a while, and then stopped editing. If no one else is interested in that topic, the category will only get basic quality maintenance attention, and not the intense scrutiny it got when it was first built up.

It's a beehive.

One thing I don't get:

The way we've been editing and treating the unreviewed "pile" is exactly the same way we've been doing it since the creation of the directory. Oh, sure, there have been some improvements to hold back the flood of spammy submissions (excuse me, suggestions) and other tools to make editing easier, but the basic methods haven't changed a bit. Heck, back in the early days of the directory editors HAD to go find sites on their own, because there was certainly no one suggesting them to this (at the time) unknown directory.

And by doing it this way we have built, by many accounts, the BEST directory on the web. So good, in fact that lots and lots of people want to be listed in it. Why then do so many people want to change how we do things?

This is the ultimate Marxist model, in a way. Every single potential listing, from IBM.com to Joe-Bob's Bait Shop and Internet Cafe is judged on its own merits. It can't get any more fair. I suppose the people who are looking for these changes aren't seeing the big picture: If we change for YOU we have to change for EVERYBODY, and if we change for everybody the directory will become worthless. Obviously nobody wants that, they just want the rules bent for "their" site. (I see this phenomenon every day during my commute. People who flaunt basic traffic laws and common courtesy because they feel more "important" than the other drivers. Of course, were this the norm, it would be absolute chaos and NO ONE would get to work. Don't matter to the guy riding the shoulder. Sure, he'll get to work five or ten minutes faster, but thousands of other people will be delayed by 20 minutes.)

I just don't get it.

This is one area I'm willing to attribute more to ignorance -- solid unshakeable ignorance -- rather than requiring an assumption of malice.

Note well, I'm not at all an expert on queing theory or operations research. I took a course from an instructor with some practical experience in the area. I highly respected his knowledge and experience -- and I learned very quickly that even the most trivial systems (two-queue, three-state) exhibited altogether non-intuitive behavior. But people who've never experienced being hit by that kind of clue stick (and most people haven't) really can't grasp how totally clueless they are.

And ... the ODP includes 600,000 queues, an arbitrarily large number of states, millions of undocumented constraints, ... and we get several people a week thinking all our problems would be solved by a single FIFO queue.

"Right, we've got 10,000 editors just staring at their computer screen because the next submittal in the queue is in some obscure Khoi-San dialect, and our one editor who speaks it is on vacation. Shut the servers down, folks, we have gridlock. Check back on or around September 1, and oh, the 300,000 edits that you might have done in the meantime, fagetaboutit."

Alright, now that I've said that, it's blindingly obvious. And what do people respond? Do they say "If my brilliant conception breaks on something so simple as that, maybe, just maybe, I don't know as much about the subject as I thought I did. I'll tell you what, I'll go get a degree in Operations Research so I can tell when I'm talking through my hat. And I'll also sign on to edit my hometown Society category, to gain an experential knowledge of what the queues are really like. Then I might be able to know enough of the facts to contribute constructively"?

Sigh. No, they don't. They come up with some equally simplistic idea that handles the Khoi-San case, but fails utterly if the website uses Flash....

You missed the last go-round on this subject. If you have a very sick mind, that thread would make entertaining reading. It just made me sick. The guy just flat didn't know what an "average" was, or how to calculate it, or what it signified, but he was bound and determined that he was going to pry an "average time to review" out of us with a sharpened crowbar.

Then he thoughtfully explained that if we were having such a hard time calculating the average, we could switch to FIFO submittal processing, "which would make the average easier to calculate." (Ignoring the fact that nobody at the ODP WANTED an average, and nobody ANYWHERE could do anything useful with one if they had it, all of which had been explained to him) But the kicker is: in reality, the order in which submittals are processed DOESN'T AFFECT THE ARITHMETIC MEAN AT ALL! And any bright high-school algebra student could prove that. (Gauss proved it when he was 7 years old, IIRC.)

Sigh. I have a degree in math, not operations research. All I really know is that for anything more complex than single-stage queues with perfect preclassification, FIFO starts doing things you don't want to see. And ... whatever the ODP is, it is not that simple.

And, speaking from mathematical experience again, if a problem becomes sufficiently complex, the ONLY efficient solutions involve nondeterminism (that is, randomness.) So, if you see the ODP appear random, there is a chance that we may be doing the best job theoretically possible. If the ODP DOESN'T appear completely random, then please let us know about it, so that we can work on fixing the problem!