This third most common of all questions in the forums, continues to baffle me. What are people expecting?
Obviously people who ask it have not a clue about the ODP. "We list sites with unique content, so if you don't have any unique content, you need to add some!" is about the only kind of answer that a real ODP editor could ever give. But surely this is not what people are expecting!
Well, knowledge of the ODP is rare enough: but I can't even understand the question based on the most common ignorant popular concepts of the ODP.
For instance: there is the "ODP Editor As Competitoricide" -- all four million sites were editors' sites added by themselves. But -- surely people who have this view don't expect those abusive editors to suddenly turn helpful about how to make their competitive site MORE competitive? No, this isn't where the notion comes from.
And there's the "ODP editor as Calvinist God" myth -- predestining some sites to listings, some to eternal obscurity. But again, people who believe this can't very well expect the CG to admit "I don't like the color of your style sheets..." Or can they?
Is there some heretical sect that has "ODP editor as Arbitor Elegentae" as a prime tenet of its creed? -- and this is the source of the question? What would start an idea like this? Is it newbie webmasters keenly aware that they really don't have a clue about website design and probably made a bad hash of it -- but thinking that we list all cool-looking sites regardless of content ... and hoping we'll explain what we think looks cool? But if this were true, and if we really wanted to help people, why wouldn't we just post a page describing how to make sites look really cool? (Like Google's list of things to do to facilitate spidering a site.)
So, simply because I can't fathom how idiocy would explain it, I keep falling back on the malicious conspiracy theory: that the people who ask are all affiliate spammers, probing for clues as to how we spot their spam so quickly, so they can disguise it better next time.
But I don't want to believe THAT large a percentage of our visitors are malicious spammers, either. And in fact, many of the sites about which people ask this question DON'T bear the usual earmarks of the mass spammings. So even if I were more willing to believe in mass villiany, the evidence doesn't seem to support it.
Anybody have a clue as to what sort of -- I hesitate to use the word 'thought' , perhaps 'neuropathological activity' -- leads to this question being asked so often?
Comments from people who have asked the question, or who would have asked the question if fate had not mercifully intervened, are especially welcomed.
Because I just can't figure it out. And obviously there's SOMETHING about the ODP that people just DON'T GET.
Obviously people who ask it have not a clue about the ODP. "We list sites with unique content, so if you don't have any unique content, you need to add some!" is about the only kind of answer that a real ODP editor could ever give. But surely this is not what people are expecting!
Well, knowledge of the ODP is rare enough: but I can't even understand the question based on the most common ignorant popular concepts of the ODP.
For instance: there is the "ODP Editor As Competitoricide" -- all four million sites were editors' sites added by themselves. But -- surely people who have this view don't expect those abusive editors to suddenly turn helpful about how to make their competitive site MORE competitive? No, this isn't where the notion comes from.
And there's the "ODP editor as Calvinist God" myth -- predestining some sites to listings, some to eternal obscurity. But again, people who believe this can't very well expect the CG to admit "I don't like the color of your style sheets..." Or can they?
Is there some heretical sect that has "ODP editor as Arbitor Elegentae" as a prime tenet of its creed? -- and this is the source of the question? What would start an idea like this? Is it newbie webmasters keenly aware that they really don't have a clue about website design and probably made a bad hash of it -- but thinking that we list all cool-looking sites regardless of content ... and hoping we'll explain what we think looks cool? But if this were true, and if we really wanted to help people, why wouldn't we just post a page describing how to make sites look really cool? (Like Google's list of things to do to facilitate spidering a site.)
So, simply because I can't fathom how idiocy would explain it, I keep falling back on the malicious conspiracy theory: that the people who ask are all affiliate spammers, probing for clues as to how we spot their spam so quickly, so they can disguise it better next time.
But I don't want to believe THAT large a percentage of our visitors are malicious spammers, either. And in fact, many of the sites about which people ask this question DON'T bear the usual earmarks of the mass spammings. So even if I were more willing to believe in mass villiany, the evidence doesn't seem to support it.
Anybody have a clue as to what sort of -- I hesitate to use the word 'thought' , perhaps 'neuropathological activity' -- leads to this question being asked so often?
Comments from people who have asked the question, or who would have asked the question if fate had not mercifully intervened, are especially welcomed.
Because I just can't figure it out. And obviously there's SOMETHING about the ODP that people just DON'T GET.
