Is this Abuse? I think so...

[pvgool]

I re-submitted less than 30 days ago. Based on that, it is possible then for the editor of our category to avoid the appearance of abuse for 2+ years based on ODP policy that an editor will get to it when he can and that time can range from as little as 2 days to 2+ years. Without a way to gather evidence, what more can be said?

 

This is also a wrong way of thinking.

If a category has an editor listed has only limited meaning.

It doesn't tell anything about this editors activities.

- this might be the only category he is able to work in, but it might as well be one of over a 1000 categories he has access to

- an editor is not obliged to review suggestion at all, the only thing he has to do is edit one site during a 4 month period to stay active, were and how he did find this site is of no importance

It also doesn't tell anything about which editors can and will edit in this category.

- all editors listed in higher categories can also edit

- we have lots of editors with high priveleges that can edit in all or a very large part of ODP without being listed as editor for any category at all

[Callimachus]

If there is an editor in a very deep category where his own website is located and there are only 37 entries, it would also be good to be able to find out if this editor is still active and has not just achieved the coveted editor's title, added 1 or 2 sites including his own, and then dropped from the face of the earth. That to me MIGHT constitue evidence, but we have no way of gather such evidence.

 

No. but meta editors do, and as has been suggested, if you honestly believe some such has occured, then filing an abuse report is the way to initiate such an investigation.

[lkevinl]

Abuse

 

If a category has an editor listed has only limited meaning.

It doesn't tell anything about this editors activities.

- this might be the only category he is able to work in, but it might as well be one of over a 1000 categories he has access to

- an editor is not obliged to review suggestion at all, the only thing he has to do is edit one site during a 4 month period to stay active, were and how he did find this site is of no importance

It also doesn't tell anything about which editors can and will edit in this category.

 

These are all argurments towards my point that it is nearly if not entirely impossible to have ANY evidence of abuse beyond suspicion.

 

I have yet to see an editor come forth with an example of abuse where a submittor presented evidence that led to an editor being removed or corrective action being taken. Names of the guilty parties can be changed to protect the innocent but can any of you provide a personal anicdote?

 

Callimachus, I have no experience with the abuse reporting process yet and look to it as a last resort with faith that it will be followed up on. I'm willing to give benefit of the doubt that abuse is not taking place, but based on the black hole of submission described even by pvgool in his last post, there's no way to know when abuse is really happening (my original point). I'm hoping that my experience with submitting an abuse report, should I be left to that, will not leave the same taste in my mouth that the site submission process has.

 

Any anicdotes welcomed!

[bobrat]

Well we can't give you any proof, since all internal activity is held confidential.

 

Even I as an editor I am not able to see the activities that led to the dismissal, it has to be this way, since if editors planning abuse were able to see how they were detected, it makes it too easy for them.

 

So the bottom line is you have to trust us. All I can say is that I have seen activity that was suspicous and filed internal abuse reports, and they have been followed up and led to termination. Sometimes that has taken some time to happen, sometimes it happens the same day, depends on what was happening, and how much prrof is required.

 

Since all editor actions are open to scrutiny from all other editors, it's difficult to hide that much.

[lkevinl]

Thanks for the reply bobrat. I guess that is the best I can expect. It's hard to have blind trust, which is really what you're asking for since there is virtually no visibility into the submission process nor the abuse reporting process. If blind trust is what the editors expect, then they should also have understanding when responding to frustrated submittors (many of you do). Rather than scolding a user as was done earlier in this thread for making accusations of abuse because he didn't provide evidence that is impossible to collect, a canned response would do quite nicely:

"I'm sorry that your situation appears like abuse but there is a chance that it's not. Since you have no visibility into the workings of a particular submission or the activities of the editor(s), you can't definitiviely come to that conclusion. Submitting an abuse report will help determine if abuse has occurred and if so a corrective action may be taken."

Did I capture the basic gist of the thread?

I guess I'll need to work on the blind trust. My patience is still intact.

[hutcheson]

Herewith a slightly different perspective on the abuse problem.

 

There are, roughly speaking, four different things involved.

 

1) Adding sites that shouldn't be added. Anyone on the internet can see the evidence. It may be either accident or abuse--usually only editors can tell the difference. We want to hear about it -- from anyone.

 

2) Rejecting submittals that should be accepted. It could be accident or abuse--usually only editors can tell the difference. You find out about the evidence by asking for the status. We'll tell you the status, and generally if there's an issue, we'll take it from there, you don't need to report or argue any further.

 

3) Editors listing only their own site, then timing out. This is abuse. But it can't possibly hurt you; and you won't ever have the evidence for it. So there's no point in discussing it.

 

4) Editors spending their valuable time not reviewing your submittal. This is really what happened in your case, and if you think about it a minute, you'll realize what an insulting, comprehensive, and absurd charge this was.

 

First, comprehensive. I'll tell you right up front. There are several hundred thousand site submittals I did NOT review yesterday, as well as millions of unsubmitted sites I did not review. The most active editor in the ODP will tell you the same thing. Multiply that by 10,000 active editors, and that's (by your definition) maybe 50 billion counts of "negligent abuse" every single day.

 

Since I cannot significantly change this number by any humanly possible effort, by your definition I stand accused of ongoing mass conspiracy to commit abuse so long as I remain an editor.

 

How much more insulting, and how much more absurd an accusation could you make?

 

As far as assuming that editors will eventually fulfill the social contract concerning reviewing your site, ... that is an issue of trust. But -- I do not recommend that you trust it!

 

If you are "depending" or "relying" or "trusting" that your site will get a listing within any particular time frame, you are depending on us to something we haven't promised to do, and can't do. If your business depends on it, then ... you've got a dead business.

 

If you really need site promotion within a particular time, then you need to go to someone who DOES offer that service, because the ODP doesn't.

 

You can probably trust us to review several thousand sites daily, and list many of them -- because we've done it every day (that the system has been up) for years. You can trust us to include some sites we know about personally, some valuable sites we found, and some sites submitted to us. You can trust us to provide a directory that's useful for submitters, because we've done it before. You don't have to trust that editors to not have special interest in the vast majority -- 99% or more -- of the total submittals. (Do the math if you don't believe that...if it weren't true, it would be VERY obvious.)

[lkevinl]

Haven't you taken the time to read this thread? I wasn't posting about my own situation in the first place and have NOT filed an abuse report yet! My original post was in response to another person being criticized for lack of proof where there is really no means for obtaining such proof.

 

Your item #1 above doesn't apply to allegations of abuse from submittors so its irrelevant to this.

 

Regarding item #2, I've read plenty of submission statuses from editors and if you consider "Submission declined. I can not say why." as evidence of anything, then you're unfit to judge anyone on anything.

 

In my case, I suspect item #3 regarding my PREVIOUS submission dating back 24+ months and, as you've so kindly pointed out, there is no way for a submittor to have evidence of this type of abuse, and as I've pointed out, I have NOT submitted an abuse report, nor have I accused anyone of abuse at all yet. I just SUSPECT it. The fact that a competitor edits that category and his site that has similar content (his requires pay to access, mine is free) is listed lends itself to suspicion. I'm still willing to give benefit of the doubt but as an editor you're being naive if you think that a person can not do exactly what you've described in item #3 but avoid timing out and still server his/her own interest. If a self serving person is talented enough to become an editor in ODP, then I'm sure they can work the system and avoid detection for some amount of time. With 50 billion sites to review and only 10,000 active editors, how do you think any of them could ever catch a clever, self-serving editor?

 

Regarding item #4, are you speaking from actual knowledge when you refer to MY situation because as far as I'm concerned my submission status is currently unavailable as it has not been 30 days since my re-submission and I don't plan on checking until that time has passed. I have absolutely no expectations about my submission beyond that. If you are NOT speaking from actual knowledge, then your jaded response shows your anger and frustration but you're going to have grin and bear because the workings of the OPEN Directory Project are CLOSED to public viewing and the lack of information lends itself to suspicion.

 

Fortunately, I do not believe ODP is the key to success for anything. The fact that it is a widely used directory makes it appealing for people to submit.

 

My site is already listed in Zeal, a directory that tests submittors as well as editors as a means to prevent spam submissions. They provide easily accessible feedback and you can rate editors and read their reviews and have access to statistics on their activity. This type of visibility into an editor's activities probably stops plenty of abuse allegations before they're ever reported. Until ODP provides similar tools, you may continue to have your feelings hurt by submittors accusing in the dark. Turn the lights on.

 

bobrat, in case it didn't sound like it, I really appreciated and respected your reply and hutcheson, in case it didn't sound like it, not so much.

[pvgool]

Regarding item #2' date=' I've read plenty of submission statuses from editors and if you consider "Submission declined. I can not say why." as evidence of anything, then you're unfit to judge anyone on anything./QUOTE']

 

It should not be "I can not say way" but "I am not allowed to say way".

The ODP rules clearly state that we won't give reasons for rejections and that discussions about these reasons are not allowed. ODP has decided to work in this way and when you suggest a site you have agreed to accept these rules.

Because of a lot of negative experiences in the past we see this as the only way to handle suggestions. Unfourtunately the good people have to suffer because of the bad people.

[hutcheson]

You are simply wrong in several ways.

 

#1 is, contrary to your assumption, the kind of abuse most often successfully reported, and many of the reports come from submitters. The reports come in the form "how come xxx is listed if my site can't be -- it's even worse." And in a large majority of cases, they are right. So we welcome these reports, set up multiple official channels for them, investigate them quickly, and go a long way towards tolerating them even when they are made by inappropriate channels. And it has been well worth while -- regardless of the submitter's motives, they have been finding and reporting problems.

 

Regarding #2, I'll go through the logic slowly, and avoid the obvious assumptions.

 

If a site has not been rejected, then it's pretty clear that it hasn't been INAPPROPRIATELY rejected, right? But by far the most common STUPID abuse reports are of the form "my site hasn't been listed yet, some editor must be refusing to list it." And by far the most common public allegations of abuse are of this form.

 

The accusers have two different gambits from here. One is the assumption that "the editor isn't reviewing my site because I'm being singled out for special inattention." That's why we editors spend so much time telling people how the ODP actually works, so they can understand the inner workings. Once the facts sink in, people realize how idiotic and insulting an allegation like this is. The honest ones will say something like "oh, I didn't understand how things worked. I see how that was a pretty silly idea." The malicious ones say, "I don't appreciate knowing the truth, because it interferes with my paranoia."

 

And the clueless but cynical often jump to the conclusion that "I need to be able to investigate this -- I need evidence." But people who are so ignorant as to jump to this conclusion simply aren't competent to handle evidence. They should have exercised simple logic on the evidence they already have first.

 

If a site has been rejected, then there is at least a possibility of inappropriate rejection. So there's no point in investigating abuse -- as a few simple arithmetic facts will show, we have 50 billion cases of "not reviewing a site" every day! In fact, that isn't abuse, even though it is not what you want.

 

But you can see for yourself, using just the evidence available to anyone on earth, without looking at any editor logs, how much of a possibility of abuse there is here. All you have to do is read the guidelines, then do some reviewing of sites that HAVE been listed, to see if other sites are being treated the same way. There are only two possibilities, and you can think about

 

If other sites ARE being treated the same way, then ... you have no evidence of inequitable treatment. We're not being unfair, we are being fair -- but we are simply following our mission, not yours. Our guidelines are public, but -- like most "guidelines", cannot be fully understood without some experience at trying to follow them.

 

If other sites ARE NOT being treated the same way, then you have an indication of abuse. But how to turn this into evidence? Well, there are two ways to look at this. First, you don't have to collect the evidence (and this is a point that I thought should have received more emphasis from the editorial side of the trenches.) And there's nothing you can do with it -- if you gave it to us, we certainly couldn't just take your word for it. (We get many false and malicious abuse reports!) So there's no reason that you should be able to collect it.

 

Second, it doesn't matter whether you have evidence. We want to look at the indications. Even if there is no abuse, there may be a problem we should fix! So insofar as your complaint is about being unable to collect evidence, it's not a problem. We put the data out so that people can find websites. What else they do with it is not our concern. (The fact is, a clever person can often find evidence! But that isn't our concern either.)

 

And thirdly, if you can't handle the evidence already available, including the published ODP guidelines, the published ODP listings, and everything else on the web -- then there's obviously no reason to give access to internal ODP working documents.

 

----------------------------------------------------

Another point on which I wish to respectfully disagree with other editors (that is, give a different perspective) is that I am less likely to ask for trust than some other editors are. I'll tell you up front -- you don't have to trust us: there are other directories, there are search engines, you can look anywhere you want for URLs, and you can do whatever checking you wish before using any information you get from ANY website. And I think you should do that! (In every human activity, IMO, too many people don't look for themselves, but just trust their own intuition, or trust what other clueless people say. I'd want people to do more checking. Certainly, the Open Directory has earned widespread respect for the comprehensiveness quality of its results. And that is much more important than any kind of trust, especially misplaced trust.

 

And this gets back to unrealistic webmaster expectations. We do not promise to list every site submitted; we do not promise to review any site within any particular finite time. But webmasters who DO trust us to do these things are the primary cause of idiotic accusations and inane conspiracy theories!

 

So we keep telling the truth about the ODP mission and practices. And when people understand that, concerns about "needing evidence" to "report abuse" will have been completely relieved. The honest people will stop making those absurd and insulting accusations -- and we'll know how much attention to pay to the others.

[lkevinl]

Abuse

 

I wasn't trying to imply that I don't think #1 is the most common type of abuse or the most successfully reported. I'm sure it is. I just meant that it didn't apply to this discussion about how a person can ever really know or have evidence that their submission is being rejected or passed over for review by a self-serving editor which is the type of abuse we've really been talking about.

 

I already understand that not being reviewed is not evidence of abuse and being wrongly rejected may be but that it would be impossible to investigate every reported incident.

 

It sounds like, based on your logic, that even clear conflicts of interest aren't worth reporting. What's a clear conflict of interest? By your standards, there is none and if there was it wouldn't be worth investigating because conflicts of interest would typically fall into one of two categories: those passed over for review or those wrongly rejected. I'm sure editors have enough visibilty and enough intelligence to distinguish between false accusations of conficts of interest and actual incidents. I have not specifically read any where in ODP guidelines that conflicts of interest should not be reported. I did read and copy the following from "How To Report Suspected Abuse By An Editor" in this forum:

 

"Competitors being editors is not automatically a reason file an abuse report - you should have something more substantial than that if you want the meta-editors to investigate."

 

Again this talks about "something more substantial". This implies "evidence", right? I'd like to collect something more substantial, but ODP does not provide any tools for doing so. Only editors have access to logs and statistcs on other editors.

 

I think its out of line to call people you've volunteered to serve "ignorant", "STUPID", and "clueless" when ODP has created a system that lends itself to concerns of abuse, whether abuse exists or not. ODP has created a fence with editors happily operating on one side participating in their hobby of editing the directory trying to abide by ODP guidelines, and submitters on the other side throwing their submission over the fence hoping they don't land in the mud. You can clearly post your guidelines on our side of the fence but unless you create a window, you can expect to waste plenty of time and many key-strokes dealing with false accusations of abuse. The guidelines themselves are not the window, the acutal data is. I know that if I could at least see the activity of the editor of the category I'm concerned with, that simple information could very well be enough to shut me up and plenty of other users who would otherwise waste your time taking away from the 50 billion submissions awaiting review.

 

By the way, in saying that you 'serve' these people, I'm not implying that you serve them to review or accept their submissions but rather that you've volunteered to build a directory that serves the masses including these people. The fact that they think the submission system is not working is unavoidable with the way it currently operates.

 

pvgool, I understand that they can not say why a site has been rejected because of the ODP guidelines. I'm just suggesting that this type of answer does not lend itself to minimizing the number of false abuse reports.

 

I know that my input won't affect ODP policy. I was only prompted to post in this forum by the suggestions made by other editors about dealing with suspicions of abuse and evidence gathering. I think changes could be made to reduce false abuse reporting but will likely not be implemented.

[pvgool]

I think its out of line to call people you've volunteered to serve "ignorant", "STUPID", and "clueless" .....

 

By the way, in saying that you 'serve' these people, I'm not implying that you serve them to review or accept their submissions but rather that you've volunteered to build a directory that serves the masses including these people. The fact that they think the submission system is not working is unavoidable with the way it currently operates.

 

We don't serve webmasters in any way. This has been stated cleary over and over agian in many threads. We are building a directory and anyone, including website owners, can help us by suggesting sites. The moment we change to serving the webmasters by becoming a submission service I, and with me many other editors, will leave ODP, probably to start a new directory with the original (current) intention of ODP.

 

We (the ODP editors) think that the way our site suggestion system is working in a good way. It could be better and we would like to see some of our problems solved. We are also continualy increasing the quality of the proces. But I can tell you the things that webmasters see as problems are most of the time of total irrelevance for us.

[lkevinl]

I was definitely not implying that you should or do serve webmasters. I, as a webmaster, also use ODP for its content as do many other webmasters and therefore belong to the group of users of the directory you've chosen to volunteer to help build. Some of those users were being called "ignorant", "STUPID", and "clueless". You may think a bum off the street stinks, but you still pour the soup if you've voluteered to do so and you probably would do it without telling him he stinks. It's my understanding that even this forum is voluntary. You guys kindly answer the inquiries and commentary from us 'bums'.

[hutcheson]

"Something more substantial" (than mere potential conflict of interest) would be something like: POINT TO AN ABUSIVE ACTION! Inaction is not abuse. Action is abuse. The results of our actions are visible to all the world (except for deletes from the unreviewed queue, which you can find out about from the forum.)

 

So the "substance" of an allegation is always the same: just point to the site(s) that shouldn't be listed. Point to the sites that get extra listings in a category, or have more fulsome descriptions than other sites. Point to the sites that are inappropriately rejected. Point to the listings that are misplaced. That's abuse, and it's out there for all the world to see.

 

If you can't see it there, then by definition it's not abuse...or you simply can't recognize abuse.

 

In neither case is there any reason to give out any more information than is already available.

[hutcheson]

I should mention that at this point, we differentiate between malicious carpers and constructive critics.

 

The carpers scorn to use the terabytes of evidence we already provide for them and go off in a huff, sneering "I wouldn't want to do your job for you", whereupon we wonder what they were proposing to do with all the other evidence they proposed that we provide.

 

The constructive critics fetch out a list of putatively bad listings. (Of course, some of those lists are more acute than others, and some have more noise than signal. That's fine -- the same thing is true of submittals.)

[motsa]

This is NOT that system.

No, it's not. And we never claimed it was.

You can make it look even less like that system if you try to prevent people from submitting their grievances to an open forum based on the fact that they don't have enough evidence that they have no means to gather.

This forum isn't here to provide submitters a place to publicly air their grievances. Period. Use the abuse reporting system if you suspect abuse is involved but we don't appreciate people coming here to do it in this forum.

 

Again this talks about "something more substantial". This implies "evidence", right? I'd like to collect something more substantial, but ODP does not provide any tools for doing so. Only editors have access to logs and statistcs on other editors.

We can collect that information ourselves. We don't need you to collect that for us and present it to us on a platter. What we do need is for you to present to us what you do know...that will help us when we investigate.

[lkevinl]

Abuse

 

"Something more substantial" (than mere potential conflict of interest) would be something like: POINT TO AN ABUSIVE ACTION! Inaction is not abuse. Action is abuse. The results of our actions are visible to all the world (except for deletes from the unreviewed queue, which you can find out about from the forum.)

 

hutcheson, come on, man! That quote was specifically referring to conflicts of interest. It was suggesting that you need something more substantial than mere SUSPICION of conflict of interest before reporting conflict of interest. It was NOT in reference to the ONLY type of abuse that you think is worth reporting, inappropriate listings. You're the only editor I've heard make that assertion and that quote would indicate so as it was made by another editor.

 

I especially like the concept you're trumpeting that inaction, intentional or not, is not abuse because you can't touch it, taste it, see, or prove it. Thank god that concept doesn't fly in the real world! Ok, maybe its not evidence of abuse but maybe its evidence of incompetence, something ODP claims it tries to weed out in its editors. You'd of course argue that if everyone submitted abuse reports based on inaction, you'd have 50 billion abuse reports sitting in the queue. Well, that's a lame argument. This is the new millenium. Information is at our finger tips. If ODP provided a tiny bit of info to submitters, that would easily quell many concerns. Competitor directories do it! As it is, there is nothing like that in place and I'm sure you get PLENTY of abuse reports regarding inaction.

[lkevinl]

motsa, I know it's a long thread, but if you read the entire thread, you'll see that the first quote in your reply was made by me in response to an editor trying to make it SOUND like a real system of a government that is responsible and accountable for dealing with issues fairly. Terms like "checks and balances" were being thrown around about a system where there is no visibility into those "checks and balances" by the people they'd supposedly serve (already mentioned earlier in this thread). I objected to that assertion and reminded that editor that "This is NOT that system". Believe me, I'm fully aware it's not. That was my point.

 

This whole thread has been about the abuse reporting system. hutcheson claims that the only form of abuse that should be reported is an inappropriate listing. Period. Do you agree with that assertion? I'm not airing any greviance about my submission (already mentioned earlier in this thread). We've been discussing the abuse reporting system itself.

 

Your third comment is most promising, but do you agree with hutcheson's assertion that inaction, intentional or not should not be reported? I believe that you, as an editor have access to real data, as you've implied, and can EASILY determine whether a claim has any basis or not and act accordingly. According to hutcheson, this type of abuse should never be reported! I have read nowhere that that is the case, except in replies from hutcheson.

 

Thanks for your response.

[ronin100]

Abuse

 

lkevinl,

What kind of a "handicap match" did you get in with these people? They are of course, above reproach. You "of course can not provide evidence" and they are hurt that they, because there is a "2 month to 2 year" wait (how utterly ludicrous), that "they stand accused".

 

Nothing was directed at anyone personally. Imaginary scenarios were explored and taken as "personal indictments". Our esteemed editors, DO in forum posts, refer to people and inquiries in an abusive manner (I have evidence). They repeatedly let us know "we can hit the bricks" and go look into other directories (I have evidence..and we are).

 

Their complaints about the volume of sites awaiting review and the millions of submissions, while another illustrates they are under-staffed, further points to their finely tuned machine's slow degradation. "The system this, the system that"....."is working great". Well it must not be, when they crawl all over miscreants like you and myself for approaching them to obtain a straight answer. It doesn't work so good when they can't get the staff to review 2 yr old submissions..all the while...turning down editor applications. (I have evidence)

 

A couple of months ago in a public forum, directories were being discussed and the problems of getting listed, trying to communicate in a professional manner, being "crushed" immediately by the above "tag-team" tactics, and the general arrogance of the staff at the ODP. This was not my thread, or did I post in it, but it's a good indicator of the way ODP is starting to be viewed by the community of site owners on the web.

 

Obviously no one from this directory is reading the major "search engine" and "directory" forums or they would see how the backlash is rising. There are a lot of (righteously PO'd) webmasters who are doing just what you suggest and seeking out the other directories. Many are real "comers" too! They either are ignorant of the "buzz" on the net, or perhaps find it complimentary in some odd way, to be continually bashed in large open forums, with all parties in agreement. (I have evidence)

 

To ice the cake, one poster identified that the only way he could get his site listed was to apply for the category he needed to get in and "placed his site in the ODP" himself and it was approved or whatever the next step is. You could even back track this poster to his main web page, do a "whois" search and find out his name. It may have been a lie, but for reason in my own guidelines, I won't mention the editor and site (but I have evidence).

 

You may also notice that the ODP listings are all stripped away from Google listings for awhile now..an indication of ??...well....lots of room for speculation.

 

I do believe that maybe 80% of editors have "no agenda" whatsoever and are truly trying to be the best of the best, but your admin's numbers?: "99%" are true blue devotees of the Project? I think not. (I have no data to support this remark except that the 99% defense statement is a red flag on it's own)

 

(OOPS, more circumstantial evidence found) I just checked another SE forum (after doing a Google search "is dmoz worth it anymore") and another guy ID'd himself as an editor and said after a lengthy post regarding exclusion of a site from the ODP: "PM me the urls' I can't put them in if they aren't in my categories, but I'll have a look at them"....geesh!

 

You may now commence to trashing everything I have posted. It's ok, it's in your natures. I am an editor at several other web directories who welcomed my efforts upon application, hope I see your sites in my "pile".

[lkevinl]

Abuse

 

Hi ronin,

 

I guess I'm not as angry as you are yet, but certainly don't like the implications some editors have made that either abuse is not worth reporting because they can't police all of it or that we should have more evidence of which there is none to collect due to lack of vision into the system.

 

I know how they'll reply to you. They won't bash you. They'll respond, in an arrogant, "we're better than you because we've been accepted to the club based on our 'editing' skills so why question us" kind of way, that:

 

1. There mission is NOT to serve submitters.

2. They review sites when they can get to them They're not obligated to review submission.

3. Insert other canned responses here.

 

Other directories have definitely figured it out. Zeal is one of them. They test submitters as well as editors. I had to carefully read and understand their EDITING policy before I could submit and was tested on it. And the test wasn't a "pass on the first try" kind of test. You really had to understand the policy. It seems like a policy like this would be something the ODP editors would literally wet their pants over! Can you imagine submitters actually having to understand the editing policy?!? In addition, you can see the activities of both submitters and editors which can make abuse CLEAR or disprove it CLEARLY, something that would then minimize the work of investigation!

 

I know what the response to these comments will be. "Go to that directory and stop bugging us". I went, but will continue to bug you at least every friggin' 6 months as will MANY other users. "If that directory was so good, why aren't they #1 like we are?" (I'm assuming ODP is #1) Well, in the web, it's not always that who is best is #1. Sometimes it's who is first and when you're talking about a directory that, overtime, collects data, being first is definitely important.

 

The point is there IS a better way, but posts from bums like us won't make them change their system.

[pvgool]

Ahh, you have given al the answers already yourself

 

You are showing that you start to understand the way we work.

Next thing to do is to accept it.

[lkevinl]

Fortunately, we never have to accept it. It's not in our nature. That's the nature of the process!

[ronin100]

Abuse

 

lkevinl and all,

My post was not to display anger. The ODP has always been "decent" in their treatment of me personally and when an editor has been wrong and challenged they have written me personal notes to that effect. This was only twice, but they were SO wrong (human beings do make mistakes...no problem with that). The thing that bothered me is that the thread gets shut off, (not locked) and they handle the mistakes via private email or PM. Then things are handled "in house" and big whopping errors are swept away from the prying eyes of the people. I am only recalling a few, of hundreds of threads across forums on the web. They are rife with the same type of complaints like I mentioned in this thread. 1. That some editors are too curt & snippy to the point of "personal" abuse. (Both in forum replies on status, and the way you were manhandled earlier in this thread for instance) 2. That they post, derisive remarks, directly and indirectly at posters who post inquiring why their sites can't be included. 3. That they post "as if" their system is w/o flaw and above reproach, when it is not.

 

I thought you mentioned that submitters were part of the masses they serve. Did a night's sleep mellow your opinions? To go on any further would be repetitive as my last post mentioned that it isn't just me, or you, that gets frustrated with ODP, but the "masses" of submitters (without which there would be no purpose for ODP editors or the Directory).

 

Just go to the forum on: submission status inquiries to see example after example of this cycle. Sure, some of the webmasters get a little too carried away, they don't read the guidelines and start premature threads and submit posts that they shouldn't, but are far surpassed, for rude behavior, by editors (who should know better) than "Joe Newguy", who just made his first site and is overly zealous about getting listed. I have seen some awful things said to webmasters who were not posting or submitting per "Guidelines".

 

I am only the messenger here, as only one editor has ever posted anything in a rude manner, directed to me, over the years that I have made any posts about a site. I believe that my post is "on target". Also, that the problems I've mentioned are real. The ODP appears to be losing ground in their ability to handle the load. They have created something larger than it's components can control effectively. (in regards to submissions, updates, growing the editorial staff) Their statements, that no abuse is present 99% of the time, are not realistic. Also, the ODP staff appears to the submitters, in forums across the web, as being "arrogant", "out of touch", "unresponsive to submitters" and consequently will end up continuing to degrade the reputation and stature that they profess to uphold. The summit is a small place and easy to fall from.

 

Try not to think of me as an ODP basher, but a reporter giving you the news. I'm only re-stating the opinions of thousands of webmasters whos' clients they claim to serve (thus the " "). I agree with some, but not all of them. There are some REAL ODP bashers posting around the web. My posts are what they are, real facts and not just my own opinions and they're not ALL wrong.

 

I won't continue as I do have an amount of respect for the ODP, but that doesn't mean that I have respect for every editor or their methods of communication. The ODP "has been" the model of excellence for human edited directories, but "ship-jumpers" and other groups of people with vision are setting their crosshairs on gaining equal stature as the ODP. They are at the doors already, showing up in Google backlinks, and passing "PR". They are being picked up by all of the major SE's. It's not a one man show anymore, if that's any consolation. I figure business rules apply and the ODP will stay on top, or lose ground, based on their "actual" and "perceived" impact/usefulness. The Directory, still seems to be "the place to be listed", whether it continues to maintain it's lofty status is in the hands of these editors. Good competition usually instills a need to do things better, or at least, right and with courtesy. !

[lkevinl]

Hi ronin, I wasn't disagreeing with you and still believe what I believe. I was just saying you sound a bit angry than I do. Unfortunately, I'm coming to the realization that not much will come of our grievances though, that's all. <sigh>

[motsa]

This whole thread has been about the abuse reporting system. hutcheson claims that the only form of abuse that should be reported is an inappropriate listing. Period. Do you agree with that assertion? I'm not airing any greviance about my submission (already mentioned earlier in this thread). We've been discussing the abuse reporting system itself.

You are so misreading hutcheson's posts. That isn't what he's saying. You are entitled to report any abuse that you suspect. But we need something more than "my site hasn't been listed so the editor must be abusive" to go on. Yes, you don't have access to the information we have but "my site hasn't been listed yet" isn't even a suggestion of abuse let alone anything approaching evidence of it.

 

but do you agree with hutcheson's assertion that inaction, intentional or not should not be reported? I believe that you, as an editor have access to real data, as you've implied, and can EASILY determine whether a claim has any basis or not and act accordingly. According to hutcheson, this type of abuse should never be reported! I have read nowhere that that is the case, except in replies from hutcheson.

Inaction, of and by itself, is not abuse. As long as an editor isn't only editing their own sites and/or isn't editing their own sites or competitor sites inappropriately, inaction (i.e. not reviewing any particular site) isn't abuse. This is why you should ask for a status check first -- if your site is still awaiting review, there is no need to file an abuse report as that isn't what the system is for.

 

Obviously no one from this directory is reading the major "search engine" and "directory" forums or they would see how the backlash is rising.

ronin100, we read them all the time but we don't actually care all that much about the bitching that goes on there.

 

It may have been a lie, but for reason in my own guidelines, I won't mention the editor and site (but I have evidence).

Mmm, lots and lots of people claim to have evidence of abuse by editors but very few report them. If you choose not to report abuse that you know (as opposed to suspect) is happening, you are a big part of the problem.

 

Their statements, that no abuse is present 99% of the time, are not realistic.

Well, since we're the only ones who see the abuse reports, we'd obviously be the ones to know the stats, wouldn't we? Now, granted, maybe abuse is actually happening 50% of the time but everyone is so busy reporting inaction while no one bothers reporting the big stuff that we'd never know.

 

In any case, having said all of the above, this is not the forum for bitching and complaining about the ODP. It's not the forum for reporting how much people are bitching and complaining about the ODP elsewhere on the Internet. You've got plenty of other choices if you want to do that. This thread has dragged on well beyond the guidelines for this forum so I'm getting out my big stick and closing it.