Complaint [split from ODP editors are so slow]

[monayuki]

I really like your Replies.

 

Happy New Year !!

[Alex75]

On consideration, I think my case is more different from Alex's than I may have said. After all, I'm not a casual passerby at PG, telling them what they should do next: I have done thousands of pages for them. And my work on that book wasn't something I chose, for my own purposes regardless of anyone else's priorities or needs: it was one that multiple other volunteers had contributed to -- and that they would have contributed to even if I had never appeared. So ... I knew up front that my work was compatible with the community goals. Alex hasn't mentioned anything to suggest he was aware of the community goals, let alone that his work contributed to them in any way.

However, you've presumed that for me anyway.

[Alex75]

I am astonished at the kind of ignorant arrogance that some people display -- as if they owned the net and nobody else could play. Alex, you do not own the net. The web has room for many things. I doubt not it even has room for you, Alex. But fortunately, you are not the Czar of the web -- and much will fit in the web that will never fit into your mind -- or, for that fact, even into the much broader mind of surfers who are not so blinded by our own immediate commercial advantage, and have learned to find online information meeting a broad range of human needs.

 

And that's OK. That is good. Anyone who wants to pay for server space can try to fit something new into the net. Who are YOU to say otherwise?

When it begins to get personal, it's a sign the wit is out.

[Alex75]

Hey, the economy is COMPLEX. I can't describe the whole thing. I don't KNOW the whole thing.

 

I do know, trying to control the whole thing from one place, or with one technique, invariably leads to some pretty horrific societies. Which doesn't keep people from trying...

My thoughts exactly. Hey, the internet is COMPLEX. The ODP can't describe the whole thing. The ODP doesn't KNOW the whole thing.

 

The ODP does know, trying to control the whole thing from one place, or with one technique, invariably leads to some pretty horrific societies. Which doesn't keep people from trying...

[oneeye]

There are hundreds of millions of potentially listable sites to review - and eight thousand editors listing twenty to thirty thousand of them a month. You do the math. That means it will take anything from 0 to 800 years for any site at random to be listed. Average 400 years. Assuming no further growth. Come back and complain in 401 years.

 

oneeye (former editall/catmv)

[Alex75]

The priority is building a quality directory. One of the resources for that is the submissions -- but a large proportion of these are terrible.

Indeed. Quality remains a good goal, especially on the net.

A finite number of editors cannot clear a million submissions, to a high quality, quickly.

True. However we voice it, and some persist in denial, there is a real possibility that a very large ratio of submissions to editors will bring down the submissions system, quality directory or not.

[motsa]

The ODP does know, trying to control the whole thing from one place, or with one technique, invariably leads to some pretty horrific societies. Which doesn't keep people from trying...

If you're trying to imply that the ODP is trying to control the Internet, you are sorely lacking in some understanding of the Internet. We're just building a directory, one of many on the Internet.

 

True. However we voice it, and some persist in denial, there is a real possibility that a very large ratio of submissions to editors will bring down the submissions system.

Hence the reason we don't place a high priority on the pool of suggestions.

[Alex75]

There are hundreds of millions of potentially listable sites to review - and eight thousand editors listing twenty to thirty thousand of them a month. You do the math. That means it will take anything from 0 to 800 years for any site at random to be listed. Average 400 years. Assuming no further growth.

The submissions system has become ridiculous. My suggestion is that it should be radically improved or discontinued.

[motsa]

The submissions system has become ridiculous. My suggestion is that it should be radically improved or discontinued.

No need to discontinue it. It still *can* be of use in some categories.

[Eric-the-Bun]

that a very large ratio of submissions to editors will bring down the submissions system.

 

There is no system per se to bring down. People's submissions/suggestions go into a list of unreviewed for each category. This list is one of the resources an editor can use to build up that category.

[Alex75]

There is no system per se to bring down.

There is: the ODP's submissions system. It might not be the ODP's priority, but a huge backlog of site submissions will soon give the ODP a reputation. Don't underestimate the power of negative perception. Change forces change. The ODP is sustained by commercial interests, the ODP's "open" is no longer the altruistic "open" of Open Source and a grade of editors gets paid. If there were to come a time when a submission has to wait ten years for an editor's reaction, commercial imperatives will force the submissions system to change or to go, perhaps along with the current system of volunteering. Nuff said.

[jdaw1]

The ODP is sustained by commercial interests

News to me.

 

Nuff said.

Complete agreement from me, and I suspect from others.

[oneeye]

The submissions system has become ridiculous. My suggestion is that it should be radically improved or discontinued.

The main thing that is wrong with the submission system is that for some reason people get the wrong idea about what it is. They think it is a service for them to get their site listed when all they have done is made a suggestion and they believe the suggestions made via the link are (or should be) a priority, when it is just one of a dozen methods by which editors find sites. The fault lies in not ensuring that the correct message is reinforced at the time someone suggests an URL using language that is not only unambiguous but makes it clear that it is not a webmaster service but a pitch by a potential supplier of material, i.e. the submitter is not a customer; the directory is the customer and the webmaster the supplier. It is clear there are people who are not getting that message from the current wording and changing it can do nothing but good. Of course agreeing a wording everyone likes is never easy...

 

oneeye (former editall/catmv)

[monayuki]

Alex75

 

It seems that even on New Years Eve you dont have any sense of wits. I am very scared out of my wits of your insenseless wits. Why are you so angry ?

You seem very intelligent and know everything try Feng-shui to calm yourself.

[oneeye]

a grade of editors gets paid

Technical staff are paid for their technical contribution, they are not paid for editing and nor is anyone else.

[oneeye]

commercial imperatives will force the submissions system to change or to go, perhaps along with the current system of volunteering.

ODP has no commercial imperatives - other directories, where the webmaster/submitter is the customer have and they would have an interest in ensuring submissions are dealt with promptly or they lose money and customers. ODP may have an end product that looks the same but the underlying model is completely different.

[hutcheson]

>commercial imperatives will force the submissions system to change or to go, perhaps along with the current system of volunteering.

 

Change is always possible, and commercial pressures might well have an impact. I think the Marxist ideologues overestimate the extent to which commerce controls humans. But insofar as commercial pressure forces change, I'd agree with Marx this far: WHATEVER CHANGE WAS FORCED, WOULD BE TOWARDS A SYSTEM MORE RESISTANT TO COMMERCIAL PRESSURE.

 

And, once you start thinking about how that change might work out in this particular niche, you'd realize: IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED ONCE, AND THE ODP IS THE RESULT.

 

I remember when every portal and search engine had its own directory, built by its own hirelings. Yahoo! was the pattern, but frankly, none of the imitations came close to matching it -- and yet attempt it they must do, or be less than a REAL portal.

 

OBVIOUSLY, two things are going to happen: (1) Portals are going to start pooling efforts, and presto! appears as if by magic but really impelled by commercial pressure -- Looksmart, Zeal, NewHoo! (And, just to remind the greybeards among us, many other similar efforts started, just in case these stumbled.) and (2) people are going to start looking for non-commercial motivations -- and so go Zeal and NewHoo.

 

The obvious winning combinations in this all included: (1) take commercial considerations out of the picture by using volunteers, (2) push commercial considerations downstream by allowing customers (that means HOSTING USERS, not webmasters, in case anyone has forgotten!) to add ads (or whatever floats their nest eggs) (3) Circumvent commercial pressures by harnessing other sources of human motivations: such as community, public service, challenges, curiosity -- thus avoiding the horrific commercial overhead of the traditional hierarchical management, which in many organized systems may absorb the majority of all income.

 

So it is no accident that the ODP is relatively immune to commercial pressure -- it is the most successful of all the attempts to create something that WAS immune to the commercial pressures that had crippled previous efforts to build something like this.

 

That's humanity for you: don't give up, work around the problem, even if the problem is malicious humans. There's nothing unique about THIS niche. In computer operating systems, Microsoft's criminally monopolistic behavior and commercial predation has resulted in a whole new breed of programming projects relatively immune to predatory price-fixing: open-source projects such as Linux, Mozilla, Apache, OpenOffice. In media distribution, every attempt by the RIAA pigopolists to shut down any alternative music distribution system (mostly by litigational harassment) has resulted in new systems more resilient to single-point failures, and therefore harder to use legal thuggery against. And "self-published" (samizdat) literature thrived under the most brutally and violently repressive dictator of the mid-twentieth century.

 

Other pressures, other changes, are certain. But it's the pay-for-quick-review, pay-for-inclusion, pay-for-click directories that are constantly sliding down the knife-edge between economic collapse and descent into ad-farm irrelevance. That's one direction it's obvious the ODP won't go!

[Sachti]

There is: the ODP's submissions system.

 

It is not a submission system, it is a suggestion system.

[Alex75]

Alex75

It seems that even on New Years Eve you dont have any sense of wits. I am very scared out of my wits of your insenseless wits.

Monayuki, Happy New Year to you. No need to be scared by my "senseful" wit. Goodwill to all men and all that.

Why are you so angry ?

Ah, the commonest phrase to provoke anger. I'm not angry at all, and wont fall for it.

You seem very intelligent and know everything?

Thanks, but I only know little.

try Feng-shui to calm yourself.

Another provocation. I use stuff from Africa, thank you very much. It seems to work much better. It calms me by keeping my head coolly focussed on the subject matter rather than let it stray into personal confrontation.

 

As I said before, we seem to have exhausted the ODP subject proper. The mantle of thread-starter was thrust upon me; I owe it to you to let you know this will be my last word in this thread. Thanks for your contributions.

[monayuki]

From the contributions that some editors make to these forums, one can surmise from the tone of voice, temperament, quality of writing and editing that the ODP has some bad editors. The forums put the dirty linen in full view of the public.

 

Alex75

I don't think its a good idea to start a new thread. We have answered all your concerns. Happy New Year to you too.

[giz]

>> It might not be the ODP's priority, but a huge backlog of site submissions will soon give the ODP a reputation. Don't underestimate the power of negative perception. <<

 

A reputation like "only lists the best sites", or "rejects spam and schemes", we will willingly accept; and ask you to broadcast it to every webmaster you know, and ask them to tell everyone they know too.

 

 

There is no concept of a "backlog". Every site not included in the public listings is a candidate for being reviewed and included irrespective of whether anyone every suggested it to the ODP or not. The date it was suggested is also irrelevant.

 

Anyone can suggest any site at any time, and editors suggest and list sites all the time. You could look at the editors as being "trusted suggesters" - they get to suggest and edit in one move. Everyone else gets to put their suggestion into a list - one list per category - that an editor can look at when they take an interest in, and then access, a category to do further work on it.

 

Editors are specifically not "queue processors for other people's suggestions", having to work in some specified order, but can take those suggestions and use them, or not use them, as they see fit. If a suggestion isn't used at any particular time then it remains in the unreviewed pile until someone else takes an interest in it.

 

Spam and unlistable stuff will be deleted as it is spotted, and wrongly suggested sites can be moved to the unreviewed part of another category at any time, and wait there until an editor takes an interest in building that particular category up.

[PMojo]

I feel your pain...

 

Alex, I know what it's like. I have waited over two years to get listed. In my opinion, the editors waste their time writing lengthy and mostly oxymoronic replies instead of actually reviewing submissions while sites with crusty content are already listed in DMOZ.

[hutcheson]

The difference in this respect between editors and non-editors is ... by your definition, all non-editors are wasting 100% of their time, whereas the editors are only wasting 99+%. So why pick on the editors?

[jdaw1]

I agree with PMojo, and said so at the start of this thread.

[pvgool]

jdaw1, as an ex editor you should know better.

That thread you started was seen a a good joke. After your last post I´m not so sure you meant it to be a joke.

 

PMOjo´s problem is cuased by the fact that he doesn´t understand what ODP is about.

DMOZ is not a listing service. And by so suggested sites are nothing more than that. Just one of many possibilities for editors to find sites worth listing. And we all know it certainly isn´t the best source. For that reason DMOZ editors don´t care about how long ago a suggestion might be made.

 

And as a volunteer editor I decide myself how to waste my time.