Last update: 21:47 PT, Saturday, July 30, 2005

[motsa]

It's not attitude.

 

There are 600,000+ categories in the ODP that I can edit. I am one person. There are not enough minutes in the day foir me to be able edit all of those categories, even if I wanted to. So I (like all editors) edit where I have an interest. B2B is among the subjects that don't interest me so those categories will be among the thousands that I may never touch in my time as an editor. Saying that to you is not contrary to my "job" as a meta editor.

 

I can't tell you whether any other meta editor feels the way I do about B2B sites. But they have the right to not edit in any category they want, just like all editors.

[hutcheson]

So far as editing categories, metas are no different from anyone else. I have maybe 200,000 edits, spread over a few tens of thousands of categories. That means that for several hundred thousand categories I'd HAVE to say, like motsa, "It'll be a long time before I edit there." And so would every other editor have to say. It's drop-dead mind-numbingly simple arithmetic.

 

If being an editor means denying the fundamentals of simple arithmetic, we'd have lots fewer editors. (But just about as many critics.)

[srikondoji]

The category that we submitted our site to in 12/05 has not been updated since Saturday, July 30, 2005.

 

As there are only 5 sites listed and many others that have certainly been submitted (as well as easily discovered and added by an active editor), is this considered an unacceptable length of inactivity by the editor?

 

This particular category

http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/E-mail/E-greetings/Invitations/

 

was last editied on "Last update: 13:50 PT, Tuesday, March 23, 2004"

 

But who cares it anyway. The editor is busy editing other categories or may be not or ????

He may just for namesake touch any one listed website and then the time stamp changes to the current date. For general public it looks like the most recently touched category.

[hutcheson]

>The editor is busy editing other categories or may be not or ????

 

Yes. Exactly. And how is this my business, if I don't happen to be the editor in question?

 

Editors aren't responsible to do a predefined amount of work, or to do predefined instances of work. Editors are simply expected to pick something good for the directory, and to do it well.

[giz]

>> a META is notified that the category requires attention. <<

 

And when the list of 400 000 categories that require attention is produced, how do we divide it up?

 

Perhaps by topic area of some sort, or perhaps give one meta all the categories that begin with A, another all the B categories?

 

But then, what is each meta supposed to do with the list of 10 000 categories that require attention that they receive?

 

 

 

As usual, Hutcheson had the right answer:

 

...you assert that there really IS work to be done in the category, and as evidence you show several good sites not listed.

 

If nobody can do that, or if nobody cares to do that, then by definition the topic isn't neglected. It is receiving all the attention justified by its body of knowledge and its social importance.

[RayJay]

400 000 categories that require attention

 

Maybe that information needs to be displayed prominently on the DMOZ home page so the public can make an informed assessment as to whether their time is being spent wisely using the directory and it will be "receiving all the attention justified by its body of knowledge and its social importance."

[giz]

I guess you still chose to ignore what Hutcheson said.

[hutcheson]

Statistics so easily manipulable by malicious parties, wouldn't be used by any honest person.

 

Because, the simple facts are,

(1) the vast majority of suggestions are spam,

(2) within that giant Hormel tin, the specks of genuine gems are unevenly distributed.

 

So what does it signify that site suggestions are piling up against this place or that? Nothing, except that to be productive, editors should probably go elsewhere and look for sites on their own.

 

So we do well to let the "travel portals" pile up, even in Las Vegas, while we hunt out the sites created by genuine travel service businesses and genuine tourists. We do well to let the classified ads sites pile up, and focus on information of more than ephemeral value. We do well to focus on what interests us as surfers, and let the rest wait for a more sympathetic reviewer.

 

Or at least, the ability to do that is what attracts active editors to the ODP.

[srikondoji]

Few broken links in a category

 

Please look at few links in this category, they are broken or non-existant.

 

http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=sulekha

 

This category was recently updated and still contains some broken links

http://dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Languages/Natural/Dravidian/Tamil/

Tamil eBooks : This link is defaulting to the main page of website.

Thanks

sri

[spectregunner]

Please direct request such as the above to the thread that is dedicated to that purpose.

 

Otherwise, you are simply adding to the workload and, perhaps, keeping an intersted editor away from the category you care most about.

[RayJay]

I can understand that many editors prefer to work on sites they find, however, this widespread disdain for reviewing submitted sites is harmful to the directory. It is also unfair to site owners since the directory has achieved the status it now enjoys, whether it wanted it or not.

 

It seems to me that ODP really needs to make a decision - accept submissions or not.

 

If the decision is to continue accepting submissions, they need to be worked.

 

What would be the problem with requiring all editors to first clean up the submissions needing review and staying on top of them going forward? Of course this will require a period of additional time and effort but well worth it, I would think, for those editors that believe in the project.

 

As an alternative, clear out all pending submissions and put the word out that the directory has done so and is now starting to accept submissions again and they will be reviewed in a timely manner going forward.

 

Such a move by ODP would be so well received that new editors will join in droves.

 

This thing is broken. Isn't it worth fixing?

[srikondoji]

Please direct request such as the above to the thread that is dedicated to that purpose.

 

Otherwise, you are simply adding to the workload and, perhaps, keeping an intersted editor away from the category you care most about.

Sure i will.

[hutcheson]

>It is also unfair to site owners

 

It is profoundly disinterested in site owners. Anything that happens to site owners, good or bad, as a result of editing, is an irrelevant side-effect -- not worth the energy of determining what it is, let alone whether it would be possible to prevent it.

 

>... since the directory has achieved the status it now enjoys, whether it wanted it or not.

 

The directory gained the STATUS it has, by following the MISSION it has. Sacrificing that mission would betray everyone that matters: the surfers who trusted the directory to focus on content, not webmasters; the contributors who trusted the directory to give something away to surfers, not webmasters; the licensees who trusted the directory to focus on the needs of their users, not webmasters.

 

>It seems to me that ODP really needs to make a decision - accept submissions or not.

 

The decision has been made. It's not necessary to revisit it.

 

>If the decision is to continue accepting submissions, they need to be worked.

 

They are worked, and they are worked in a way that maximizes the efficiency and effectiveness of the critical resource. If there is any good to come from webmasters from site listings (not that it matters, of course), then obviously, the most efficient way of listing sites, benefits the largest number of webmasters.

 

There is no harm to me in you doing whatever you do. If you think editors would flock to the Dark Sith Lords' Directory, you're welcome to set up a sheepfold and send out invitations. I have no interest at all in your mission or your process, and I think your proposal is all rot, but what does that matter to you? That's MY opinion, but it's YOUR proposal, and YOU are still free to act on it. Enjoy!

 

And there is no harm to you in me doing what I think is most important, in the most effective way I can. Which I've been doing, and will continue to do. And if the Dark Lord's Academy takes over the ODP, I'll still do what I think is important, somewhere else.

 

The difference between us is not that we have different opinions. That's true of any two people. The difference between us is that only one of us thinks other people have a right to their own opinions.

[pvgool]

I can understand that many editors prefer to work on sites they find, however, this widespread disdain for reviewing submitted sites is harmful to the directory.

Why?

It is also unfair to site owners since the directory has achieved the status it now enjoys, whether it wanted it or not.

We can't influence the status webmasters/websiteowners think DMOZ has. DMOZ has never provided a service to webmasters, and as far as I can see it will never provide such a service.

 

It seems to me that ODP really needs to make a decision - accept submissions or not.

That is easy. We don't. We accept suggestions. There is a small but significant difference.

A suggestion to DMOZ means "I found this nice website and I think it would be usefull for other people to know about its existence, do you agree"

But it is mainly used by webmaster "here is my site, I want it to be listed in DMOZ because I think it will be of importance for me, my site and my income"

 

If the decision is to continue accepting submissions, they need to be worked.

 

What would be the problem with requiring all editors to first clean up the submissions needing review and staying on top of them going forward? Of course this will require a period of additional time and effort but well worth it, I would think, for those editors that believe in the project.

All editors are volunteers. Noone is forced to do any specific work. We all do what we think is usefull for DMOZ in those parts we are interested in.

In your "solution" many editors would resign immediately.

 

As an alternative, clear out all pending submissions and put the word out that the directory has done so and is now starting to accept submissions again and they will be reviewed in a timely manner going forward.

 

Such a move by ODP would be so well received that new editors will join in droves.

Why wouldn't these people join now? If they think processing suggestions is a usefull activity they are willing to do for DMOZ they shoul apply now.

 

This thing is broken. Isn't it worth fixing?

It is not broken at all.

It is just not doing what certain people want it to do.

And for DMOZ that is a good thing.

[spectregunner]

As an alternative, clear out all pending submissions and put the word out that the directory has done so and is now starting to accept submissions again

 

And watch every spammer on the planet give themselves hernias attempting to mass-spam the directory.

 

No thanks.

[RayJay]

From the ODP "Social Contract with the Web Community":

http://dmoz.org/socialcontract.html

 

"We will make every effort to evaluate all sites submitted to the directory."

 

"We will make the most comprehensive, user-friendly directory possible..."

 

=====================

 

From Editors in this forum:

 

"It is profoundly disinterested in site owners. Anything that happens to site owners, good or bad, as a result of editing, is an irrelevant side-effect -- not worth the energy of determining what it is, let alone whether it would be possible to prevent it."

 

"We don't (accept submissions). We accept suggestions."

 

"So what does it signify that site suggestions are piling up against this place or that? Nothing, except that to be productive, editors should probably go elsewhere and look for sites on their own."

 

"Editing is based on interest, on reviewing sites that interest the individual editor."

 

"If no editor is interested in processing a category today, it won't be processed today. Same thing tomorrow etc."

 

"Until the category which interests you interests a volunteer editor, it will go untended I'm afraid."

 

"you'd be waiting a loooooonnnnnnggggg for me to edit in a B2B category (or any of thousands of other categories for that matter)."

 

=====================

 

Hmmm., seems like site owners and webmasters might be part of the "Web Community".

 

I'm just not sure you guys are performing on that "Social Contract". No, wait, I am sure - you’re not.

[hutcheson]

Well, we're obviously performing MUCH better than we would if SOME people were running the show! Imagine: we could permanently vitiate our ability to evaluate a half-million sites suggested to the directory, if we did what YOU said, and just threw the suggestions away. That's about as perfect a violation of the social contract as you could imagine!

 

It is one measure of the success of the Open Directory that even its detractors can't think of any way to do better: all they can do is think of ways to slow down the process, throw away potentially useful information, and drive off productive editors.

[spectregunner]

It is sooooo easy to sit on the sidelines, with no real involvement, and second guess those that do.

 

I see it every weekend at Little League.

 

So, just for fun, let's play a game.

 

By the powers vested in me (by no one) I have just named you grand poobah of the ODP.

 

-- You can now give marching orders to the ~9,000 active editors. They may not follow your orders (have you ever tried to herd cats?) -- in fact, they probably won't accept direct orders, but will follow if you can convince them of the rightness of your orders. If they think you are full of it, they may simply go off and edit elsewhere.

 

-- You cannot do anything that is not beneficial to the downstream users of the data.

 

What are your first three marching orders? No vague generalities now, we are awaiting your guidance. What specifically do you want. You tell us (and then we will sit on the sidelines and snipe at you, telling you the likely result of your guidance).

[motsa]

"We will make every effort to evaluate all sites submitted to the directory."

Nowhere in that statement does it say how quickly we will make that evaluation. It'd be fair to say that at some point during the natural lifetime of the project, most suggested sites will be evaluated. No editor is violating the social contract just because today he or she didn't edit in Category A or review suggested Site B.

[nea]

OK, this will get long.

 

What would be the problem with requiring all editors to first clean up the submissions needing review and staying on top of them going forward?

This is an important question, actually. Many (I'd say most) editors who have been around for a while do think that it would be directly harmful to the directory to do that, but I can see how it won't be obvious to somebody without the insider knowledge.

 

Suppose you are an editor, with editing rights in the category Sports/Waterfowl_Wrestling, its five bird-specific subcategories and their respective subcategories. Suppose you review the home page of the Australian Duck Wrestling Federation, which has been suggested for review by the site's webmaster. On it you find links to 40 local sites for Australian duck wrestling clubs. Some of these are obviously abandoned sites with information last updated in 1998, but most of them are good, and listing them would really make the category Waterfowl_Wrestling/Ducks/Clubs/Australia a much better resource.

 

However, because it has been decided that you must first review all suggested sites before going on, you can't build this category you are itching to create. You have to review 210 other sites first, which have been suggested by the public. 102 of these sites have nothing whatsoever to do with waterfowl wrestling; they were suggested to the category by a lazy SEO who didn't bother to look up the best category to suggest the sites to. If you are a conscientious editor (which we will assume that you are) you'll do your best to find the right category to forward these sites to -- we're assuming that you don't have editing rights anywhere outside S/W_W. Many editors make an attempt to re-write the description of sites they send to the unreviewed pile of other categories as well, to make the reviewing job a little quicker for the next editor to handle the site. This takes at least 5-10 minutes per site (determining what the site is about, finding the best category, moving it... and possibly writing a new description). 25 of the mis-submitted sites are in languages you don't recognise. Finding out the most likely language is fun (for many of us at least -- I love that process myself) but can also be time-consuming, especially when it comes to navigating the category structure of an unknown language to find the best category.

 

Interspersed with these are sites that have to do with the subject area; these are probably more fun for you to review since they are about the thing you are there to deal with. Again, review times vary from site to site, say between 7 and 25 minutes. Some of the sites are really bad, such as the fan sites for the players in the Gull Wrestling World Cup; they are deserving of as much of a review as any other site though, and as already mentioned you are a conscientious editor.

 

Let's also assume that you have a life outside the ODP (I have heard rumours that some editors do, though I don't hold truck with that stuff myself). You devote 3-4 hours to editing, twice a week -- I have no idea of how much time the mythical average editor puts into editing, but there are many who don't have time for that much, and many who edit much, much more than that, so let's say 8 hours a week all in all. I'm not going to do the math to find out how long it will take before you can get around to the Australian local clubs; of course, new site suggestions trickle in all the time while you are working on the other sites. Sooner or later you will probably have cleared all the unreviewed sites, though -- and only then can you do what you were so enthusiastic about a couple of months ago. Except if you're like me at all, you may have forgotten about the Australian clubs, because you have also found dozens of listable links on other sites, not to mention in the Albatross Wrestler magazine you subscribe to.

 

So, in the end you have done the waterfowl wrestling community a disservice by not listing the Australian club sites whose webmasters have no idea of what the DMOZ is, and no intention of paying a SEO person to promote their site (probably they, like most people, have no contept of what SEO is. Lucky them.) You also haven't had the most fun you can have as an editor: creating a new category from scratch. (And an editor who is having fun is an editor who will stay around, and may tomorrow be cleaning spam from the Web Designers category). Instead you have moved a number of undoubtedly very worthy sites around, without feeling any interest in them at all, simply because you had to do so. Without the pressure, you would eventually have found homes for the mis-suggested sites, but you'd have been able to get some proper editing in as well. As it is, you feel that a lot of your time has been wasted. If I were you I'm not sure I'd stay around. After all, you joined because you are passionate about the subject and wanted to create a great resource.

 

Am I making stupid examples that have no foundation in reality? Not at all. (Well, the category names are made up, I'll confess to that.) The number 102 is real -- it's the number of sites a lazy SEO in the space of 2-3 days pushed into a category I edited. (A fairly high-level category to be sure, but on the other hand that meant that fewer editors had access to it). When I started taking a special interest in the Benin category last year (the category then had fewer than 40 listed sites), I found over 50 sites about Ireland that had been suggested there (and there are still the occasional suggestion of Ireland-related sites to Regional/Africa/Benin -- no other European country, only Ireland. It's one of the great mysteries of our time why this should be). That sort of thing happens all the time, on a larger or smaller scale. Many people think Recreation/Models has something to do with beautiful people showing clothes, and suggest their sites wrong in good faith. And let's not even start on the language thing. Which, again, is something I personally enjoy, but I know it's a pain to a lot of people.

 

All right then. How about a solution where all the sites which are suggested to the right category get reviewed immediately? That's one of these things that sounds obvious, but is actually impossible. Because in many, many cases, it won't be all that easy to see that it is mis-sent. A toy shop in Waterfowl_Wrestling -- sure, that's an easy one. But a site about computer consultants doing a particular kind of programming in a category devoted to another programming language, that's not all that simple. Oh, and this is assuming that the description of the site actually says something about the content of the site, and in our experience that's usually not the case. So there's more time wasted trying to ascertain whether a site should be reviewed or not -- a pre-review process. I don't need to tell you that adding another step to the process is not the way to make it more efficient!

 

So the example is one that could very well be taken straight from reality. And this is in a category with a named editor who is editing out of a love of the subject. Does this help you see why implementing a "clear unrevieweds first" rule would be directly harmful to the directory?

[giz]

>> this widespread disdain for reviewing submitted sites is harmful to the directory <<

 

How so? Most of what is submitted is unlistable. Reviewing that takes time away from reviewing legitimate sites found elsewhere.

 

I can't remember the exact figures but I had some time off work a few months ago, and spent the whole day editing. Out of some 60 site suggestions that I looked at, about a dozen had been submitted to completely the wrong category (and about 10 of the 12 weren't listable anyway), 20 or 30 were obvious spam and junk, about a dozen were quite devious doorway or cloaked spam, several more were unlistable deeplinks, another dozen or so were mirrors or duplicates of stuff already listed, and so out of the 8 hours spent reviewing sites, I think just two out of the 60 sites made it into the directory.

 

A few days later I spent just half a day editing. This time I banged a couple of keywords into Google and then reviewed all of the sites in the top 100 that were not already listed in the ODP. It was very easy to add another 20 sites into the mix.

 

So, do you want the editor to add to two or 20 sites per day?

 

 

 

>> It is also unfair to site owners <<

 

Not at all. A good site is a good site whether or not anyone ever suggested that we go take a look at it. If it really is good, then it will be findable in search engine results, and in the links pages of other good related sites, mentioned in other places offline, and creating its own buzz elsewhere. Once an ODP editor spots that, then the site is an easy add - irrespective as to whether it was ever suggested.

 

In fact there is a very strong negative correlation between how good a site is and how hard the owner pushes the ODP into reviewing it (by repeated submission, by submission to multiple categories, by submission of deeplinks, and by submission of multiple related domains, and so on). It takes most editors only a few hundred edits to spot that pattern of abuse.

[RayJay]

You people are amazing. You all agree that the current process of site submission is broken and overwhelming yet no one seems interested in finding solutions. You just want to ignore the problem, just add sites that you find, and convince yourselves that you are, indeed, making "the most comprehensive, user-friendly directory possible..."

 

If ODP wants to continue using this approach, please, be honest with the "Web Community" and revise the "Social Contract" to read something like:

 

"We will make the most user-friendly directory possible that consists of only those sites that our volunteer editors discover and deem useful."

 

Not sure just how "Open" that is but...

[nea]

You all agree that the current process of site submission is broken and overwhelming

??!!

 

"We will make the most user-friendly directory possible that consists of only those sites that our volunteer editors discover and deem useful."

 

?!?!?

 

Nobody has said ANYTHING of the sort in this thread. It's just a little frustrating to have one's own words twisted -- but you can't accuse me of not trying to explain in any case.

[motsa]

OK. We're repeating ourselves and you're not actually listening so I'd say this thread has reached the end of any usefulness it might have had -- I'm going to close it.