Meta shadow575 Posted August 19, 2006 Meta Posted August 19, 2006 If DMOZ wasn't used so much by search engines for supplemental information, then I'm sure everyone would "Get Over It." Even you point out the DMOZ backlog...So...taking the backlog, lack of editors, editors with little or no time...how does make DMOZ useful to the internet community? Is the information in the directory really "fresh" and up-to-date? In the broadband information age, what is timely? I'm a student....When I search the internet, I hope to have the most up-to-date information I can get. Do I get that from DMOZ? There is no back log. Just an abundance of raw materials from one source (not always a very good source) which is located in the site suggestions. Editors don't just use site suggestions, they are there to assist us in building categories but in many categories the site suggestions are unreliable at best and blatantly unproductive at worst. As a student, it would very much depend on what it was you were researching. If you were researching Deception Island then you would find just a couple of sites (last updated in 2002 according to the marker on that page) but they seem to be pretty good with still offering decent content. I am sure you could find a few more sites that would fit there but by your standards that category is 4 years old and useless. On the other hand if you were researching Oligosaccharides you will find that it is up to date by the "last update marker of July 31, 2006. These were just two random and to my interest obscure categories I picked by drilling through from the top down. For a category to be dead/useless, it would have to have nothing to offer. I guess I am just not editing in enough categories to uncover the 10's of thousands of categories everyone seems so interested in that are so riddled with useless information that the whole directory should be declared dead. Shadow *The opinions I offer are my own and may not represent the opinions of Curlie.org or other editors.* It can take anywhere from two hours to several years for a site review to take place. I do not respond to private messages requesting site status checks. _______________________________________________ https://shadow575.wordpress.com/
Meta hutcheson Posted August 19, 2006 Meta Posted August 19, 2006 It's been said over and over again: for information that has to be up-to-date or it's worthless, the ODP doesn't really get in that business. As for news, we gave up TRYING to list it: we couldn't do a good job. And Google Search doesn't do a good job either--that's why they have a separate search using distinct ranking technology, for news. Nobody in their right mind would use Google Search for news; nobody in their right mind would complain that Google Search isn't good at finding "up-to-date" news. And ephemeral shopping is the same way. Try looking for books: Google Search will show you dozens of online used book catalogs at websites where that book USED to be available for sale! And we have a policy of not listing "shopping sites" that advertise one product (like a house or yacht) and once that is sold, the site is useless. It's a waste of our time to try to keep up with shortlived sites like that. If you want the kind of "up to date" information that you must "use by next Monday or it rots", DO NOT GO TO THE ODP. Go to Google News, go to Ebay or Abebooks, go to anyone who makes a reputable business of collecting freshness-limited content and giving searches that are absolutely up-to-date, instead of out-of-date like Google or the ODP. This is another example of whinging about the ODP because it can't and doesn't try to do something that -- someone else does better already.
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