Anti Trust on DMOZ

gworld,

You really did seem to hit a nerve. Heh. It's a strange chain of events though, they volunteer to work for AOL, in their volunteer job they get perks, which translate into money. So that is an income, like you said, if they did some other type of "volunteer" work and got paid in trade, it would still be income. It's an interesting question, any lawyers around? I'd just like to hear what the law would say about that... very interesting point you made. But don't they pay taxes on that income when they sign up for say... adsense? Use their SSN as a tax id? Or did I miss something?

 

Whether or not there is a potential for legal or IRS action, what struck me was how quickly some of these guys react to any suggestion that they are personally benefitting from their involvement in the DMOZ club.

You don't have to look very far to find editors who will blatantly say that they became editors to get their sites listed. Note these are not discredited or fired editors... these are CURRENT editors in good standing. And then we have an editor in this thread telling us that disclosing "affiliations" (aka conflict of interest in the real world) is optional.

 

Becoming an editor to get your own site listed is very tempting. Especially after you have tried for over a year to get listed the regular way.

It shouldn't be optional to display your affiliations, though. It should be mandatory. Maybe dismiss editors who don't list them, or falsely list them.

 

The income of business and employment is taxed differently and with different rates. The question here will be, if the editors are employee of AOL or not? If they declared as independent contractor, the tax collection will become the responsibility of the employer, in this case AOL.

There are also situations that a value has been transfered but no money has changed hand. For example, lets say I am an editor and I will manage through DMOZ listing get a high rank in Google, high PR and a lot of traffic to my site. I have no adsense or other income from the site but my site will have high sales value because of traffic. therefore while I have got compensation from AOL, no tax has been paid on the value received.

 

Don't forget that Macdesign even offers to sell the DMOZ information here and then he denies that editors benefit from being editor.

 

The only thing I'm upset about is the fact that people in this forum are suggesting that there are large numbers of corrupt dmoz editors. How would you feel if someone suggested that a bunch of people you've come to consider your friends as a result of sharing a hobby for many years, were corrupt?

The suggestion that listings are potentially taxable is amusing, not upsetting.

Whilst publicising affiliations so that every editor can see them is optional, declaring them is mandatory. If you don't make them public, only metas/admins/staff can see them. This allows metas to consider affiliations when assessing whether it is appropriate for an editor to be granted privileges in a given category.

 

Hate to interrupt a perfectly good discussion with facts, but there is an editor FAQ about Affiliations, available (and fairly prominent) from their main editing screen, which says:

Q. Is it mandatory to declare my affiliations?
A. Yes, it is.

I don't think it could be made much clearer than that. And as has been stated elsewhere, an editor's editing logs are available for scrutiny by any other editor.

 

Alucard,

Amazing that some editors don't know that. Perhaps you guys need to have a meeting and get your story straight before you run over here.

But you're still working on the honor system, you still have no way to connect a person to a domain, or a friend's domain. It's still "optional" no matter what you write in your faq.

Again, why doesn't DMOZ post a public list of all KNOWN sites editors have added for themselves? It would be good for the public to know who is affiliated with what, it would make it much easier to take the DMOZ line "no known corruption" seriously.

 

Jim, got your email. I wont argue with your decision but still fail to see how it can not be classed as editor abuse. Just post some information in here for others to debate on:

I have identified the following website all owned by a category editor at DMOZ:

libraryreference.org – 20 listings in DMOZ
www.ericdigests.org – 59 listings in DMOZ
www.historyofnations.net – 28 listings in DMOZ
http://www.libraryinstruction.com – 24 listings in DMOZ
http://lorenzen.blogspot.com – 3 listings in DMOZ
www.michaellorenzen.com – 11 listings in DMOZ

Some of the sites contain affiliate links and very little content. What does digitalpoint crew think, abuse or not?

 

As there are a few dmoz editors in this thread, I've got a question for you
With the upcoming removal of the status check forum in RZ there will be no way of knowing that the site you tried to list ever made it into a queue.
I have no real great problem with the fact that a site can sit in a queue for a year or more, what I have a problem with is there is no way of checking whether your site is even in a queue.

The cat that I submitted my site for (at least I think I did) has no editor, nor does the parent cat. The next level up does have an editor, so I'd guess that that guy has a lot of categories to wade through.
If he ever gets to my submission in the queue then he gets to it. But I have absolutely no way of finding out if the site is in the queue.

I'm open to suggestions about how to find out if a site is in a queue.

 

Looks like abuse to me.

I can't wait to see the spin the DMOZ editors will put on this one...

 

nddb, could you let me know if there is a fairly foolproof systematic way to connect a person to a domain? I am not directly involved in investigating editor abuse, but I know several who are, and I have "found out" several abusive editors (all got removed, by the way, within a very short time of me finding it and reporting it).

I don't know of a way, but am more than willing to be educated. Remember, we start out with an identity, and need to find all the domains (and also web sites - like sites on geocities, yahoo, etc.) that they are affiliated with - and to do this without trusting them to come up with a list.

 

I'm stunned, I just posted into RZ and lived to tell the tale
I took a guess at the cat for one of mysites - submitted sometime in jan (ish), and actually got an answer that it's still in the queue.

My earlier question about how can people find out after 21/5 still stands.

 

Alucard,

Let the public see the domains approved/rejected/wait lists and make our own decisions about DMOZ editor motives. All we can see now is the "approved list" but that doesn't tell us which sites got rejected and why.

The only way to even look around and see which sites have been waiting for years while others got approved above them is to become an editor, apparently.

 

Shhhh!

Didn't you ever hear of jinxes?

 

I know amazing isn't it.
And you'll never believe who actually went and check on the status for me - and with a polite replay as well.

 

RZ thread

Let's see now. A polite request from a non-spammer who's taken the trouble to follow the forum guidelines is treated with courtesy. That's normal.

What p****s the RZ volunteers off is serial submitters who think the forum rules and the submission guidelines don't apply to them and are not too familiar with the truth. Sadly, they're partially why we're giving up on status reports. They won (or did they?)

 

I've always shyed away from posting in RZ, mainly because I have no idea of the date the site was actually submitted, nor do I ever note the actual cat - I simply assumed I'd submitted it the the obvious one
I don't keep notes on dates sites were submitted to directories - nor am I about to start now.

As for being polite - not a lot of point being otherwise

 

No, Jim... you know full well that there is a wealth of public evidence at RZ showing clearly that it takes neither spamming nor impoliteness to be rewarded with insults, condescension, and discourtesy from the likes of Hutcheson.

 

I think one of the reasons that RZ is closing part of it's forum is to allow the editors more time to come and post here and help out you guys, since you don't seem to know that much about ODP.