Beer. I love it. Coors Light, Bud Light or Millers Light. Someday Gary I will visit you. Are you in New York ?
You got that chit right! Having a few as I type Back on the directory, looks like some pretty good growth last month.
Net growth in number of editors (New+ Reinstated-inactivated)= 443+129-631= -59 Number of present editors/Total Joined in %= 7436/ 73191 = 10%
With 6 months worth of data you can start determining some proper trends. The net growth rate in number of sites listed over the period is just 1.5%, about 75,000 sites. This is about 25% of the average 6 monthly growth in terms of sites since the directory started. Without full data over the life of the directory you cannot tell how this growth compares with the peak but it is undoubtedly a lot less than 25%. I am sure that it wasn't that long ago we were talking about net growth of 250,000 to 300,000 sites per year. This indisputable slowing indicates the burden that maintaining such a large number of sites carries as resources shift from adding sites to maintaining what is there. Assuming the same performance in the second half of 2006 this will mean a net gain of just 150,000 sites. Compare this to the number of sites awaiting review (not published) but liable to exceed 1,000,000 and draw your own conclusions about how long a submission will take to review. A large amount of editor time is wasted on spam and obviously efforts must be redoubled on tools that assist in identifying and removing spam in Unreviewed "pools". A complete database redesign to make it relational might be the answer to this. Implementing that system where you have to copy a random code to submit a site might also counter mass spamming or at least make it far more painful. Another area which wastes a lot of time is the fact that 99% of submitted site descriptions must be rewritten. Yet there is a formula to how descriptions are written. It must be possible to devise a submission system to effectively enforce submissions in a particular format. The guidelines on what are listable sites are not actually on the submission form - they are just linked to. Forcing submitters to go through the criteria by using checkboxes within the submission form would weed out many incorrect submissions and also make spamming more painful. Effectively smart systems to enable a degree of self-assessment of a site's suitability and formatting of titles and descriptions. Finally, reworking submission guidelines and instructions, along with advice on expectations, would remove ambiguities and inaccuracies and should contribute towards more accurate submissions. That work is long overdue. The other major set of statistics given are editor numbers. On 1 Jan there were 7840 active accounts. By the end of June this was down to 7,436. A drop of about 400 or 5%. In most months there has been a decline so it can be reasonably assumed that this is a continuous trend. By the end of 2006, if this trend continues, editor numbers will be down to 7000 or thereabouts. You can see from the sharp decline in net sites added that the maintenance overhead is already hugely impacting on productivity - the aim of DMOZ is to list sites not to remove them. There will come a time, as resources decline, when the removal of dead links will balance with new sites added. When that point is reached then it is difficult to see how DMOZ could recover because the next step is into a decline in sites listed month on month. New editors don't join to remove dead links - it is often a tedious chore. There are a number of solutions that someone has to start taking seriously soon. First the number of new editors is to an extent restricted by the number of metas available to review new applications. They also approve the extension of editor rights to existing editors. Since 1st January there have been just 5 new metas appointed. Pre-Admin this would have been considerably more. There are no statistics published to indicate how many metas have left or gone inactive over the same period so there is no way of telling whether this is 5 extra resources or replacements, or even whether there have been fewer replacements than those no longer available. Any way you look at it more metas would increase the throughput of new and existing editor applications. An alternative would be to grant experienced editalls more rights to examine the applications for existing editors - they can already appoint existing editors to new categories they create. Because of the sparcity of promotions to meta there are a substantial band of highly experienced editalls more than capable and proven trustworthy who could perform those duties. You could introduce greenbusting privileges granted directly to new editors to allow more applicants to enter without the same level of risk of damage and to enter larger categories. In a mature directory many of the most interesting categories have already been built out to a point where conventionally new editors would not be accepted because of the number of sites involved. Some voluntary mentoring schemes exist but its take up, relative to the number of new editors admitted is poor, and the number of experienced editors able and willing to be mentors could probably not meet demand if take up were greater. Replace voluntary mentoring with mandatory structured online training modules and tests, rewarded with certificates of competency. This should produce an editor corps better trained and motivated and increase their suitability for extending editor rights and to promotion. It is easy, very easy, to get an editor's rights extended. If they know how. Train them how to do it. And finally, run some polls to find out properly editor motivations, what motivates and demotivates them. Stick it on the login and make them complete it. Find out how you can improve motivation and therefore productivity. Chase up voluntary resignations and timeouts - find out why, ask them to return. If DMOZ does nothing but more of the same then they can only expect the trends to continue in the wrong direction. It is time to take up the challenge and treat these issues as the very highest priority if it is not already too late to reverse trends. Or in 12 months time we will be looking at 6500 editors and listed sites starting to decline month on month. I don't think it is too late even now but there is a hell of a lot of work to do.
For those who don't have time to read the long version in brizzie post, the short version is that DMOZ is dying.
Top Level Category | Now | Feb/05 | Change -------------------------------------------- Adult | 47413 | 68295 | -20882 Arts | 290057 | 298570 | -8513 Business | 254666 | 249555 | 5111 Computers | 139930 | 149195 | -9265 Games | 61496 | 61421 | 75 Health | 65029 | 70798 | -5769 Home | 32728 | 35405 | -2677 News | 235646 | 237231 | -1585 Recreation | 119374 | 120534 | -1160 Reference | 65939 | 67413 | -1474 Regional | 1113195 | 1063507 | 49688 Science | 105809 | 106154 | -345 Shopping | 114243 | 122211 | -7968 Society | 268275 | 274200 | -5925 Sports | 107871 | 106984 | 887 World | 1743017 | 1449655 | 293362 Kids and Teens | 41013 | 32437 | 8576 --International | 14148 | 9581 | 4567 --Non-Int (English) | 26865 | 22856 | 4009 -------------------------------------------------- Total | 4805701 | 4513565 | 292136 Non-World (English) | 3062684 | 3063910 | -1226 Code (markup): And if you subtract Kids and Teens... Total | 4764688 | 4481128 | 283560 Non-World (English) | 3021671 | 3031476 | -9802 Code (markup): Or in words, the non-Kids_and_Teens English language portion of the directory has decreased in the number of listings by nearly 10000 since Feb 05. I think we're bleeding. Badly.