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Is DMOZ even relevant anymore??

Discussion in 'ODP / DMOZ' started by alphaneterik, Jul 13, 2009.

  1. Qryztufre

    Qryztufre Prominent Member

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    #21
    What if an editor approves the site? Can that get one listed?
     
    Qryztufre, Jul 28, 2009 IP
  2. crowbar

    crowbar Peon

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    #22
    A site can get listed, a site owner can not get it listed, was my point.

    A site owner can suggest it for consideration, but beyond that there is nothing more a site owner can do. (other than adding some unique content to his site)

    Hey, we're tickled pink to find good sites for a category we're building, the only objection most of you have is the speed in which that's done, the fact that we're selective, rather than being all inclusive, and that we don't treat you like our partners.

    You assume that because you deal in sites, you should have some rights or a say in how the Directory is run. Sorry, but only the people who are building the Directory by doing the work have any say. Not even AOL Staff get involved in the day to day operations, other than hardware issues. The Directory is run by the editing community. (the people you all love to trash) :D And the metas are the most experienced, most committed, and knowledgeable of those.
     
    crowbar, Jul 28, 2009 IP
  3. jamieellis

    jamieellis Active Member

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    #23
    The only person who uses DMoz now is Googlebot! If that were not the case the directory would die overnight and everyone knows it. On the rare occassions I've looked at it (usually to try and add a site - unsuccessfully!) the categories are hopelessly out of date and missing many sites, many have not been touched for years.

    If it was kept up to date it could be an extremely usefull tool potentially, but it is not. The only way this could really be fixed is by the directory selling commercial listing and using the cash to pay for editors. The idea behind it is good, the execution is not.
     
    jamieellis, Jul 28, 2009 IP
  4. crowbar

    crowbar Peon

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    #24
    How would it die? It's not in business to make money, and as we're all volunteers editing as a hobby, how many people use it really doesn't affect our interest in building it. :)

    Editors build categories because it's fun to do, nothing else, just like putting a puzzle together. We don't really need someone watching us to enjoy doing it.

    If someone finds the category we work on and uses it, great! If they don't, we'll never know, so it won't discourage us from building it more, or as most of us do, find other fun categories to work on. It's all good.

    As far as out of date categories that need a lot of work, yep, they exist and it's a shame there are no volunteers who are interested in editing there, but how does that affect what we do in the categories we do work in? It doesn't.

    As far as charging, there are plenty of paid Directories that do that, friend, so go there. :D
     
    crowbar, Jul 28, 2009 IP
  5. jamieellis

    jamieellis Active Member

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    #25
    OK by die I mean in the same way as sites like Alta Vista and Excite, which hardly anybody ever visits anymore, I know it will still be there. I can buy into the beauty of the ODP as a way of categorizing the whole of the internet, I'm not slagging it off but I do feel less and less people will use it as the results become poorer and they are getting worse all the time. It is after all a tool and not a work of art!

    I remember using the ODP quite a bit back in the late 90's at college, it was actually a very good tool for web browsing and finding sites, but now it seems poor maintenance and some abuses have weakened it. I know there are many genuine editors out there, but it's clear just from a look in the directory that the current crop of editors are too small in numbers to maintain the directory as a whole.

    It's very hard to find someone who will maintain a commercial section of the directory without having a vested interest (something which gets you rejected pretty much out of hand in my experience). That's why it would make sense IMO to sell listings in here, with moderation like in Yahoo, and leave other categories like sport and hobbies to the enthusiasts, it would actually improve it greatly IMO and get shot of most of the bad editors looking to make personal gain from it.
     
    jamieellis, Jul 28, 2009 IP
  6. crowbar

    crowbar Peon

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    #26
    A vested interest in a category is a good thing, I think, as long as the editor goes out of his way to remain impartial in his editing, and totally honest in declaring and maintaining a list of afilliations. You've got to be willing to treat your competitors sites the way you treat your own.

    My own application when I first applied to be an editor contained my own business site as one of my three example sites, but I made it very clear that it was mine. I was accepted within 2 days, and added all three sites.

    I agree. I use Google exclusively for searching, but a couple of the categories I edit in really lay out a wide spectrum of topics that I never knew existed, and if you don't know they exist, you aren't going to do a search on them. :)

    I think one our blogs purposes is to advertise the Directory and what's in it, because to be honest, I don't think 90% of the people even know about it.

    That's true, too, we are under staffed. It would be nice to see every category covered by an editor, but editing isn't as simple as you might think, it does take a lot of training because theres such a wide variety of topics.

    I can't imagine how much it would cost to actually pay editors, but I do know that many of us would leave, we already have real jobs and don't need another one, :D.
     
    crowbar, Jul 28, 2009 IP
  7. websys

    websys Active Member

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    #27
    I find it quite amusing when many people claim this . Seriously, the directory is under much better maintenance nowadays than ever before.... better infrastructure, dedicated staff, more knowledgeable editors ( based on they have 10 years of documentation from thousands of past editors collected notes).
    It's not just that more people used directories back then , but its just that even more people use the internet nowadays .... and even more of them than before are webmasters - professional ones, stay at home moms, 12 year old kids .... and everyone is after the $$ . During the 90's websites were made by hobbyists and passionate webmasters , which allowed ODP editors to list more sites as sites such as those were more useful . This has given rise to more bitterness ... nothing more.
     
    websys, Jul 28, 2009 IP
  8. jamieellis

    jamieellis Active Member

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    #28
    I accept some of the rants are bitterness from SEO's and such, but dig beneath that and you can't just ignore the underlying problems or pretend they don't exist or just put every critcism down to bitterness, there are genuine flaws in the system that are blindingly obvious. Look in loads of categories they have no editors, presumably they thus just remain dormant. I know the category I'd like to put my sites into hasn't been properly cleaned up for years.
     
    jamieellis, Jul 29, 2009 IP
    Qryztufre likes this.
  9. crowbar

    crowbar Peon

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    #29
    On the other hand, the 4,592,741 sites (or whatever the current nimber is) were added by volunteer editors under the current system. That's not too shabby.

    There are different levels of editing permissions, kind of like a pyramid. The higher up in the pyramid your editing permissions are, the more categories each individual editor can edit in.

    Newer editors would be at the bottom of the pyramid, with just one category, and meta editors would be at the top of the pyramid (meaning they can edit in all categories beneath them).

    I edit at the US Country level, which means I have editing permissions in every category within the United States. It would be impractical to name me as editor in each of those hundreds of thousands of categories, so I'm named once at the Country level:
    http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/

    The other country level editors listed at the bottom of that page, can all edit in every single category within the United States, so no category is without an editor. In addition to that, many states have State level editors that can edit any category within a state, such as:
    http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/California/
    http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/New_York/

    Which category are you talking about? I'd be interested in looking at it. We've only got around 600,000 categories you know :).

    New editors start out with one category to learn in. Once they've learned the ropes a bit, they can apply for as many new categories as they want, and are encouraged to. If their editing is up to par, they'll be granted the new editing permissions, if not, they'll be advised in detail on how to get better.

    Just because a category has no resident named editor in it, doesn't mean it doesn't get edited, there are hundreds if not thousands of editors who can edit there, but there are also hundreds of thousands of categories to edit in, and as we've said before, no editor is obligated to look at site suggestions at all, and there are many other tasks that an editor can choose to do with his free time.

    Having paid editors wouldn't change that system, new editors would still be limited in their access while training, thousands of new site suggestions would continue to pour in daily(and probably increase) , the guidelines for adding a site would remain the same (whether you're paying for a review or not), there would still be a backlog of site suggestions, and you would still not be guaranteed any kind of "personal service" for your money or a guarantee that your site would be acceptable, because there still wouldn't be the manpower available.

    In fact, I think it would get worse, and "no refunds" thank you.
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2009
    crowbar, Jul 29, 2009 IP
  10. jamieellis

    jamieellis Active Member

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    #30
    When you consider Yahoo charges $300 a site, I think the cash raised could pay for an awful lot of full-time editors who could each review hundreds of sites each every day. Really it's the commercial listings that are poorly maintained and abused, I can't see how this wouldn't be the best solution, maybe combined with a free listing option too.
     
    jamieellis, Jul 29, 2009 IP
  11. Qryztufre

    Qryztufre Prominent Member

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    #31
    Yahoo offers free listings, but that's even harder to get in then the ODP... and I do agree that it COULD potentially help DMOZ overall, and could take it back to the top (and I don't just mean the top of directories).
     
    Qryztufre, Jul 29, 2009 IP
  12. makrhod

    makrhod Peon

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    #32
    • Exactly. If DMOZ/ODP didn't matter any more, this forum would be empty and rabid trolls such as gworld would have nothing to fabricate about. ;)
     
    makrhod, Jul 29, 2009 IP
  13. Qryztufre

    Qryztufre Prominent Member

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    #33
    Nah... it's still fun to talk about :p
     
    Qryztufre, Jul 29, 2009 IP
  14. jamieellis

    jamieellis Active Member

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    #34
    jamieellis, Aug 11, 2009 IP
  15. crowbar

    crowbar Peon

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    #35
    crowbar, Aug 11, 2009 IP
  16. caprichoso

    caprichoso Well-Known Member

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    #36
    You can't solve your problems unless you start by accepting them. DMOZ have many problems and isn't willing to solve them. Editors are convinced DMOZ has the best organization it could ever have. Any improvement suggestion is almost insulting for them. And they spent a lot of time trying to explain how wrong you are about DMOZ and how that is the origin of your improvement suggestion.

    If they were manufacturing calculators, the following conversation between a user and a DMOZ editor would be frequent:
    
    user   —This calculator (that I got as a gift from you) is not working!
    editor —How is it possible? Are you sure?
    user   —Yes. I added 5 to 4 and got 200
    editor —It's working perfectly!
    user   —It isn't! Adding 5 to 4 results in 9
    editor —You are wrong about what adding is, my son.
    user   —Adding, like in maths. "the process of uniting two or more numbers into one sum"?
    editor —This calculator doesn't sum numbers, it adds them.
    user   —But a calculator is expected to sum, like in maths!
    editor —You are wrong about what a calculator is, my son.
    ...
    
    Code (markup):
     
    caprichoso, Aug 11, 2009 IP
  17. willy4987

    willy4987 Active Member

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    #37
    i cannot submit to dmoz
    is very hard
     
    willy4987, Aug 11, 2009 IP
  18. Qryztufre

    Qryztufre Prominent Member

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    #38
    Submitting is hard? Heh... maybe your post is lost in translation.

    Submitting to DMOZ is really no harder then any other directory, it's getting listed that can be the hard part.

    Submit & forget // Forget to submit
     
    Qryztufre, Aug 11, 2009 IP
  19. internetsuser27

    internetsuser27 Peon

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    #39
    I just tried to add my outdoor video website again. I really hope it gets accepted this time... not holding my breath though. That is a bummer that there is not a rejection confirmation when it is not accepted. At least that way I know when I have waited long enough to re-submit.
     
    internetsuser27, Aug 12, 2009 IP
  20. snooks

    snooks Well-Known Member

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    #40
    Well if it was rejected, there would be no sense in re-submitting anyway. :)

    The important point is that you have suggested the site, there is nothing more that you can do.....it may be reviewed in due course, it may or may not be included in the directory and anything else that you do, can only be detrimental.

    Move on and promote your site through other methods, there are far more valuable ways to spend your time :)
     
    snooks, Aug 12, 2009 IP