Helleborine. The difficulty is that meta editors deal on a daily basis with liars and cheats. And some very plausible ones. This includes applications for new editors and devious existing editors like popotalk and gworld with their multiple personality disorder. I have personally tens (or hundreds) of times been faced with accusations of unfairness on application rejection or editor removal. In many many cases the screams of innocence do not match up with the facts. I will give you some examples. There was an individual who applied to be an editor hundreds of times. False identities, bogus emails, proxies the works. When he gets in he lists his porn sites in regular non adult categories. They get deleted, he gets removed, he applies again.And every time his application got better. Now the problem is that meta editors when dealing with applications always are wondering if the application is genuine or its from a pathogenic liar like this character. Another example is that of an editor who claims no affiliations and says he is a retired librarian from Timbuktu and just wants to make the web a better pace. He then turns out to be an SEO who starts suggesting to his clients that they can get preferential listings through him. The evidence that he is not really a librarian from Timbuktu is undeniable. So he gets removed. Of course next minute he is posting in assorted forums about the corruption in dmoz quoting his removal as evidence. The problem is that if someone were to be removed based on erroneous evidence then it is likely their protestations of innocence would not be taken seriously. And to be honest I am not so comfortable with that.
I did not went back. I have a major problem with what I consider to be gross mismanagement and whilst that mismanagement continues I'm not about to kiss and make up with anyone. I would return but I would pursue the same issues inside as outside - I don't believe I would be welcome on those terms. That doesn't mean that everything about DMOZ and its editors including metas, is wrong. What is wrong is, or was, wrong is correctible. The vast majority of DMOZ and its senior editorship are corruption free, and the basic concepts are commendable. But I fear the month on month failures on key performance indicators illustrate that DMOZ in its current format is on borrowed time and it is incapable of changing significantly enough in short enough a time to survive as a major influence. And these threads may be flogging an already dead horse.
Believe me, I know what the ODP is up against. But it doesn't diminish the possibility of a meta that's well known to be a kook, carrying out a personal vendetta against an editor that dared to lodge an arbitration request against him, and needed to be silenced.
I agree with you on every point except that I think that you might be surprised how readily you would be accpted back.
If evidence were presented publicly to the librarian from Timbuktu and all observers that they were in fact SEOs R'Us Inc from Portland, then the result of account termination would not change. What would change is (a) the ability of the culprit to get away with false claims all over the place, and (b) editors themselves being concerned that a librarian has been unfairly evicted and they may be next, innocent or guilty. There is and always has been a fear amongst sub-meta editors that they could be evicted at any time without notice without appeal, the door just slammed in their face. That fear may be misplaced but nothing about the system as it stands provides any reassurance on that. So the ejected liars will always win the propoganda battle and the ejected innocents will be turned from friends into enemies. It is a balance between fairness to the accused and editor confidence in the system versus trying to keep removed editors out. It is a balance that needs to be reconsidered with evidence from other volunteer Internet projects that do perform discipline tasks openly.
And how would the Meta editors explain the way they cheat, lie, and could not even explain a simple question with a straight face. Sure, at least its not a hormone imbalance. I'll stay that way until DMOZ ceases to exist.
Unfortunately the decision on the reinstatement of editalls lies solely in the hands of Admins, and they consider me a disruptive element and the issues I raise as damaging. If they change their minds and come to the conclusion that raising issues enables faults to be identified and remedied then they have my email address.
Well, unlike brizzie, I sure burnt my bridges! But maybe brizzie has got the same experience as I have. I retrospect, it was good for me that I was removed. I was spending way too much time obsessively re-writing bloated descriptions, creating new categories, changing categories around, listing fresh new sites, investigating applicants for doorways, dodgy mirrors, treating everyone fairly, etc, and in many areas that were wholly unrelated to my sphere of interests. Maybe brizzie too has realized that there are better uses for his time, such as creating content more useful than that of the ODP. The bar isn't high. I myself have moved on to spending the majority of my time in more creative and fulfilling pursuits. Editing can be addictive, but creating fun websites and receiving emails daily from people that appreciate them is far superior. There is no going back. That's a big part of the reason why I've come out of the woodwork with my beefs, after so long. For a long time, I thought someone, somewhere, would take a good look at what happened, send me a heartfelt apology, maybe a dozen roses, and invite me back. Haha.
I'd rather have a cup of coffee with Popotalk than with some of the paranoid kooks of the ODP - not least of all because Popo's goodlooking. DMOZ must not cease to exist; however, Google's dissociation from DMOZ will be a event welcomed by all. It will be welcome publicly by DMOZ, but in their hearts, there will be disappointment they'll never admit to. The day will come.
I always smile when faced with predictions of the ODP's imminent demise as they remind me of the dire predictions in 2000 when AltaVista stopped using ODP data. At that time one of the ODP's most prominent critics Andrew Goodman made the comment on the XODP group "Altavista dumped ODP. After Go2Net and Lycos also get rid of it, you won't have much left to boast about." Six years on and here we are. Reading through those old post I we other things have not changed much. The ODP is alleged to be corrupt, unfair, low quality blah, blah, blah. The names have changed but same old crap.
I didn't know Metas and Admins have daily meetings. Well, many of us know how you are getting paid to list different web sites and how you listed your web sites and didn't list your affiliation for the SEO company that you are working for but because we have to deal with cheaters and liars on daily bases and uncover this type of abuse of the directory, we have to keep it secret and can not show you all the evidence that we have. You can claim as much as you want about your innocence but this is what all people who have been exposed do. We are even more fair than DMOZ and we can give you chance to try to prove that you are innocent but you understand that we can not tell you about what you are exactly guilty of or what evidence we have.
I've always said that throwing me out would be a favour to me! So far no-one seems inclined to go that far, despite the fact that I have butted heads with metas, admins and staff. Believe me Helleborine, I've spoken my mind on various occasions, and I don't suppose that I am the only one. The issues I bring up are often resolved. I'm not so swollen-headed as to imagine that my influence alone could achieve that. So I'd guess that plenty of people have said similiar things.
The other day I sent you a PM re your suggestions thatthe adult metas have been abusing their privleges by overlisting their sites. Still waiting for a reply. You are so good at accusations, slur and inuendo, and so bad at anything that justifies your mud slinging..
Have an answer for Still in Braces for me Neb ? Then if you have an answer for that we go to Easy Bambi.
Ones truly corrupt know exactly why they got kicked out and will simply reapply under new nickname and start it all over again, its collateral casualties which are baffled (and pissed off). Thank you for verifying my point, wouldn't be more effective to have such removals public? Wikipedia is doing fine and nobody is screaming corruption, also other editors would become more adapt at recognizing old troublemakers under new nicknames taking some burden from meta.
I'm not sure what you mean here Ivan. Inevitably people have abused Wikipedia with link spam. It has a massive and continuing clean-up problem. That will get worse before it gets better, I'd say. Like the ODP, Wikipedia is a victim of its own success. As it gains authority and its pages rise in the SERPs, more and more people will try to take advantage of the ease of access to it. So more and more effort is channelled into clean-up that could be spent on adding content. I imagine it will have to close completely to anonymous contributors at some point. Just my opinion. It has done amazingly well though. I agree there.
Six years later, here you are, with Resource-zone still standing as a monument to the condescension and disdain that editors like to pile on webmasters. Is the ODP removing these rude and hostile editors from RZ? NO! They are applauded. Six years later, here you are, a solid two full years behind the times and no hope of ever catching up. Six years later, here you are, with fewer and fewer editors. You think kctipton is the only editor with a pathological attitude problem? As I have been vocal, I have been attracting a few "me too's" from other editors over the years. I don't care whether the ODP continues, or not. But I do cheer for Google to completely drop the ODP dinosaur. After that happens, it will hardly matter what happens to the ODP, the apologists will be able to hang their keyboards, for threads like this one will no longer be necessary.