Monthly Report for August

Top Level Category   |  Sep/06 |  Aug/06 | Change | Yearly % Change
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Adult                |   46229 |   47243 |  -1014 | -25.7
Arts                 |  287836 |  289549 |  -1713 | -7.09
Business             |  254596 |  256386 |  -1790 | -8.37
Computers            |  137952 |  139439 |  -1487 | -12.7
Games                |   60838 |   61433 |   -595 | -11.6
Health               |   64440 |   65012 |   -572 | -10.5
Home                 |   32605 |   32806 |   -201 | -7.35
News                 |  235601 |  235632 |    -31 | -0.15
Recreation           |  116373 |  117074 |   -701 | -7.18
Reference            |   65188 |   65891 |   -703 | -12.8
Regional             | 1106160 | 1114423 |  -8263 | -8.89
Science              |  104907 |  105881 |   -974 | -11.0
Shopping             |  112867 |  113887 |  -1020 | -10.7
Society              |  264734 |  267229 |  -2495 | -11.2
Sports               |  107204 |  107903 |   -699 | -7.77
World                | 1750853 | 1754638 |  -3785 | -2.58
Kids and Teens       |   41071 |   41175 |   -104 | -3.03
--International      |   14100 |   14151 |    -51 | -4.32
--Non-Int (English)  |   26971 |   27024 |    -53 | -2.35
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Total                | 4748383 | 4774426 | -26043 | -6.54
Non-World (English)  | 2997530 | 3019788 | -22258 | -8.84

Code (markup):

Number of Active Accounts: 7346 (as of Aug 30, 2006)

Number of Listed URLs: 4806466 (as of the Aug 25, 2006 RDF)
Number of Categories: 618008 (as of the Aug 25, 2006 RDF)

I'm sure the "official" report will be out shortly. The "spin" on why there was such a dramatic decrease in the number of sites is that Robozilla went on his little run removing all the dead links.

Sorry I don't have any pretty graphs like the "official" report. Intra-monthly is not very useful, just pretty. Once I have enough inter-monthly data (say around 12 months), I'll start making graphs to show editor numbers and site numbers in major categories.

 

Why is that spin? I just went through a deleted multiple reds.

 

LOL.

It seems that you are tried of "spin" and abuse. The latest post sounds like that you are planning to be removed.

 

It's spin because it will be said like it's a good thing. When in fact, it's extremely negative. The English portion of the directory has decreased in each of the last three months. The first two months had nothing to do with Robozilla. A neutral directory would be one that stays the same size, the sites added in a month would be the same as those removed. But this isn't the case with ODP. It is shinking, and any effort to say otherwise is spin.

 

Why so negative ishy? We still have the rest of today and all day tomorrow to bring up the numbers.

 

That is the mother of all shrinkages.

Let's see my own personal score board for this month:

Google Co-Op: 1113 annotations.
ODP: zero edits.

Check out my Molecular Biology page:

Molecular Biology

Ooo-wee! Don't you love that cool graphic on the profile page? I made it myself!

 

That brings such fond memories, sending me each time on a wild goose chase to find out were did does sites move to hoping they aren't really dead.

 

With so few editors, Robozilla catching your website when your site is 404 for whatever reason, means your listing is thrown back into the queue... for another couple of years.

Everytime Robozilla goes on a rampage, the ODP shrinks. The ODP dies a little bit more.

Contributing factors include:

(1) Editor attrition and decrease in interest since it's become obvious that DMOZ links aren't worth anything special for ranking purposes, and widely known that referrals are at an all-time low.

(2) Nuts like kctipton are allowed to file frivolous corruption charges about editors that have filed mediation requests against him, to get rid of the incovenient little editor

(3) Every editor application that lacks in fawning verbiage is viewed with suspicion, and summarily rejected.

Robozilla is like two steps backwards. The editors can only move one step forward, before Robozilla goes two steps back again.

Not only is the directory increasingly obsolete, but good sites are being randomly booted out over glitches. A 404 listing should be removed only after 2 or 3 unsuccesful attempts on different days, not on the basis of a single 404 visit. But even the people that run the ODP know that the ODP isn't important enough to make it worth their while to reprogram Robozilla.

 

For a listing to be moved to unreviewed by Robozilla, it needs to be 404 (or another error) on 2 successive visits by Robozilla which are spaced apart by 2-3 weeks.

 

Well, I had two listings that went down the drain in one week end. Same host.

Robozilla bad luck?

 

Another problem might be that the sites listed in DMOZ are mostly old sites. More and more of these mummies will be going off line, as they are replaced by newer and better sites, that will never get listed.

 

What ishfish said - robozilla needs to catch a site twice to boot it out. The main problem with robozilla as a means to catch dead links is what it does not pick up. Many sites don't go 404 any more, the host sticks some holding page on it or it gets picked up by a spammy "directory" that wants you to make it your home page.

Annie, I love you dearly and would gladly follow you into any battle, but not even you can persuade the troops to add 26,000 sites in a day!

Robozilla normally removes 10,000 links per month between runs. So if the last run was May that should be about 30,000. Based on last month's net additions (a low in itself), I would expect to see listings down by 13,000 but they are 26,000 down. This seems too extreme a dip - perhaps Robozilla had an above average haul this time.

 

I stand corrected!

Yes, you're right, placeholder pages and domain-name speculators keep the dead links alive, while genuine 404 glitches get the big flush.

 

Just before my removal I applied to reorganize one category and add some 200 missing links and I think I there is another 50 links still stuck in my test folder that would have left only 25,750 sites.

Please don't scare me my site was down this month for several hours during hardware upgrade - loosing 11 deeplinks, 9 of which took years to get into DMOZ...

Yep, spent my last days deleting sites that got merged with another one or moving to unreviewed ones under reconstruction.

 

Includes 3 editalls lost in the last 3 days. Between them they had added over 29,000 new sites. When you take their net contribution (new sites less deletions) those three on their own contributed 0.5% of all listings in the Directory. Whilst raw editor number losses can look dramatic when they total hundreds this year, it is the loss of senior editors who make the situation so critical. Expect to lose 4 more in the next few weeks worth a similar contribution unless something changes.

Edit - 4 editalls gone, 1 returned.

 

brizzie - where are you getting this information...?

 

I would guess http://dmoz.org/edoc/editall.html

 

Oh yeah - forgot that it was public.

 

You would guess right. But I wouldn't have published the link.

 

Yes somebody might decide to putt password on that page and send warning to ishfish.

I think I got several older copies, if I weren't that lazy it would be fun to compare them.