I would love to see how much of the traffic that DMOZ gets is for submissions and how much is actual people looking for a site? DMOZ ranks well in alexa and since its really only webmasters that use alexa toolbar i estimate that over 90% of page views on DMOZ come from webmasters and editors. any thoughts on this?
Some stats are available to editors, if AOL were to release them it would make it easier to answer questions like this, but the vast majority of referals are from SEs for specific search terms. On top of this I would suspect that few editors and webmasters submitting their sites would be visiting the various clones such as the google directory.
so dmoz directory ranks higher for keywords and the actual sites that are competing for the keywords get shoved down. this is such crap, if SE stopped giving proirity to dmoz and gave the actual sites some credit dmoz would cease to exist.
And that would be a problem for who? Seo's or volunteer editors who would have to spend their free time doing something else?
it would be a problem for dmoz and the certain percentage of editors that exist solely to protect their own interest within dmoz. honestly odp editors think they are the internet police.
I don't know of any editors who do that, sweetlouise, but if you do, please fill out an abuse form with a little bit of proof that can be followed up on, because we don't want them as editors either. Not the Internet police, or we'd probably delete half the listings we have, for one reason or another, and spend most of our time arguing about which ones, but we do try to police the Directory as far as abusive editors and submitters go, . I think the reason some of the more unsavory topics are included is because the Directory tries to catalog what is on the Internet, impartially, and without getting into the quagmire of making moral judgements, which is very subjective rather than being objective, and requires personal opinion being applied. As there are around 8,000 editors, that many personal opinions would create havoc, and make it impossible to have any consistancy, so being the Internet police just isn't logical or doable.
you wouldnt know of any, because they tend to keep it to themselves. it works like this 1. submit my site to dmoz. - get a message saying "why not aply to be a editor" 2. brainwave "i can become a editor and add my site" 3. apply 4. get rejected 5. go underground, surf, search, digg and read what you can about dmoz, lots of interesting articles out there to help you. 6. new email address, fresh ip address, fresh application (reseached) 7. wait 2 days, accepted 8. stop, lest think back to that article about shoemoney, i know that metas will be watching my edits so play it safe. edit my catagory and then hit the unedited backlist. 9. get chatting in the private forum 10. worm my way to my submission 11. remove the competiton - SLOWLY 12. add my site 13. login every now and then make a few half assed rejections and ruin the chances of getting anyone else listed. 14. preach about how ethical i am all over the place
1-7 seem pretty logical, there's a lot of advice out there. #8. Shoemoney was an obvious liar, as he could provide no proof of any kind. Staff addressed that on the blog. #9. I assume you mean our internal forums? I don't really see any connection there. If the submission belonged in that category, no need to worm his way to it, he has every right to openly list it. In fact, he'd be foolish not to use it as one of his sample sites, as I did when I applied. And, he's required to list that site as one of his affiliations, both in his application and right on his dashboard. Not doing so is cause for removal, and our metas (who review editor applications) are very good at ferreting out unclaimed affiliations. I would imagine the competition might use the abuse form, but, even if they didn't, there are several other ways for an abusive editor to get caught doing that, and by any editor, not just metas. He wouldn't get away with it for long, and those sites would be discovered and relisted. And the editor would be banned, and his site looked at very closely. Should have done that back at #10, it's very legitimate. Not doing so would be a reversed discrimination, if the site qualified. Many other editors can and do edit in many categories, including that one, so it wouldn't be unusual for one of those editors to spot something and investigate further. It would be difficult for an editor to get away with anything for very long, he'll have a short career, . I certainly hope so, we might like to go take a look at what he's doing, and encourage him to apply for further permissions, which would also end his career. I can see you've put some thought into this, and your scenario is certainly a good possibility, but, we're aware that things like this can occur, and have ways to discover and deal with it on the few occassions that it happens. There are many jobs in the Directory, and security is one of them.
thats the point, they would be hiding their new ip address from dmoz because they log all submissions and it is easy to link a catagory submission to a editor submission by looking at the ip address. and yes they would be lying through their teeth by this point
That's where your story breaks down. One reason there are a bunch of low-quality listings in DMOZ is that there's a strong bias against removing sites. Of course, if they've totally changed since being listed (gone dark, had the URL taken over by a different business, whatever) that's a different matter.