"DMOZ is Dead...Long Live the Open Directory Movement!"

Maybe you need to refresh your cache? Seems to be working for me in several browsers.

 

Nothing to do with my cache. It's up for me now. I suspect that it was a DNS change.

 

(Sorry, this is a little late but wanted to respond.)

I keep hearing this from minstrel and others and am perplexed by the question and the statement that DMOZ is meaningless.
It seems easy enough to me.
- someone thought the conglomeration of a human selected websites with meaningful content might be useful to them and anyone else surfing the web, being individuals, organizations, or companies. Others seem to enjoy the hobby and joined in.

If it is a meaningless directory then why waste your breath on discussing it everyday? Why such the effort to discredit the directory? Or why the pains taking hours to "make it better" by pointing out any and all faults? I guess that is the hobby and meaning it gives you? And why would webmasters be interested in ODP if the true end user was not eventually the common individual looking for product or information?

If the ODP is irrelevant then leave it alone and it will die on its own.

 

The same reason, people don't like Mafia or any other organized crime groups even if it does not personally effect them. Decent people seems to have a tendency to fight corruption, especially when it tries to disguise itself as a "volunteer" and for "common" good organization.

 

I don't think DMOZ is really relevant for humans anymore, but there are hundreds of directory sites that scrape it/legitimately use its content. This is a relatively cheap and effort free way of building back links, a few of them from relevant sources. From the sites we have in DMOZ though we get very little "organic" traffic, again most of the benefit seems to come from links from a large variety of sources.

When I do combined backlink checks of our keyword competitors dmoz shows up quite a lot, as well as related directories that use its content. Whether this relates to the sometimes higher page rank those competitors enjoy is an exercise left to the reader.

 

Add "arrogance" to what gworld said about DMOZ and maybe you'll start to understand, jjwill. Maybe....

 

The overwhelming majority of DMOZ editors are not at all arrogant. The problem is, they also don't post in outside web forums so you never see what they're really like. Then when perfectly sweet editors like jj do venture out to a forum such as this he's met with misdirected anger. That anger should be directed at the minority of editors who really are arrogant.


Problem is, we all know they won't let you do that.

 

Ok, maybe I'm being dense but I still don't get it. I could understand if you believed that DMOZ was corrupt and believed it to be relevant, important, or had a major effect on the internet but you say just the opposite, here and in numerous other posts. So either you believe it is corrupt and relevant or it's your own personal hobby to stir the pot. Personally I believe you think it is the former but try to discredit odp at the same time.

I'm sure there are arrogant editors (I’ve seen them) but most who I encounter are far from it. Take Annie for instance. She would serve more as the rule than the exception from my experience.

 

No problem with Annie and JJ and SOME. But the rest especially the META who runs RZ if I say anything I'd be banned here. Better NOT. Don't like DMOZ too while they are there.

 

Once you get bad reputation it is very difficult to change it even if your innocent - I should know since I got first hand experience.

 

Where it doesn't fit the model is that there is zero accountability of those in power to those who volunteer. When you pull apart all the spin in the About DMOZ information what you have is form of junta led organisation with no more than a moderate tolerance for dissidents. The results of such an organisation have been clear to see throughout 2006 with the failure to identify risks and counter them effectively. The question is now whether that culture will change sufficiently to prevent a repeat in 2007.

 

Dream on.

And Merry Christmas to you.