DMOZ is NOt Open, it is BIASED

EDIT: Sorry for the double-post. My wireless was going wacky for a second.

*SNIP*

I think a Tachy Goes to Coventry might do the trick for him. Except that I have so much fun reading his ridiculous posts.

 

Where did maxx go??? Oh - meeting with lawyers, I forgot........

 

Time is money and all that - not all of us have silver spoons ya know

 

Or Sky High IQ's ~~~~~~

 

This thread began by questioning whether the Open Directory was in actuality open or not.

It then got sidetracked with all this PRBot stuff -- I don't know anything about him, not have I bothered to follow the links posted about him because frankly I don't care one way or the other.

On the other hand, has his original point about ODP/DMOZ been addressed here? It is a misnomer -- it's not an "open directory" at all -- it's a selected set of bookmarks based on the opinions and preferences of a self-selected and self-pruned community of editors.

 

it isn't open in the sense that anything goes, no. I associated the "open" with ODP as something more along the lines of how wikipedia is "open"

 

How is it "open" at all? in any sense?

 

I think Google should stop giving so much importance to links from DMOZ, since it's broken. That's the way I feel, anyways.

 

it's edited and run by the public, and you're able to get up to that step if you want... I made it into editing fairly easily, and I aided a few friends into getting into their cats, and it really isn't that hard at all, assuming you can do a bit of work beforehand.

 

In your case, I think, that you should make a chrisitain site and submit it to DMOZ. If it will be indexed you should download your site or submit yourself as DMOZ editor. I think that is only way to do it.

Tomecki

 

I'd like to see where his proof is that his "Athiest" site wasn't accepted by this terrible "Christian" person...

 

What is your secret of success to getting into DMOZ?

 

Like I told him while he was throwing abusinve emails at me last night NONE of the sites he submitted have been deleted thus they have NEVER been declined.

As for 'open' the data is 'open'. It is permitted for download for completely free and the data can even be used to make money from it simply on the condition that the license is adhered to (the same license PR chooses not to adhere to might I add).

Would you really want a directory where the webmaster could stick their links in like a Wiki? Trust me if this was the case we would hardly have any data users and google would pay it zero attention. The reason google do use it is because it is human editoed - a factor that no spider can imitate.

The public can join the project at anytime. They simply have to prove their competance and the majority of that is being proving literacy and a clear understanding of the guidelines - which are publicy on display. It ain't hard.

 

Lord, forgive him. He does not know what he is doing

 

It isn't "edited and run by the public" -- it is edited and run by people chosen by existing meta-editors according to their own biases and preferences and those chosen may on a whim be locked out of "the club" at any moment, without even the courtesy of a clear statement as to why. It is anything but open -- rules forbidding editors to provide any rationale for not listing a site or dropping a site, or to provide any rationale to another editor for his or her dismissal are stated quite clearly in their rules. This is not a "public organization" any more than the board of governors of a private country club is open.

But that isn't the point - you are in now, but once there you can be dropped on a whim and you must take the vow of secrecy that any editor must take. Again, it's like be elected to the board of a private club. It's not a democracy. It's not "open source". In no sense is it public.

 

All right -- the product produced by DMOZ is made available to the public, Big deal. That doesn't make the orghanization open. I can quickly construct an html page of my bookmarks and post it on the web with a statement that anyone is free to copy or mirror those bookmarks at any time. That's what DMOZ does. However, my choice of bookmarks is my own. I don't take input into how they are chosen; I don't provide explanations to anyone about why one site is there and other similar ones are not; I don't accept emails telling me to add or drop listings. Doesn't that sound a lot like the "Open Directory Project" to you?

You're creating a straw man here -- who said anything about free-for-all submissions being preferred? There are also several smaller human-edited directories that are more responsive to queries than ODP, even though they make no claims whatsoever to being "open". It's the process that sucks at ODP.

See my reply to Disgust above -- certain members of the public can join the club, at the whim of existing editors and meta-editors -- that doesn't make it "public" or "open" -- members of the public can also apply for jobs at Microsoft... they are not "open" either.

 

Building upon Schlottke's posts...

[seeURLspelling]http://www.ooomooo.com/Geting-Guaranteed-BackLinks-Optimizing-For-Google-And-PageRank.html[/seeURLspelling]

[seeTITLEspelling]Geting Guaranteed BackLinks[/seeTITLEspelling]

Great SEO work there.

 

I understood this to be a discussion about DMOZ.

Suggestion: take the "Max is evil... no: thedude is evil" debate to (1) private messaging; (2) another forum; (3) its own separate thread at DigitalPoint; (4) www.personalvendettas.com; (5) The Jerry Springer Show; or (6) anywhere but here.

 

Leer is correct in that the 'Open' in ODP means that the data is freely available to users (those who comply with the very reasonable conditions anyway!). It has also been construed that it is 'open' for anyone to suggest a site for inclusion and although it is, this was not the intended reason for the original use of the word in ODP. Obviously the Directory is not 'open' in the sense that everyone on the planet can have their dross listed.

- Michael

 

I feel left out - I didnt get any abusive emails!