Ok, so the domain was registered back in 2000, but it also appears as though this site is BANNED in Google. Alittle research shows the domain owner as: Wes Mayder 3031 Tisch Way, Suite 700 San Jose , California 95128 United States who I Google searched and found he's a big CEO / Mortage Guy / self proclaimed SEO expert / known spammer / been sued multiple times by the likes of Amazon, foriegn countries, etc. because he makes domain name spoofs off big companies. Found threads on forums where he was being called out as a spammer, etc. Found where he was pretending to be other people, blah blah. This guy is trash, so are his websites, and I can't believe he still has that 1 listing left in the DMOZ. If he can get a site like this listed 26 times, then my money says he has many many more DMOZ listed sites. Hmmm... mortgage guy... wonder how many real estate listings he has :/
Read my previous post again carefully - it's going to be gone soon, it someteims takes the servers a couple of days to refresh and display changes.
Seems not everyone thinks like you. Let me show some red reps I (a DMOZ editor) got. "you idiot" "cry me a river" "This isn't the resourceless zone, asshole!" And noone was man enough to sign their remarks.
In the tens of thousands of edits I did I will bet there were more than 26 that were duff decisions made just before bedtime, more than 26 that got hijacked/bought out by a spam merchant, more than 26 where I got fooled by a spammer, plenty more than 26 where a decision was borderline and I gave the benefit of the doubt because there wasn't much else on the subject - something is better than nothing, and still tens of thousands with no regrets. Sites change, other sites come along and make them look poor in comparison, editors make mistakes, editors follow the lead of a more experienced editor who has made a mistake, amplifying it, etc. It happens, it get spotted or reported, it gets fixed.
I think it's just the tip of a huge conspiracy. I think Jim Noble, pagode, and macdesign were in it together until mdvaldosta and compostannie blew the whistle and now they're furiously trying to cover their tracks
Dude, nobody's sayin that there are some websites not qualified to be listed. Nobody's sayin that mistakes or poor judgements aren't occasionally made. Nobody is saying anything about the occasional poor quality site listed. But, NOBODY can make the 'accidental' mistake of listing a crappy site 26 times, and to say that multiple editors participated and that makes it "not fishy" just makes it even more fishy. Look, I'm really pleased that the DMOZ meta's stepped up and removed a spammy listing. Things like this are bound to happen on occasion, this isn't a perfect world and there are some greedy people (everywhere, not just the DMOZ). Nobody, and I mean nobody would have said anything about editor abuse for a crappy site being listed, but when it's listed 26 times... I think alot of editors catch hell here not because of the occasional crap site that slips in, but because of the ODP policies putting themselves in a "holier than though" position by effectivly closing the open directory project.
It could be an alias though, when doing searches for the numberous websites he claims to be the CEO of, then doing whois for those domains, I come accross different domain owner names but with the same same address and different suite numbers. When searching for those names I find even more websites and complaints, and could go on and on. So, either he's got a bunch of partners or he's one greasy slimeball... or all of the above.
Whew! This is enough to make me rethink my opinions... Ok editors I was standing up against my own for you guys last week. I know this isn`t representative of all editors. But some inside comments would be interesting....
pagode I agree with you and its not fair to you or other members here but because certain editors and they know who they are when you dont agree with them and they cant ban you because it isnt the RZ they feel their only recourse is to try and give out red rep. We all are entitled to our opinions and be able to give them without fear of someone issuing bad rep to your user for a topic that is sure to contain heated exchanges and different opinions.
And exactly that is what we won't get. We will get the "it's been taken care of, but we can't tell you how, you guys just have to trust us" kind of reply.
Thats the problem for the last year they have been saying trust us we want to clean up the directory but still to this day they ask us to trust but yet gives us no reason to trust them. I personally say let them have their directory, none of us really need it and when Google/AOL realizes that the reason for the decline in DMOZ submissions is noone trust DMOZ then maybe they will move to either clean house or I would guess create a new directory and start from a clean slate. Dmoz will never change, none of us are going to change it. We all might be able to rattle the right cages but that is all I am hoping for. I wouldnt mind seeing a few of these editors go down in flames, not all but the ones we have all come to love For ever action there is a reaction and it will soon catch up to those DMOZ editors that are abusing the system. Most of them act like what goes on in ODP is a matter of national security yet dont have the common sense to realize that there are a hell of a lot more webmasters than there are editors and the masses will prevail. I already see a few editors making arrangments for their departure from DMOZ, those are the smart ones.
I like to assume that 95% of DMOZ staff is cool , and take their 'jobs' seriously enough to spend some time to add/edit/remove listings. But the real problem is the few percent that doesn't: they either never log in, they remove listings, they add their own etc. etc. The other DMOZ people, as we have some of them on this forum, have to explain the behaviour of these 'rotten 5%' to us, to the world. and they can't. in a previous thread about dmoz, i posted some suggestions for dmoz to implement in their next back end release, Just to help you guys out once more: * Remove inactive editors (2 weeks no log in == bye bye) * Run a periodic check on duplicate domain names. geocities.com, tripid.com are all okay, the rest shouldn't have 2000+ listings. I got a DMOZ rdf dump and even I can figure it out ... man , run some sql queries !! * keep track of deletes and inserts. Any editor that first does X deletes, and Y inserts in any given period should be flagged and checked (could be a clean up action) if X > Y. * Use whois information. Any editor that adds his/her own sites should be banned for life. * Make it formal: a new editor must sign a piece of paper where he/she commits him/herself to the rules. An online application is just too easy. And don't forget to threaten to sue the rotten ones. * Any directory with 3 or less editors can only be approved by meta's or whatever you call them. Always ask for 3 votes. 2 - 1 is in, 1 -2 is out. * Give more credit (links) to your editors! They do your work (AOL!) for nothing, they should get something in return. A link on a high PR or high traffic page should be enough. Put a co-op like system on your site, "some random editors sites: xxx | yyy | zzz" etc. * Make money and share it with your editors! Put adsense boxes on every page and share it with the people who made it possible. $10 a month will be very generous for your standard editor that now will spend months being 'a good editor' and then sign off for good because of lack of time/ reading forums like these and most important: * GET SOME SQL PEOPLE TO CHECK YOUR DATABASES! as stated above, I have up to date rdf dumps (and older ones to check against), and even I can see who's abusing the system! You should be able too! Make abuse priority #1! Wow. long list Just to add to our dmoz editors here: I think you are all doing a great job, just make sure you kick out the bad editors! IF you have the guts to mention you are an dmoz editor here, you are probably ok. Reporting incidents and getting them fixed is just not enough anymore. The problem is bigger than that. If you red rep me for this, please leave your name so I can send you some SQL dumps to prove my points
Dam good suggestions, it is to bad it will fall on deaf ears. Dmoz doesnt want to fix the problem, they want to ignore it and hope that we all will forget about it so the same abuse can go on as long as possible. I vote we make you the head ass kicker at ODP Very Nice Post ...!!
I know for a fact that at least 3 dmoz editors with some extra privileges are reading this forum, all I hope is that they pick up a few of my points and share them amongst the other editors. Really, I like DMOZ, I like the idea behind it, I wish you all the best! I don't want to be a ass kicker to dmoz, I want them to stand up to the bullies that have taken control of it!
I will have to admit I thought this was just another whiner thread about dmoz, well, besides the fact that it is - this site is pretty useless to have that many listings, except for the fact it has car pictures in a car picture category. There has to be many other sites with at least some content that would make more sense to add in all the other categories it was added in. So, this complaint looks pretty legit to me...