Doesn't this just piss you off?

frankm

I must be missing something - how can you tell from the RDF dumps who is abusing the system?

 

And what about holidays. This would remove 95% of all editors within 1 year. Imagine howmany sites will be reviewed after this is implemented. If an editor only does 1 edit each month that is still one more than none.

Domains are allowed to have more than one listing. Domains with many listing are constantly being watched and discussed internaly if needed.

All editors are constantly being watched by their fellow editors (and by the public). Major wrongdoings will be seen very soon, minors will take some longer to be noticed but eventauly every wrongdoer will be catched.

Adding your own site is allowed. Giving your site any favor over other sites is not allowed.

And people already complain that the editor application is much to strict. You can't have it both ways.

I don't understand.

Absolutely not. This would be major abuse of editor positions and is against the whole principle of DMOZ.

Absolutely not. This is totaly against DMOZ principles.

1) DMOZ is not build on a SQL database.
2) If you can spot abuse so easely please get into contact with one of the meta's (jimnoble for instance) and explain how this can be done. Maybe we have missed some usefull information. Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks. As known I'm a DMOZ editor.
About the bad editors. We know they exists and probably there will always be some as there are everywhere in society. But we keep on fighting them.

I don't see any need to red rep you.
But if you can prove some of your points and help us detect abuse more easely DMOZ editors will be very happy.

 

DMOZ editors just don't like the truth period. Anyone who believes that editors are not aware of corruption or support it must be very naive and should get his/her head examined.

DMOZ editors don't have any respect for truth or free speech. As you mentioned the threads were deleted in other forum by (moderator/DMOZ editors) as soon as proof for DMOZ corruption was posted in the threads and that is the reason that the other forum is all but dead and the same editors who are moderators there are showing up in DP.
It seems they have achieved their goal in the other forum and censored it to death.

 

gworld - if instead of throwing insults wildly at all editors without discrimination you came up with positive proof - proof mind not speculation, assumption, and conclusion - of links between one or more serving DMOZ editors and sites they have allegedly corruptly listed then speak and the allegations will be taken seriously. Serving editors are listed at the foot of each page. You have reported suspicions and they have been looked into and no proof has been found by a number of independent editors of high integrity of corrupt serving editors although there was evidence of corrupt editors who had been removed. Honest editors, who comprise the vast majority, want nothing more than to see corrupt editors expelled but that cannot happen without proof positive. It is like this thread - 26 listings of a crap site dating back years - there are a dozen innocent explanations all more likely than corruption but if you prove a link between the site and a serving editor then there is something more to investigate. Nobody did, here or internally, or an editor would be finding themselves locked out by now.

26 listings of a crap site = proof of corruption? No! It proves nothing of the sort! It is feeble to be honest. Proof is something along the lines of Editor X is named to Category Y. Category Y contains 10 listings. All 10 sites belong to Editor X and 3 sites belonging to A, B, and C which used to be listed and are perfectly listable, have been removed. My evidence of ownership by Editor X is this document that shows X is Wally ZhaZhaGabor and these whois records that show Wally ZhaZhaGabor to be owners of those 10 sites. My evidence of abusive site deletions is contained in this cached version of the category 3 months ago. And you don't present that in public because it alerts Wally to start covering his tracks. That is the sort of evidential process editors go through when investigating before handing over what they know to a meta editor they trust. Even then that does not mean the editor will be found guilty and removed - Wally could well have got permission to list the ten sites from AOL staff (they own it, they can do what they like). Another editor may have deleted the 3 sites because their servers were down and their domains were up for renewal. To remove an editor requires a quorum of meta editors to unanimously find the accused proven guilty of abuse. This prevents editors being removed maliciously without just cause.

Are there editors I have suspected of being abusive who have not been removed? Yes. Why? Because suspicions are not proof. Better you tolerate the one corrupt individual than remove dozens of innocents on suspicion and coincidence. That one corrupt individual will eventually trip themselves up, the evidence will eventually surface when they get too confident. One I reported survived a year until he got careless and revealed one bit of personal information too much - the link was made and the evidence of abuse and of a second editor name presented itself to the point where meta editors were satisfied and the guy was shown the door. When nothing happened the first time I reported the matter I could have concluded it was being covered up, that he was being protected, I knew he was a crook. Instead I concluded I hadn't proved the case and bided my time.

I truly hope that if any of your suspicions have substance then one day enough indisputable evidence is uncovered to prove them to the standard of proof required to convict by a unanimous vote of metas - on that day an editor will be removed and other editors will be very happy. On the other hand if the suspicions are just that with insufficient proof (and it is safe to conclude that is the current status of your suspicions as they have been looked into numerous times and all that has shown up is editors who have been removed), then continuing to pursue it without further evidence is futile and just comes over to editors as trolling. As you have been touting the same line for a hell of a time, preceding some of the removals, isn't is just a little bit possible that where evidence has been found to support your suspicions it has actually been acted upon already?

 

I think your posting shows that corrupt editors have nothing to fear. The only one that can be removed is the idiot who registers 10 domain and provides real information for the domain registration and then provides the same info. to DMOZ for his editor account.

Have you ever heard about private registration and do you know that when you register a domain you can put any name or address you like as the owner? It is not like they check your driving license and birth certificate when you register a domain. May be that is the reason many of suspicious sites have address in Norway while their site has nothing about Norway or even translated to that language.

If some moron is found out the way you describe, DMOZ should not only remove him as editor, the guy should be shoot for the crime of stupidity.

 

I hate to agree with you but you are right. Most corrupt editors are stupid and do trip themselves up. But they are more likely to give false information on their editor account and it is when they can't maintain that false identity that inconsistencies come out and they reveal themselves.

The cleverer they are the harder they are to nail and you have to nail them to remove them. You cannot say there is no evidence of corruption against this editor - therefore they are corrupt because they have been clever enough to hide every single track - therefore remove them. You mentioned Norweigan sites and I know from when I looked into it there was a Scandinavian editor removed that appeared to be associated. But Norweigans have a very limited market - if they want to make money they have to make products for the English speaking world. It might be a small factor that makes you look a bit deeper into a listing's origins but it doesn't form the basis for a corruption charge. You need more. Much much more. Like a chain of evidence leading from the site to a non-Norweigan editor beyond the mere fact of listing the site. Then internally someone has to confirm that the editor has deliberately concealed the connection (which they will have done if it is abusive).

Well it is a more complex than that simple example. And to be honest, in some ways it is better that corrupt editors believe they have nothing to fear - it makes them over-confident and that is how most of them get caught.

 

Do you take any action against editors that don't do a good job of keeping their categories maintained to certain standards?

It seems to me the big missing component in the DMOZ system is the accountability factor. Sure, everyone can make a mistake or poor judgement call. But, do you track on a per editor basis how many "bad" decisions are made. For example, listing approvals that are later overturned by other editors? Do you have performance standards for editors and are they suspended or removed if they don't meet those standards?

Why aren't all listing decisions made public ... or at least made available to the submitter?

This would certainly go a long way towards making the ODP more "Open"

 

Shawn, can you finally do something about pages that stretch 4 miles to the right of the outer edge of the monitor when someone like NitinM has an oversize blog title?

You really should reset your display resolution to 800 x 600 for just long enough to view this thread and get a glimpse of how hidjus this makes the forum!

 

Unfortunately this is not true and that is the reason only Small portion of really stupid small time editors are removed while smart ones will become meta editors and corruption continues year after year after year after ......

An organization can not wait until corruption happens and then try to discover it. It has to implant procedures that stops corruption which DMOZ is not willing to do.

DMOZ is like a bank that instead of having alarms, security guards, safes,... decides to wait for the bank robbers to rob it and then tries to arrest them.

 

Oops. It's not a problem on my display.... I know it's a silly long title but I would have thought it would just wrap to a 2nd line

 

There are three main ways editors will be checked:
a) as new editors an experienced editor will keep an eye on them
b) whenever they ask for a new category their existing work will be reviewed
c) at random senior editors with directory-wide rights will check a category and if there is a problem then do something about it.

What happens then?

a) attempts will be made to educate the editor
b) the editor will not get any new rights until they have proved they can do things right
c) if all attempts fail to re-educate them they will get an official warning
d) if the official warning fails they get removed as an editor.

That data is not kept and is misleading anyway - bait and switch isn't unknown - a decent site is listed and the next day it turns into spam. But every editor has a log of every action and that log can be accessed by every other editor. If an editor is being scrutinised their editing patterns can be easily analysed to identify problems.

The decision to list is always public - it is listed. The decision to reject is not - 90% of rejections are of spam sites and there is a policy not to give any information to spammers. The other 10% is down to editor discretion - some do email the submitter, most don't because there have been scary repercussions in the past. A public declaration of a rejection would be unfair on non-spammers - people might interpret the decision as a slur on the owner's integrity which is not what is intended, the decision merely means the site doesn't meet DMOZ criteria. A private response to the submitter - there was no intention that the ability to suggest sites was a webmaster facility, it was for surfers to let editors know of a good site. There is no way of telling whether the submitter is the owner since most email addresses given are hotmail or gmail or similar such accounts, or the designer's account. I don't think owners would want editors to notify flaws in their sites to just anyone, possibly a competitor.

 

It does have procedures, this has been gone into before at length, it is really boring. You don't believe it. Nothing will change your mind. Editors, the honest and decent ones, really don't care that you don't believe it. What they do care about is dealing with things in the real world, working within the system that exists and won't change because you say it should. That system requires a high degree of actual proof to remove corrupt editors. Help or don't help.

 

So, in your guidelines when you indicate that a site should only be submitted once every XX months and on your forums where editors/metas are constantly pounding the drum that re-submitting the same site is only going to hurt your chances for inclusion ... this refers to only submissions for the same site from the same email address?

If the same site is recommended by 10 different surfers for the same category in a 1 month period, this doesn't hurt the chances of the site being listed?

 

I'm not criticizing you, Nitin. I mentioned this to Shawn previously - I'm just using you as an example.

It should either wrap to a second line or be truncated at say 50-60 characters. Shawn needs to edit the code to do that.

 

Not mine (I am a retired editor) but the guidelines are poorly written. If a site isn't listed within the time it says then submit again once - this eliminates the possibility the site was somehow lost in the ether. Happens about 1 in 1000 times - twice means 1 in 1000000 times. Submitting over and over to the same category has zero effect, the latest one overwrites the previous one, email is immaterial. If the editor reviews in date submitted order, and a small number still do, it sends the site to the bottom of the pile. Submitting multiple times to different categories will set off spammer alarms but the systems can distinguish between 10 different surfers doing it and the webmaster doing it. To be honest, in over 3 years and tens of thousands of edits I never saw multiple submissions other than by the webmaster. Unless it is a malicious attempt at spamming the likelihood is that the only action taken is to eliminate the surplus suggestions leaving one for review.

 

You have not discussed anything about why simple procedures can not be implemented to stop the corruption, except stating that it is not ACCEPTABLE to editors.

If you really don't care then why are you discussing it. isn't better that you go back to other forum when you can ask cbp (birdie) to delete such threads instead of replying to it?

 

Troll feeding time over. For today anyway.

 

I know what you mean...

It really should come as no surprise, considering who created the dmoz... After all, hypocrisy always has been their forte.

But...
Try being listed for 2 years (after 3 years of waiting, that is), then having a new editor take over the category, remove your listing AND stick his own listingSSS in there (One in directory, one in profile, and one in bookmarks)...
Then being told you were removed due to spamming...
To make matters worse, the site is in direct competition, but it also confirms the suspicion of corruption and greed in the higher ranks.

However, I can honestly say that between having been listed (and then not), there is hardly a difference in traffic. It is possible PR and linkpop suffered, but then PR and Linkpop are just more statistical garbage that almost never translate into actual visitors... You either rank well for often-searched keyphrases or you don't, pr and linkpop apparently have little if anything to do with that. The ONLY time in 6 years on the Web that an inbound link has made a difference is when said link results in actual clicks from the linking site, thus I feel considerably more inclined towards investing my time in finding the rare, quality link list to get listed on.

There are a FEW key directories on the Web which are crucial for getting LARGE amounts of visitors, and in my opinion, dmoz is not one of them. For defining terms, I consider a LARGE amount of visitors as anything more than 5 / day from one source, and certainly is far more than the 10 or 20 / month I got as a result of it all (if I got that many). Now if a source wants to make a noticeable difference in my traffic, they need to send 100+ / day so I will notice, maybe 50 and 20 if it's really good quality but certainly not 1 or 2.

Most places that use dmoz are dupes, plan on having your linkpop increase by several thousand (yeah one would think it's 100k or more incoming links, but try 5k or 6k) MOST of which are absolute zeroes in the traffic dep't (and I mean MOST of them), the rest might send a little, 1 here, 2 there, over time you'll get your 10 or 20 thousand visitors but don't be surprised if it takes 5 or 10 years, either.

As far as the engines that use dmoz to build their db's, that's old news but they can not use JUST dmoz, and ultimately most will (and have to) resort to using hand-built link lists as well, while editing out the spew by hand.

That has been my experience.

 

You know that is a lie. You were told by 3 editors over at WMW what happened.

I will repeat it here ... it was this so-called competitor of yours that actually listed your site!!!. It was a more senior editor unrelated to the category or industry that removed it. After you said this on WMW, severals editors went and checked and agreed with the removal. No conspiracy. No corruption. You were told this...

 

Then remove said editor and it might settle the dispute...
But who are you, a meta or some casual observer?
I suspect you're nobody as far as dmoz / time-warner goes, perhaps a subscriber...

If so, why do you feel the need for involvement in the midst of someone else's war?
Are you the one wanted to be subpoenad?

p.s.: How to get listed on Dmoz:
- Find a current editor.
- Pay them for the login/password
- List your site.
You think I'm making this up?
You can find the information via Google, here's more:
> I sold all of mine and brokered a few more, discreetely, in private.
> If the editorship being sold could not edit the category you want to add your site, then make a site to suit the category.
> I would then add my links, and go into hibernation like the rest of the guys.
Quote: "your review has been received and is pending review. Do Not resubmit."
A year later...

No corruption...

p.s.s.: it's the last reply you'll ever get from me, sir birdie ...