dissapointed in DMOZ

...not counting those who are leaving in droves every month...

... not counting those who post on numerous forums every day complaining that they've applied to be editors and were rejected...

 

The number seems to be slowly rising to me, so even though we obviously do lose editors we generally gain more than we lose.

Generally those people, as gworld just pointed out, are not applying to help the directoty, they are applying to help themselves to a listing.

 

You might want to check out the published DMOZ stats on that question. You've been losing more than you've gained for a while now.

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=693466&postcount=2

March 2006 stats: Currently active editor accounts = 7,614

Still well below the number in January 2005 which was approximately 8000.

 

Right you are, thanks for pointing it out to me. I wouldn't call it droves, but you are correct that it has been declining.

http://research.dmoz.org/publish/chris2001/odp_reports/report_2005.htm

# Active editor accounts on 1 January 2005: ~8,000
# Active editor accounts on 31 December 2005: ~ 7,744

http://research.dmoz.org/publish/chris2001/odp_reports/report_200603.htm

Currently active editor accounts: 7,614

 

Hmm. I haven't evaluated the figures (and have no interest in it), but I know that to get a more accurate and comple picture is to compare those months to the previous years. That decline could actually be typical for a year. The most accurate way to find out is to compare 2005 to 2004, 2003, ect. to see if there is a pattern.

I'll give you another example of what I'm talking about. For a business to get a fairly accurate view of its monthly sales is not to compare, say, March's ($50,000) and April's ($25,000) sales and conclude that its sales dropped drastically, so something must be to wrong. The most accurate way to go about it is to compare those months to the same months of the previous years, because it just might turn out that $25,000 is average for sales for the month of April.

That same logic holds true for the ODP data reports. To get a more accurate view is to compare 2005 statistics to statistics for the previous years because that decline might actually be normal.

 

Going back to an earlier point there are currently (04/May/2006 22:00:26 EDT) 246 editors who can edit literally anywhere except Kids and Teens, excluding technical staff. The vast majority of those have edited within the last month. Whilst there has been a downward trend it seems to have stabilised for some months now. If you add another 150 for those with high level but restricted rights then you have about 400 editors probably contributing 95% of the productivity.

Enigma - the trend has been consistently downwards over a period of years. Compare the number of editors who have been editors with the number currently editors and you can see it is significantly below peak and below the number needed for maintenance as the listings grow let alone adding new sites (which then have to be maintained). There was an upward blip in March of this year - time will tell if it is a trend reversal. Nevertheless, IMO DMOZ needs to both retain experienced senior editors and develop a lot more for the future. 800 of the aforementioned highly productive editors would be a good target. Until DMOZ does market research to find out why it is not retaining editors and develops some form of structured "career" development then the omens are not good in the long term. You don't have to vastly increase the number of new editors joining just motivate those still there and try and bring back the ones that have left. I can tell you in a nutshell why I am no longer there - I did post it in the PC - I ran out of challenges, I'd done everything I wanted to do and could do. And at editall/catmv that is quite wide-reaching. I felt I could do more as a former editor without constraints than by staying. Take it down to category editors and the frustration level must be quite high amongst many. There are no easy answers to that one that you could instantly turn 400 into 800 tomorrow but the longer it is left the worse the situation gets. Now I may be entirely wrong in my reasons for leaving - there may have been many more challenges I could have taken on but I did not *feel* there were and it is how people feel that determines what they do.

 

I could'nt agree more with brizzie on his post. Its paranoia and distrust amongst that runs add it to that. The frustration has gone up and there are a lot of good editors that were lost, take monayuki for example he is a very hard working editor, just became critical of the bad apples and the system. Other than that he looks damn fine to me.

I see the Editors joining the DP DMOZ thread and growing. Motsa, jdaw1 and giz ?

 

I was very surprised he was accepted in the first place, I'm not surprised he was removed. He looked like a misfit with his own agenda.

 

btw ...i suggested 2 sites 2 months ago....and no results.

 

It usually take time to get listed in busy catagories. I suggested a blog about 3 months ago but, up until now no results

 

Based on the "it takes one to know one" theory, it's within the realm of possibility that you're correct. Just one question: Who the heck are you talking about?

 

I did support dmoz untill today, when I requested a update on something. They sent me a rude email stating that since I dont know the absolute day, I have to wait almost 2 weeks now instead. I told them that i knew it was at least 9 days ago becasue of my birthday, and their admin stated "Thats too bad, you WILL wait the entire time whether you want to or not".

I am not even bothering to submit new sites to them. They are going down the toilet anymore.

 

Can you post the reply here?

 

It wasn't an email.

Rude - (new definition) Being told that you can't get what you want when you want it.

I must admit though - there was one rude response in that thread. See post 11.

 

Well you didnt get the email I did, so you wouldnt understand why i posted that.

 

Care to post the email then?

Do you think it's correct form to reply publicly to a private message by calling all of us "pricks"?

 

It wouldn't matter anyway, even if they came over and killed you, lmocr will try to find a way to justify it.

 

As I said before, the real number is about 500 but in my opinion the number of senior editors is even less than 400 that you mention.
The 7500 editors is like the numbers for the Enron profit, built on thin air and made to look good.

 

Yeah... I am just dropping it, but you are right he will just keep justifying it.

Its like that whole child porn thing I always see things about on Dp.

That really shows how much better a "Human Edited Dir" is lol.

 

Thank you.