A leaky boat

Some interesting comments, including a few from one of the co-founders of DMOZ, on the prblems besetting DMOZ and created by DMOZ... an interesting read:

A subtle change

 

Very interesting read. Nice catch Minstrel (as usual)

 

Excellent and informative. Especially the post from the co founder.

 

I feel sorry for the guy. Former DMOZ Editor
Anyone knows the maricon he is talking about.

 

lol popotalk, that dude's full of BS...

 

Just the one editor (ex) or the whole blog?

 

How so? Care to elaborate?

 

Can't argue with that.

Has he been corrupt? Has he contributed something good? Compared to existing editors how would you compare him?

 

In the blog it states that DMOZ has one editor per category here:

Is this true or are there more than one editor per category?

 

Because of the monetary involvement such as; AOL, Netscape, Google and its relevant rankings status, the OPD may have eroded its public confidence.

It’s akin to a non profit making a big profit.

 

That is the problem. when ever there is a possibility of financial gain then an organization must have procedures that stops abuse. You can not simply hope that people will not abuse the system. In DMOZ case, abuse system is just a big joke and it only can only stop real morons and by moron I mean very very very very stupid.
There is also no real procedures or rules which makes the corruption even easier. At present time, the whole DMOZ structure is keeping the corrupt in and real volunteers out.

 

Of course the spammers want their money!

 

That's absolutely, 100% not true. Anyone with 30 seconds of free time and a very small amount of common sense can check this out for them selves - go to practically any large category and look at the list of editors.

To save you the trouble, here a couple of super easy examples:

http://dmoz.org/Games/ (enarra, thehelper, jtaylorj, lufiaguy, sidjf)
http://dmoz.org/Regional/ (gimmster, jimnoble, johncotton, marisa1116, netjim, nocturnal, randyescalada, sthenbelle, jwmoore, bhoward, melodyvargas, ubcsensei, trident6, motsa, staylor965, storm1, shadow575, aislinn)

This applies to any category of any size (I just chose top level categories ecause I'm lazy).

I have to say, when I see someone who claims to know what they are talking about make such a silly (and easily researched) mistake, it kinda makes me wonder about the rest of what they say. How much of the other stuff is poorly researched, misguiding, or just flat out wrong?

Specifically the ex-editor claiming an editall got him kicked out (that's just funny - I'm sure any editall who sees that will laugh their ass off because they know how little power and persuasion they really have).

There's nothing I could say that would be "confidential" odp info. I know that sounds like a load of crap - and I won't take offense to anyone who says so, but there's rules and I follow them. I will say that it took me all of 45 seconds to find his editor account and another minute and a half to find multiple inaccuracies in his post...

What company, other than Google, is making money from the ODP?

 

Ya in any dispute 'rarely will you find a single person having exclusivity to the truth'.

They may indeed believe that they speak the truth based on their vantagepoint - but their beliefs based only on their merits doesn't mean they are overly accurate.

I love this comment:

Usually when you are "locked out" - this is way it goes and suggestive of nothing other than the editor [on closer scrutiny] was doing more harm than good.

 

Is that only for top level categories? http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Autos/

Only shows one editor. You go deeper than that and I can't find any (Unless I am just missing them)

 

Some categories have no listed editors, some have 1, some have many. Look around and you will find hundreds of non-top level categories with multiple editors.

 

Every editor "above" can edit [and many do] all categories below their current level. In fact it is common practice to "remove specific public noted editing priliveges" on lower categories so to allow new potential editors the freedom of choice. [particularly useful for new applicants]

Thus you will rarely [if ever] see any editor noted in consecutive categories - normally only the higher one.

 

Look at http://www.dmoz.org/Recreation - five listed editors - each of them along with all the editalls and metas can edit in Recreation/Autos (if they want to). Most editors give up the smaller categories as they advance up the tree - this does (at least) two things: encourages new editors to apply and clears up the dashboard.

 

Does it make any difference for you, if he wasn't doing any harm?

 

Lets say if an editor is performing well in his editing but is an open critic in an outside forum, would he be locked out ? Or I might say that some high rank would eventually send the editor a note to discuss things internally. If the editors are critics and unbiased of some policies in the open is that doing more harm than good ? Say some are good but does'nt have blind loyalties.