I just did an experiment and wrote my second article on Wikipedia. It is short so far, but I wanted to see what you think so far: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-edited_directories I hope maybe others can contribite to this. Thanks! David
Someone has already gone in there and added their links, and now the category is flagged for deletion as a "spam trap". I have removed those links. It would be nice if some people would help write more content, rather than list their links.
David, your idea with this article was a good one. But I don't think the article will last long. People will quickly start editing it and spamming it with their links.
A few weeks ago I was thinking about the same idea. You shouldnt have given the link to public forums yet. Especialy the ones where lots of dir owners hang.
I'm thinking it is not too late. But what would be great is if a couple of people will add more information to wikipedia about stuff like: 1) Running a directory 2) Submitting 3) Features of directories 4) What makes directories valuable to webmasters etc.
It appears wikipedia is going to keep the content I added, though they may move it or combine it. If other people fail to follow instructions (they have guidelines about links), I'm sure the people at wikipedia will take care of the problem.
This is opne small thing where directories owners could contribute a small amount of their time to help directories gain wider acceptance and educate people about what we do.
In this case, I think you may be better off just putting up an article on a site you control, because on Wikipedia it is a spam-magnet. I think that will put people off from contributing, because what's the point if it's in danger of deletion? Some topics just don't make good wiki articles.