Also, AFAIK, if there's loads of sites that are already listed in a category, and they see similiar sites in the pending list - editors 60% of the time deny them sites as "they do not add value to the category".. If I'm wrong, please correct me
Speaking only for myself and not for DMOZ, I don't think that's neither correct or incorrect, in my experience. What should happen is that if a category has loads of sites listed, an editor will try to divide the sites into some sort of logical sub-category structure and then sort the listed sites into the sub-categories as they fit. Then the pending sites should also be sorted into sub-categories for review. Before this happens, it's a good idea for the editor to check the listed sites and delete any that are broken, or not up to current standards. In reality what often happens is that an overwhelmed category has to wait until an editor takes an interest in reorganizing it, and the unreviewed sites just sit there. No editor should ever delete a site waiting for review simply because the category is full.
From my own point of view, it's not that "redundant" site are deleted, it's just that the review prioriity becomes lower. So If I have 327 sites listed under "Web Designer site who's name begins with W" then I am in no rush to add more, I don't consider it that usefull. But If I see a web designer site who is located in some small city that does not have any web designers listed, then I will rush to list it there.
For the same reason that more than 300,000,000 sites haven't been listed. An editor hasn't got around to reviewing it yet possibly? Even if you take just the sites submitted (and half the sites listed by DMOZ have never been submitted), 20 times more sites are submitted than are listed each month. It doesn't matter to DMOZ because DMOZ doesn't exist to process submissions. A submitter is a potential supplier of material to help in the DMOZ project. DMOZ is the potential customer and you are making a speculative sales pitch to them to buy your material. And like all customers they don't have to buy anything. If I sent an unsolicited sales pitch to someone I don't have the right to start getting annoyed if they don't buy what I am offering within what I think is a reasonable period. The difference with other big directories is that they provide a service and take your money - you are the customer, they are the supplier, and the relationship is completely reversed. Because the end product looks similar - a directory - it is easy to make a mistake and assume that the basis of the product is the same. If you are a customer of Yahoo you must be a customer of DMOZ? Unfortunately not. You pay Yahoo to perform a service for you so you expect to receive that service. DMOZ charges you nothing, does not provide you with any service, never at any point offers any service to you. Because DMOZ's customers are the end users - they list what they think those end users will be interested in. And, of course, if Yahoo gets 20 times more customers than it can handle then it employs 20 times more reviewers and the cost is absorbed within the charges made to the customer. DMOZ is entirely volunteer driven and cannot simply increase its reviewers by putting out a job advert. In fact the number of editors is steadily declining month on month and those left are having to spend more and more time on maintenance of existing listings. DMOZ's big problem is that it is terrible at explaining all this clearly when people submit their sites. Most people understand; the number of people who complain is a very small proportion compared to those who don't - 1 in 1000 maybe, which ain't bad. Because the people who complain tend to be very vocal and, not being a service, DMOZ does not employ any customer services staff or provide any customer service advice let alone training to editors, it tends to look poor when editors do try and explain things. As regards your site, it is a travel related site. So many of these are submitted, the vast majority of which are vehicles for affiliate schemes of one type or another. So few editors are interested in tackling the categories where only maybe 1 in 100 sites are worth listing. Plus identifying a travel affiliate site can be very difficult so sophisticated are the disguises these days. So reviewing a travel site might take 30 minutes when another type of site might take 30 seconds. I believe I was one of the few editors who would actually target and de-spam travel related categories but I no longer edit. All that said, on the surface the site appears reasonable but I can't spend 30 minutes reviewing it properly nor, since I am retired as an editor, is there any point. What I will say is that in my time I have probably reviewed thousands of sites similar to yours. It isn't bad but there is a lot more you could do to make it better and if you do that then people will visit it more and more regardless of a DMOZ listing. I have a guide site for my home town as a hobby and it gets a lot of traffic - despite having had the editing rights to list it I didn't as I didn't think it was good enough, there is still loads I can do to improve it. Take your dining and restaurants page - really important for a visitor - some links go nowhere, some go to a dead page, some go to the restaurant's website. Where are the reviews and recommendations, the addresses and phone numbers, the opening hours, etc.? Where is your overview of the dining out experience in Pattaya? On the Shopping page what is the point of the online Tesco page? Where is it, when does it open, what does it sell? Your site is aimed at English-speaking holidaymakers so what possible use is an online supermarket shopping site in Thai? Hope those observations help!
Brizzie you are thinking again with your old editor's hat and repeat the old justifications for why DMOZ as organization is incompetent and there is nothing can be done about it. If DMOZ is really concerned with end users, wouldn't listing the latest information and better web sites will benefit the end users? How do we know that web sites waiting in submission line are not better than the web sites editors can find? How do the new editors join DMOZ at present time? Can some one join and become an editor if that person is interested in cars, boats, real estate, investing,....? No, people can join in small categories that does not have any editor. What kind of person tries to find a category that is of no interest for him and apply to become an editor? The webmaster who thinks of this as stepping stone for ending up in the "right category". There is no shortage of people who are interested in different subjects and as volunteers can improve the directory and with right procedure, there will be much less abuse and corruption than present time but the coalition of corrupt and incompetent is stopping any advancement of the directory.
Or "insufficient unique content". 10 sites all offering the same contact lenses, ringtones or cellphones perhaps only distinguished by price - what is the point of listing them, a search engine with give you 20000 or more. An editor is looking for something you can't get from everyone else. Looking for information on the Battle of Hastings? Once you have captured all the sites offering a different perspective and analysis you start seeing the same information being repeated over and over - the ones that offer nothing new there is no point in listing. 10 artists offering seascapes - all the paintings displayed are unique, all the artist profiles are unique, you can't run out of unique seascape artists. I also dabble in art, which I would love to do professionally but I rather like to eat daily, and buy and sell over the Internet - each of the paintings, I sell on are unique, no-one else can sell them as there is only one. Even with prints, no-one else has the limited editions I have for sale. Even so, when I went to submit my site before becoming an editor I noticed that others already listed had far more information on the history and origins of the genre I specialise in, and far more information on the artists - so back to the drawing board and start again. So when I was reviewing sites I would be looking for a differentiator. That might be as minor as a profile of the owner, the location for a geographically limited service, or a photo of the shop but as major as the uniqueness of the product, the added value information for a generic product, the quantity and value of pure information. No differentiator no listing. There are no excuses for producing a site with no differentiator at all - restaurant listings for a town can contain reviews and no two sets of reviews will be the same; selling contact lenses online - do you have lens care information, advice from an optometrist, the history of contact lenses, the history of your business, etc.? Note that in DMOZ price alone does not constitute a differentiator because DMOZ is interested in information.
How do you know what the best sites are and which contain the latest information until you review them all? And since it is impossible to review them all... you know, as an editor, the amount of spammy crap that is submitted and that in many categories the submission pools are the least productive methods of finding sites - a TV or newspaper advert is unlikely to be placed by an affiliate but by the original company. In the spam-laden categories then an editor needs to prove their trustworthyness first. But plenty join niche car and boat categories as their first category. And progression to edit larger and more important categories is as fast or slow as an editor's ability to grasp concepts and put in the effort. I joined a small Art related category and was editor of a State in Regional within a month, a country a couple of months later. I studied the guidelines and followed them and was never once rejected for a category. As you also know if an editor wants to try a bigger category than their experience would normally permit then they can greenbust (listings require approval by another editor). In Regional, Arts, and Shopping where I edited I saw very little evidence of corruption and incompetence - quite the reverse. Regional did attract some abusive editors and there was also an interesting situation amongst some musical instruments. But it was not widespread, it was the exception rather than the rule. Many many times I looked into real estate corruption allegations and found zero evidence. You are particularly interested in the situation in Adult where there is substantial legacy evidence of corruption proven by the number of editors caught and ejected. The fact that the proceeds of that corruption are still visible is, IMO, a big mistake and impacts on the rest of the Directory. But it isn't the rest of the Directory, which is by and large pretty clean. Shopping, you would have thought, would have the potential to be every bit as bad as Adult. But it wasn't in the least and I don't recall once seeing any evidence of corruption there personally. Though I do know of Shopping editors removed so obviously it still exists to some degree. I really do wish you would make the differentiation gworld - Adult is one thing and IMO needs a good scrubbing with carbolic - non-Adult (most of it anyway) is something else entirely. Nothing in this thread has been about Adult and there is enough in other threads to fill a library so why contaminate! I am not ashamed of that! If you are trying to help someone understand DMOZ and perhaps help them in producing a site that when reviewed will be accepted, there is no point in putting on any other hat. Someone with a travel guide or a rap contest site isn't in the least interested in Adult image gallery treatment!
I do not think that it is impossible to review them all. We just need to improve procedures for acceptance of submissions and open the doors to people who want to volunteer. In theory sounds good but there is no procedures to help new editors to develop. Many new editors who would like to do more, can not do anything because there is no clear defined method to gain more editing privilege exists and many new editors can be logging in for months and months, looking at the same 10 listing in their category that they have cleaned up long time ago. The problem is not only with adult. Abuse can manifest itself in many ways. Giving preferential listing to 1 web site in front of others and effectively stopping some businesses from getting a listing is also an abuse. The problem is that there is no clear definition of requirements for listing of businesses which opens the door to abuse. There is a clear resistance to rules, regulation and procedures in DMOZ and instead, there is always a cry for to giving editors free hand and this makes me wonder, why?
Completely untrue. There is much help available to new editors including mentoring, forums, and written help. As an editor, you should know this. I wonder why you don't, have you ever edited with a good attitude to see what it's really like? Also untrue. It's to brizzie's credit that he still wears his editor's hat. You, as an editor, should remove your tin foil hat and try out your editor hat. You might just learn something.
ROFL - Google cannot spider them all let alone DMOZ manually reviewing them all I thought you were anti-corruption! Who is going to do the vastly increased monitoring for corruption and mentoring for quality control? I'll agree in part. I found a clear and defined method to gain more editing privileges - I could never understand why people were rejected for categories. Read the bloody guidelines, follow them to the letter, get a cat check before applying, apply and read and follow the instructions, complete the form, Bob's your uncle (or he was until he divorced my Aunty). It is like people who buy a new DVD player, throw away the manual, then wonder why they can't get it to work. And you want to lower the barriers? But OTOH the "career" development of an editor is completely haphazard and unstructured and a series of training modules would be a lot better than pointing them at a pile of sometimes conflicting guidelines and walking away. OTOH I have mentored less experienced editors and it takes a huge commitment of time and patience plus sometimes you offer and get told to piss off. OTOH I am sure some clever people could put together some online exams to test guidelines knowledge. There is a lot that could be done to improve things, nuff said. What are they waiting for? If you have evidence of such a thing happening then report it. I did, loads of people do. But it is on a very small scale and isolated in my experience. And you know I am not afraid to cry out if I think something is a problem. Hmmm - I never had any problem but I guess a checklist would help. The difficulty is that every category potentially has different requirements and quality barriers. If you could boil everything down to a formula and procedure then human editors start to become redundant - search engines work to formulas and look at the crap that comes out of them. You make it sound like anarchy but in reality it is anything but - there are guidelines and branch charters and category descriptions, rulings galore, loads of guidelines (that could be improved), and plenty of threads discussing interpretations on any subject you can name. But editor discretion is still an important element in the basic fundamental concepts of the project and you cannot eliminate it without changing the entire nature of the project. Corruption is a fact of life but in real life totalitarian regimes have a far worse record of controlling it than free democracies where you would have thought the opportunities would be far greater for all. But I think we've had this same discussion before somewhere! God, I don't want to expand this into the realms of Adult but in that branch a major complaint is that they seem to use a 15 photos and it is in guideline, meaning all sorts of crap can be listed. That is the biggest possible reason not to have rigid sets of rules and listing criteria. Take those pedophile sites - I wouldn't have raised them in a forum thread, I would have deleted them using my discretion based on interpretation of a Staff ruling and moved onto the next category. And no-one would have batted an eyelid. Start formulating rigid rules and well you saw what happened.
Annie, you are right. But when a new editor joins whether they are offered, ask for, use, etc. that help is haphazard. I would have liked to see a full structured induction course mandatory for all*. As it stands too many are left to their own devices and either ignore or are ignorant of the sources of help. I know, you know, what an enormous commitment mentoring is even with only a couple of editors to watch over. * That is the sort of change I think would make a big difference to editor retention and involvement - I'd come back to lead a project on that sort of positive move without hesitation.
Ah, chickens and eggs Annie! To come back I would have to be convinced beforehand it was worth doing and I don't hear of anything that makes me think there has been any change in general attitudes or policy since I left. Besides I still reckon I would get a thanks but no thanks response from the powers that be.
Formula and procedures do not make humans redundant, it helps people to achieve a batter result. Imagine a court of law that the judge is not bound by any procedures or laws and make decisions based on nothing but his feelings at that moment. It is true that editors can discuss as much as they like but it achieves nothing since there is a lack of procedure for democratic decision making in the organization. The procedures do not make a totalitarian regime, it is exactly the lack of rules and procedures that make a totalitarian system. You can not blame the situation in adult on rigid rules since there are also rules and procedures that are made to stop that situation but are totally ignored because there is no procedures for enforcing it. the blame for that situation is with editors and not guidelines.
Yes, they do. Annie previously posted photographic proof of this (you have to use your imagination a bit - this is two eggs making a chicken if I'm interpreting it correctly):