Dmoz Lottery

Maybe not officially, but I have seen other editors say they consider that as a sort of unofficial operational policy... except no one is actually told that so people keep submitting and getting frustrated.

 

I'd like to know who those editors are, please, so I can give them some "guidance."

There is a mechanism for closing submission to a category. It is used in two very specific ways: one is a so-called "link farm" - these are categories which only exist to point to other categories - they contain no listings. You can tell those because, in the ODP, all subcats end with a "@" character.

The other one is where the category is so generic that only a very very limited number of sites can get listed there (for example, the top level of Regional) and we really don't want lazy submitters just submitting everything there and not bothering to find a subcategory.

The method to use in both cases is to find one of the sub categories to submit to.

As to "unofficial" or "unwritten" closing of a category, no, that should never happen. one editor might find that yet another FAQ about how to use email would be superfluous, so (s)he isn't going to go out and search for one, but if someone comes up with a new way of doing it and submits it - then it will get reviewed and listed... eventually.

A lot of the issues that people bring up about review times tend to be in categories where there is little or no editor interest. This might be because of a personal lack of interest, or might be because the sites submitted are just plain too spammy to wade through, or for a number of other reasons. if I, for example, wanted to list something in one of those categories, and was required to review them before I could list this neat site I just found, then I wouldn't be adding that site, and would go edit elsewhere, thank you.

There are many, many guidelines about how to edit. Those are all publicly available. You will notice that in no document do they talk about what an editor is expected to do (with one exception - one edit every four months to prevent your editing account from timing out - this is purely a convenience - even after an editor has timed out they can request reinstatement).

While I understand where you are coming from minstrel, I don't think that adding any requirement of editors to do anything in any order will ever fly, given the culture of the ODP. Personally, if I were given a workload, I would probably resign - my time with the ODP tends to be very sporadic, and I can make no committments.

 

Honestly, I couldn't give you names -- that information comes from forum posts I've read over the past couple of years in DMOZ threads. For all I know, they weren't even editors but they claimed to be and sounded as if they were. Regardless, that is part of the information out there that those hoping to slavage some public relations for DMOZ have to deal with.

What I'm suggesting wouldn't increase any editor's workload, though. Whatever time you have, you simply start with the submissions queue and go from first to last submited.

 

You are right, of course - it wouldn't increase the workload, but it would be telling the editor what they should be doing. If that was felt to be in the interests of the directory, then there may well be recommendations that reviewing submitted sites was a priority.

The thing is - it's not. Submissions are one of the ways editors find sites. For some, it's the best way, for others it isn't.

I have said before that the ODP isn't designed to be a submission processing service, and I have tried to tell you why that is so. Requiring editors to process submissions before doing anything else would be counter to that.

I completely understand why, from your perspective and given your goals, this seems unfair. I have tried to explain to you why, from an ODP perspective (or at leats my perspective on how the ODP works) it isn't unfair in the least.

BTW minstrel - thanks for the recent green rep - nice comments - thanks.

 

There is a TON of mis-information out there, for sure. Part of the original reason for setting up the RZ was to provide somewhere to put out a more balanced view, and to correct these mistaken impressions. I think somewhere along the line that changed.

One of the reasons I like to post on this forum is because I want to try to really educate web professionals as to what the ODP is - and what it isn't. I feel that if you understand what it can, and can't do for you, then maybe expectations can be set a little more realistically and we can all lead a more stress-free life.

I know that there are always going to be people that are angry with the ODP for whatever reason - some professional, some personal. I would like the general readers to read a little more than just ranting (on the side of both ODP haters and ODP editors )

 

Sounds very simple, but it's actually totally unworkable, if you had a good understanding of the workings of ODP - which only comes after working for several months in different categories - you would know that.

Now if an editor has one simple categroy, then it can be done, and I bet you will find that most editors with one category in fact do go through in date order anyway.

But once an editor has muliple categories it becomes unwieldy. First I have to look at the oldest unreviewed in Shopping/Clothing/Teens/ then I jump to the oldest in Health/Alternative/Aromatherapy/Practitioners/ then I go to Computers/Software/Accounting/ - it's too confusing jumping all over like that.

Editors tend to work on categories or group of categories at one time. So today I might decide to work on a Shopping category, and while there I will do some quality control checks on existing listings, look at newly submitted sites to make sure that don't need moving, check also for spam and duplicates, and then go and review some sites. Reviewing sites is only part of the tasks in front of me.

Forcing me to go through in date order just does not work. The oldest site might not be reviewable at this time, it might be down, it might need discussion with someone else. I might just want to sit and wait, it might be borderline, and I'll give it a month to see if it improves.

If you want to force editors to review in order, and provide a service for webmasters and be accountable, and make it more like a job, then I will do that. But then you have to pay me to be an editor and then it's not ODP, it's Yahoo.

 

Then as I've said before just let it be known that DMOZ will no longer take submissions. Period. No exceptions. All entries will be discovered by editors.