As most webmasters have a webmaster mindset its obvious that most of their suggestions are for the betterment of themselves, however, even with that, when a webmaster offers a suggestion to make his own site better known, wouldn't that also include making all sites better known, and hence being for the betterment of the end user as well? Most of the suggestions I see offered up here or elsewhere would be for the good of all. Webmasters when submitting their own sites are suggested to read the guidelines... is the end user suggesting sites they like also prompted to read them? Seems a bit much isn't it? the ADD page should be worthy in and of itself, which it is not. The documentation on the ODP is horribly outdated... is that for the betterment of the end user? I think not... in fact, I think that having such outdated documentation does nothing GOOD for any body, the ODP included... yet when a webmaster suggests such a change it's somehow bad. When I posted post after post after post about CNN having over ten thousand dead links in the ODP, it was not taken seriously by MOST editors here and it was weeks before anyone cared enough to actually check it out on the side of the ODP. I still go off about how Topix has thousands upon thousands of syndicated links that offer NOTHING to the end user, yet that suggestion is looked at as suggested by a webmaster, when in fact, I'm just trying to get the directory "fixed"... not for me, those sites have NOTHING to do with ANY of the sites I own... but what good is duplicate content in the ODP if duplicate content goes against the "unique content" mindset of most posting editors? The flaw is not in who is submitting the ideas, it's in who is reading them!
Yes, and you've been told, friend Q, that many editors agree with you, it was done by the founder, that we had no say in the matter, and that those sites are being removed, little by little, as we come across them (if they add nothing to the category). In some small localities, that don't have local newspapers, they are worth keeping if there's any local news in them, but it's really not a major concern for us to delete them all. We have many other tasks to do that are a bit more important, than chasing those down.
"It seems that crowbar and jamieellis like making statements but aren't willing to support them. " Such as?
Or maybe it's been discussed to death, and it's really so unimportant that it isn't worth spending any more time on. Any editors who hang out here, do so because they want to. Many others just got sick of dealing with the deliberate misinformation put out by people with an axe to grind. They had good intentions for being here, but weren't allowed to have common sense conversations about what they know. Instead, they were constantly attacked with unsubstantiated charges of corruption and wrong doing. It doesn't really bother me because I've come to expect it, and know where it's coming from.
Personally I do not care about Dmoz. I will rather pay for a PR 8 or PR 9 backlink on another directory and get the same benefits Dmoz offers.
Yeah, right. You didn't read my post http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=12263780&postcount=77 regarding your accusation http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=12260899&postcount=72 But, there is no need you to reply that post. You have omitted answering before, which means you didn't had a clue about what my suggestions were. haha crowbar did just the same. He conveniently omitted answering how would DMOZ give a user a wider view of a subject with poor and outdated content. But he replied to the rest of the post just like you did. Again, there is no need to answer now.
Perhaps that would be because I don't neccessarily agree with your opinion of poor and outdated content? You'd have to give me a specific example that I could go look at, and your reasoning. There are many categories that could use work, but out dated material is not neccessarily of no value, informationwise. The way to fix those categories is to volunteer to do the work as an editor, instead of standing on the sidelines critisizing those of us who are working, don't you think? Come show us how it's done.
DMOZ is losing relevancy but still helpful. I doubt anyone on this forum would pass up a free listing...
Of course. Nobody pass a free listing. And that has nothing to do with the actual relevance of being listed in DMOZ. Well. This explains so much. SO MUCH!
I would like to share something I've just found at dmoz.org: "As a former editor for DMOZ, I can tell you that in my experience the all-powerful meta editors dictate what gets in and what doesn't. I would follow all the guidelines as an editor to the letter and sometimes a meta editor would approve it and sometimes not. It seemed to be a random process at best. I actually was far more successful getting sites removed from DMOZ, those that were no longer in business or had otherwise abandoned their online presence. Some meta editors are more reasonable than others and some seem to be merely on a power trip. After a while I got discouraged by the editing process and the inconsistency of the meta editors in what they approved and didn't approve (and the often contradictory reasons for their actions) and dropped out." And it isn't the first time I hear such things from a former Editor. Here we can ask ourselves whether becoming a DMOZ editor (in case we were willing to do that) would be of any help.