Did my post above deserve yet another red rep from some DMOZ nazi? Dear non-crackhead DMOZ editors. It's the ones like this fella that give you a bad rap and cause people like gworld to wage war against the entire DMOZ establisment.
I have applied as well to become a dmoz editor. The category I applied for does not have an editor. Yet I understand the thoughts behind making someone an editor where they have an interest in that category. It was posted today that most people dont like to edit in real estate categories so why not bring on someone who is more than willing to edit that category. The problem is that those who hire the editors believe that all individuals who apply to a category and have an interest in that category only wants it so they can manipulate the category. I may not be the brightest or the best as an editor but I know that I am fair, plus I have a lot of experience in real estate and feel I would make a dam good editor with some training. Yet my app was denied as well. How do we try to help change things other than bit-hing in this forum and others if we cant get accepted as an editor. If there are 30 of us complaining about dmoz on this forum ( everyone knows who we are ) about certain categories and we are made editors, then nothing gets done with those Cats then who looks like the fool.. Shawn you are respected in the internet community and I am sure even before this forum you had a lot of respect, so this is one reason it is easy for someone like you to become an editor and maybe make a difference.
I was denied twice before I was approved (for TINY categories... they had maybe like 10 listings). So I had to go through the same process as everyone else. After I was denied twice for what I thought were perfectly good submissions, I actually sat down and read the DMOZ guidelines (about 15 times). Then it clicked and I realized what they were looking for.
LMAO!! There WAS that guy selling his editorship on ebay before they shut the auction down (bidding was up to near a thousand!).
When the list of ideas for things I wanted to do started to exceed 5 years into the future (I just didn't have the time anymore).
{shrug} The biggest problem DMOZ has is there are just too many listable sites on the Internet, that even if they had 2 million ACTIVE editors, they would still get more submissions than they could go through manually. Editors are human, and when you log into the editor's dashboard, and you see 50,000 pending listing requests just in your category, it makes you not even want to do any of them because it seems like an endless pile. If the editor dashboard didn't actually show how many were pending, I think they would get more edits. Like I could do 10 or 20 per day. But when you see a list of 50,000, psychologically you start thinking... "What's the point of doing 10?"
If you knew there were 1000 people also editing those listings it would be much easier to get things done. If you see 50,000 listings and wonder if anyone else is also editing them that would sure make you want to log off
You only see stuff for your categories... and a single category never has thousands (or even 10) editors. So for the most part it's on you. It's hard to explain how many pending submissions there are without seeing it for yourself. Not only that, but 99% of the submissions need their title and description rewritten. And even worse is most submissions aren't even in the right category, so then you need to go find the category it should go in and send it there. Ultimately it's a LOT of manual work that could be made easier if people submitting their sites did it right (but of course they never do). I would edit a lot more if it was a blanket rule to just delete (rather that correct/move, etc.) submissions that were not right. Of course most submissions would be deleted then.
If you manage a directory you know how painful it is to go thru listings. I've given up on doing any edits to submissions. For every 100 I get, maybe 1 or 2 have proper grammar, spelling, titles, are in the right category, are not MFA/affiliate sites, or even workable/functioning URLS. Its totally nuts. I can only imagine DMOZ gets a billion times that many submissions every day.
Well that is just absurd. What kind of system do they run that puts a workload of thousands of sites on just a handful of editors?
Same here with my little directory, it's rediculous what some members submit (and they are supposed to be experienced webmasters). I totally agree that DMOZ, Netscape and AOL are leaving the good editors hanging. There seems to be absolutely no real support system and/or proper supervision.
It's not their fault... it's just too many submissions. Most of the categories I edit have more pending submissions than are already listed (most are over 1,000 pending). And then of those, probably 995 out of 1,000 are going to have to be rewritten or put into the correct category manually. That's the biggest problem is just the submissions in the wrong place or completely garbage title/descriptions. If it were nothing more than a "approve/deny" checkbox, it would be cake.
How can it not be their fault?? Who's fault is it then?? I mean, isn't there one person with more than 2 braincells over there that can say "hey, we need to do some changes here, this is getting out of hand, lets change this and that and this other thing and that should help to make approvals easier"? I just can't understand how there can be a problem and no one able to implant a solution.
Obviously you are describing a non functioning broken system, doesn't make you wonder with so many people and so much resource involved, why there is no interest to fix it?