It wouldn't be replaced by Google Co-op though. Not as a directory. What would be the point, if people are not using pure directories at all by that time? Google Co-op is an attempt to blend elements from the directory model (classification, human selection) with the search engine. This is only one of several experiments in cross-breeding directories and search engines to get the best of both worlds. This is where I feel that search is headed. The ODP has fed into several of these experiments, such as Exalead. Potentially it could contribute to Google Co-op. We shall have to wait and see.
Actually it's even worse # New editors: 528 (the originally given number was wrong) # Reinstated editors: 118 # Accounts inactivated for a variety of reasons (inactivity, resignation, removal): 675 (the originally given number was wrong) That's 20 editor gone each day! Is DMOZ attempting to match US casualties rate in Iraq? Well with my removal there will be few dozen sites less each month but who would notice that anyway.
Thanks for the figures again ishfish. Disappointing though. http://www.searchengineblog.com/rich-skrenta-interview.htm Dmoz has continued to grow since we left AOL. The open directory project vastly exceeded our original goals -- we thought if we could get 1,000 editors and 1 million sites, the direction would be a huge success. It achieved these goals and has fulfilled its mission of becoming the largest human-edited directory of the web. But the web moved on, and while directories were very interesting in the mid '90's, keyword search has eclipsed them as the main ways consumers find information on the Internet. This is in part due to the growth of the web. When the web is small -- say 30 million documents -- a directory is a great way to find organize and find sites. This was Yahoo's strength in the early days. But as the web grows from 30 million sites to 5-10 billion, directories, even very large ones, can't keep up. Dmoz has 4M sites and over 600,000 categories. This is almost too large to be useful; one can't easily click around browsing through a 600,000 page directory. At the same time, since the directory, even with as many as 4M sites contains only .1% of the Internet or less, it can't be as big as it needs to be to cover the content available on the Internet. So sayeth a founder back in 2004. I think I disagreed with this at the time but in retrospect it is probably spot on. On the one hand DMOZ has far exceeded anything ever expected. On the other its relevance is declining because it can't keep up. And what Genie has been saying also makes a lot of sense. I have been focusing to a large degree on failures, IMO down to mismanagement, which impact on performance indicators relating to the directory as it is now. And I still think to some degree that these are critical because if your data deteriorates and your editor base disappears then the project becomes worthless and all those hundreds of thousands of hours 70,000 people spent building it up becomes an enormous waste of time. How critical depends on where DMOZ and the data is going. The comparison to the Oxford English Dictionary was very ambitious but this has stood the time and all the efforts of the original compilers are still relevant 146 years on. It seems in today's disposable world the efforts of DMOZ editors may also be disposable. If the project is to survive, it is not enough simply to boost editor numbers and productivity. It needs something more. Some might argue and I take Genie's point, that perhaps when the usefulness of DMOZ eventually fails altogether it dies and volunteers move onto other volunteer projects. And it does seem clear that the time for pure directories is over, except as a link for webmaster marketing. And a link that is declining in significance. It may also be that the structure and culture of DMOZ is too ingrained and slow to change to allow it to successfully transform itself into something new and relevant even if it wanted to. And it is a good question as to whether there are sufficient senior editors in DMOZ who are quite happy to continue to list sites exactly as they have done since 1998 and don't want change even whilst everything appears to be collapsing around them to block it. The changes needed for medium to long term survival would not leave a DMOZ recognisable to current editors. The question for those who do want change and to work on something that isn't declining in public relevance, is whether to try and drag them along or to move onto another volunteer project or to start something new alongside themselves. I can go on and on about damage done by inexperienced and untrained management working as and when with day jobs and families in contention who are responsible for some awful decisions and appalling communication with the editors they are leading. But if they turned into super heroes of the management world overnight they still would be powerless to do much more than extend the lifespan of the project as it is now by a couple of years. It would be impossible for them to do a root and branch transformation that would give another 8 years. Is it sad? In some ways but if Genie is right, and I think she may be, the volunteer resources will flow to other projects that are on the up, such as Wiki, or something new yet to be conceived. The data, all that hard work, is not like a dictionary, it always was disposable really - sites come and sites go and so every link will eventually become dead and be replaced. In some ways this is the strength of Wiki since its primary focus is on information that never expires or needs replacing; even current events just become a historical record. Perhaps this was the flaw in DMOZ all along - it needs constant tending just to maintain itself or it falls apart as soon as those tending it get bored. And because it is in a market that moves very rapidly it always did have a limited shelf life. If Wiki ceased tomorrow, in 146 years the data would still be useful, even if just a historical record, just like the Oxford English Dictionary is today. What you can extract from the DMOZ project are a lot of lessons learned about how to do things and how not to do things. For example, ingraining a culture that makes change extremely difficult and slow was a mistake. Allowing sacred cows and immovable concepts was an error. The culture of secrecy is another. Too much direction from the top without consultation another. And so on. The loss of the editor community is probably the one real sad thing but it could not survive anyway unless everyone was up for a radical change of direction and purpose. Having said all that I suppose I should just pack up and lose interest. However, I do think it is just possible that DMOZ could re-invent itself somehow and the rate of decline is too rapid to give itself time to decide if that is what it wants to do and to do it. Therefore it remains important to continue to look at things like declining productivity in order to at least preserve what DMOZ has built up in the last 8 years. And to examine ways to reverse the dwindling editor base if at all possible so if change does occur DMOZ can approach it from a position of strength. And whilst it continues to exert some, if diminishing, influence on the Internet it remains important to ensure it is properly managed. Preferably by the community itself as a team.
I don't think that's true, necessarily, but the value of a directory that is quixotic and out of date is virtually zero and that, unfortunately, describes DMOZ today. That isn't conjecture, in my opinion - that's a virtual certainty. There are really only three possibilities: Google gets out of the directory business altogether (unlikely) Google uses its clout to step in and revamp the DMOZ hierarchy and policies to turn it into something a lot closer to professionalism Google creates its own directory to compete with Yahoo, possibly based on their Coop which would be consistent with their fondness for the "open source" approach
It depends on the directory that is true. The directories that seem to be of most use, and growing in use, are those on niche subjects that have grown extremely comprehensive in content. Niche doesn't mean obscure but, for example, my local health authority has a 100% complete directory of all health care professionals in the area. One problem with DMOZ is attempting to be all things to all men in the directory field. You can't do that any more with billions of sites - what Rich Skrenta said 2 years ago. Whenever anyone asks for advice on how to get a directory listed on DMOZ the answer I have always given is go for a very narrow field and build up *the* most comprehensive directory on that field. Which is not that difficult. Then expand it outwards bit by bit. The DMOZ model attempted to cover literally everything under the Sun, and then fill in the gaps. It got so far and has now found itself unable to go any further for lack of resources.
Minstrel I'm baffled that you think Google needs to compete with the Yahoo Directory. Yahoo had to embrace the search engine model to have any chance of competing with Google! The writing has been on the wall for years for the major directories. They can't complete with search engines. The ODP is the best of the major directories on any objective assessment. So if it goes, you can forget about any similar effort coming along to take its place. Won't happen. The world is moving on.
The two serve entirely different functions. People no longer look to directories for general searches but they do look to them for funneling down and categorizing the huge amount of information on the net. My personal opinion is that for that purpose general directories are less useful than niche directories but I think the general net surfer is going to go with "brand names" like Yahoo and Google (I doubt that most have even heard of DMOZ). I would absolutely and vehemently dispute that. The ratio of crap to good content in DMOZ is steadily increasing and the directory is becoming out of date and increasingly less and less relevant from any objective viewpoint. Nobody wants another DMOZ - one is bad enough. But you're dreaming if you think someone won't come up with a better model for a directory of that stature. Google's Coop may be it. If not, something else will emerge from the lava soon enough.
Naturally! But where is your objective evidence? The truth is that no hand-made directory can keep pace with the growth of the Net and the constant change of the Net. Yahoo was overtaken in size by the ODP years ago and has a massive problem with dead links. Or certainly did last time I bothered to look. To be frank I find it useless as a search tool.
Where is YOUR objective evidence for your opinion? ALL directories are "useless as search tools". That isn't their purpose.
I hope this is the case. My impression of the Co-Op so far, is that Google has several directions where it could take the Co-Op, and will slowly implement them as the need is felt. Google seems to *want* feedback, respond to it, and take an active and democratic leadership role. This is unheard of at the ODP. I have chosen a niche topic, and made several hundred, legitimate, honest, and impartial annotations. My profile and its niche topic are now included in the Co-Op's main directory. What will happen next to lovingly made sets of annotations such as mine? I cannot predict. But the greater their number, the greater the possibilities, and the stronger the Co-Op will become.
Congratulations Helleborine on getting into the Google Co-op Directory which is pretty exclusive at the moment! I take it you are Stellula there? Yes I agree that Google Co-op is a nifty idea. I'm all in favour. I just feel that to keep referring to it as a directory is a bit misleading. Google's focus is the search engine. Co-op aims to improve that by incorporating directory-like features. That is far more interesting and novel than simply creating yet another directory. (Which Google is not interested in doing.)
Again, you seem to be confusing the purpose of a directory versus search. And why do you assume that Google has no interest in directories or in creating their own? It seems to me that the launch of Google Coop is evidence to the contrary - it is indeed a directory, Google style.
Looks like some definitions might be helpful. Let's use http://editors.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/Directories/desc.html : When the Web was new, people began to note down urls so they could find them again. Then a couple of students from Stanford pooled their lists and put them online. It was the start of Yahoo! The whole purpose of Yahoo was to be an Internet search tool. [Definition of search tool = a means of locating websites/pages. This could be a human-edited directory, search engine, a meta-search or multi-search tool or anything else anybody can dream up to do the job.] Naturally Yahoo made money for its creators by advertising. But it wouldn't have done that, if it hadn't been useful. In fact it was hugely popular. I recall that everyone used it back in the days when I first went online. Then along came Google in 1998 - the first really effective search engine. By the end of the century searchers had mainly shifted from directories to search engines. [Definition of search engine = a search tool created from an algorithm operating on a index created by spidering the Web.] Both directories and search engines have their pros and cons. Search engines score highly on ease of use. They are scalable with the Web. Indexing can find content buried deep in websites. No wonder then that they have overtaken directories. Still they have some problems. Spam is too easily insinuated into the index, and very hard to fight. Plus search intention is not always clear. Search engines cannot know, if you type 'jaguar' in a search box, whether you mean the animal, the car or the video game. So the future of search may lie in combining the advantages of the two types of tool. Google Co-op is one such experiment.
I think that Googles main aim with coop is to, in time, provide an addtional source of data to use in ranking searches. And yes the data will be much useful for that purpose than that provided by traditional directories.
Neb, I have stayed silent for a long, long time, but have been reading some of the threads on here, and your comment has made me feel like commenting. You speak very wisely, in my opinion. I hope you can help make a difference. True change can not come from maintaining a status quo. Things have to be challenged in a positive way in order to make that difference significant enough. Good luck to you.
I think it's nifty, too. And it just goes to show you that if you take it seriously, and invest the time to do a good job of it, it is noticed. I warmly recommend it If you, or anyone else for that matter, have an interest in a topic that you feel would be a worthwhile addition to the Google Co-Op, send me a PM. I will be a pleasure for me to guide you through the process to the best of my abilities.
I would like to add that it is set up in a way that makes site review extremely efficient, and spot on. You can create a larger body of information, in a much shorter amount of time, than editing at the ODP. To outline: (1) No descriptions to write. (2) Wildcards are of the utmost importance in segregating groups of related webpages within a site. (3) A relevance value is assigned to each URL/wildcard, from -1 to 1. For instance a site that sells a few widget parts, and is famous for its large selection of widget software, can have domain.com/parts* rating as "0.4" and domain.com/software* rating as "1.0" etc. It does have the fingerprints of having been designed by search engineers.