new dmoz announcement (no longer accepting status checks)

You and me both Minstrel, and sorry to have missed the 'extinction' comment

 

The reason that this is not sufficient is that the people have lost faith in the editors.

What you are, in effect, saying is "Have faith in us, we workin secret, but we know what we are doing."

Unfortunately, the DMOZ editors as a group have shown consistently that they are completely incompetent and untrustworthy.

Too bad there is no FOIA or Sunshine Laws for DMOZ.

This merely made the problem worse, because it let the peasants get near the tower -- and the DMOZ royalty leisurely pelted them with rotten vegetables.

So yes, RZ let us "interact" with the Gods -- if by interacting you mean that we were able to be spit on more effectively.

Before RZ, we submitted web sites and they sat in queues being ignored. After RZ, being ignored was replaced with being insulted and ignored.

Such an improvement! Probably not what was intended. But you know what they say about the road to hell...

The corruption of any single DMOZ editor is important only for his or her soul.

The corruption of the system is what is important.

The system is terribly designed and cannot be fixed from within.

For the record, I do believe you. I believe that the incompetents running DMOZ stare at user suggestions like a group of Neanderthals staring at fire.

I've spoken to them about areas in which I am an unquestioned expert, such as IT security. They failed to grasp the most simple concepts and dismissed my attempts to educate them because...

"You are not a DMOZ editor, so you obviously don't know what you are talking about."

Nice.

 

This is the key:

Well said, Will.

 

Far from it, Will. I'm not asking anyone to have faith in anyone. I am merely talking about what I have seen in the internal fora when suggestions have been made by non-editors, that's all. I was also recording the fact that some were put into action (with limited success), and many, many received very serious consideration. A statement was made that suggestions weren't listened to at all, and I was just pointing out what I have seen when suggestions have been made.

Yes, I know that that is the opinion of most of the SEOs and webmasters that post to this forum, and others. I can see how you could come to the conclusion you have.

I agree with you completely, it made the problem worse. While it may have helped some people understand what the ODP is about in ways that editors wanted to happen, it also helped others to reaffirm their negative opinions on the ODP and its editors.

So now we get rid of the insults, at least from the side of the editors. (There were enough insults flying from both sides in this one) We tried something we had been asked to do - it didn't work. So move on.

No, not what was intended, but probably inevitable, yes.

One other comment to another poster - it is only the submission status requests that have stopped, not the checks about editor applications - I don't do those, but I know they continue.

 

I must say this, Alucard:

I am well known I think as someone who has zero faith in DMOZ and who has stated frequently that I believe the concept upon which DMOZ was founded is fundamentally flawed and doomed to failure. As you know, I have also been highly critical of the attitude and behavior of the majority of the DMOZ editors who appear in public and on whose behavior the rest of the world judges DMOZ.

That said, I commend you for these last two posts. They are direct, honest, and straightforward, at least as I read them. They contain none of the arrogance and hogwash that I've come to see as characteristic of most posts by DMOZ editors.

Thanks.

 

He must be a new editor.

 

Whoever he is, it's a refreshing change...

To clarify, I'm not saying I agree with him and this doesn't alter my opinion about the status and eventual fate of DMOZ whatsoever, but I think I needed to give the guy credit...

 

**My $0.02

Ive never really liked dmoz much anyway, i only ever really submitted to them because every person i asked and every forum i went on recommended a dmoz link and since i was new to the game i thought it was a good idea but after months of waiting ive moved on

 

A quick trip to http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.plymouthcricketclub.com/ shows that your site from oct 2003 to mar 2004 was frame based and no googable keywords. From mar 2004 to sep 2004 it was a landing page at the isp. So, for all intents and purposes, google thinks your site started in sept 2004. There was little keyword rich text in the first page or two of html code in the sept 2004 page in the archive, unlike the current page which has lots of goggle crunchies near the top. I can't tell when you changed to the current, well layed out format, but many suggest that that would be the start date for your crawl out of the sandbox.

The geocities site was first archived in august of 2000. There is plenty of keyword rich content in the first few thousand bytes on their site.

They may be stale but they have a heck of an age advantage on you and you were likely to be sandboxed if you like that term or longevity impaired if you prefer it instead.

I don't know how much or little a dmoz entry would have in your case. Frankly, I see no reason your current site would not qualify for entry if you were to apply now.

 

True, but eventually they will be halted if history repeats itself. My contention is that the whole "asking if I am approved" process is the problem. There should be a status system in place, or at the very least some automated reporting that keeps people in the loop. DMOZ is not doing any potential editor any favors mind you by allowing them to be accepted into the collective. We are volunteering our time and expertese in a given category, and to put forth the effort to do so only to wait months to get an answer is pretty lame.

Ultimately the solution is a more timely approval process, say, 48 hours. Think about it, if it did not take so long to approve or deny submissions and editor requests, there would not be so many people asking the status of said submissions.

 

Your DMOZ?

NIN

 

Sometimes I still feel that way.

 

Well, that's exactly right - AUTOMATED REPORTING.

I had to go through an editor on THIS site to find out why http://www.acarplace.com/ wasn't listed. Even he didn't have the full story because I had resubmitted, and that didn't show up in the history.

A way to complain about editors' abusive behavior other than PM on RZ would be nice too. And that isn't effective - that part was ignored and "there's no reason why your site shouldn't be listed, wait a few more years for someone to do it" (paraphrased) was the response along with "who gave you that information?" (I don't want to be part of an editor blacklisting so I didn't answer that one...not that I know the editor's screen name anyway.)

DMOZ serves a very useful function but I think democracy has taught us a few things:
1) Light assures competence. Darkness assures abuse.
2) When most people you meet are criminals, innocent people seem like criminals.
3) If you don't have enough staff, allow more people to volunteer - perhaps in randomly assigned categories to avoid abuse.

And ...

Why is there no status checking system for outsiders? Why, after submitting a site, do I not have access to the same history file that editors do? Then I could appeal bad decisions or see status...and for that matter compare status of my site to others to see if it was being "selectively ignored." I'd pay $50 for an appeal.

 

Yikes! Not a good idea... the way DMOZ works, ALL sites would be initially rejected to collect the appeal fee

 

"Works"? Isn't that being a bit generous?

 

This falls under the "ODP is not a listing service for webmasters. It is a resource for surfers." rebutle. The ODP does not care about making webmasters happy by listing their sites, and/or giving them the service of notification of acceptance/rejection, and the service of allowing debate over the reasons of a site's acceptance/rejection.

I do agree that some kind of automated email should be sent for submition varification, (this would serve to purposes. 1. help reduce spammers 2. let submitters know that their submittion was recieved)

I do agree that an automatic courtesy email should be sent when a site is approved.

But I will stand behind the agrument that by sending an email notifing a submitter of their site's rejection is only asking for trouble. It will cause long agruments (as seen in RZ). It will casue more re-submissions of rejected sites that will only waste the editors' time.


As far as the agrument I have seen in these forums about "Dmoz has so much influence on a site's success that all websites should be listed to be fair and not give an advantage to one persons site over another person's"

If I was to start a directory (not a billboard advertising site) and it grew to over 4 million sites and the search engines took notice and started weighing websites based on being in my directory or not, it is still my directory and I will list only sites I feel are quality. And I would sooner close down my directory than beforced into listing every crappy website on the internet (just to be fair to all webmasters throughout the world). The directories are created because of an idea for a project and that idea should not have to change to please those that have a website of poor quality or questionable practices. There are many other directories out there that will not list these sites and there are many directories that will list any site submitted (and incase you haven't noticed, the directories list every website that comes along are usually banned/or penilized by search engines. They are called link farms)

Now for the cases of "Real" editor abuse (not accusations by a disgruntled webmaster). Unfortunatly it happens when many of the editors are also webmasters and some of them seem to think by abusing ODP they will have an advantage over their competitors. Yes they may have an advantage with number of backlinks. But a well designed and good quality website will still make more money even not being listed in ODP. Search results are based on keywords which a well optimaized site will return better than a crappy site with an "abusive" ODP anchor link.

An ODP listing would be nice, but it is not a nessecity to web success.

By the way- if you see editor abuse (not just his site is listed but mine isn't.) report it through the "report abuse/spam" link on the top right hand corner of every page throughout the ODP.


Later,
Rob

 

A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Good one... "resource for surfers"

I think you meant "resource for editors", didn't you?

Who the hell uses DMOZ to find anything?

 

Interesting and typical DMOZ comment -- I would expect that most cases of "real editor abuse" involve either ego or attempts to block competitors from being listed in the "directory" -- wouldn't you expect the victims of that "real editor abuse" to be a little disgruntled?

 

As said, this is the rebutle always used to argue the debates about "you should list my site becuase you listed my competitors' sites.

The ""ODP is not a listing service for webmasters. It is a resource for surfers." is what the ODP was founded on, and is supposed to still be based on.

The abusive editors that have come and gone and some that might be there now, have changed the ODP's mission to suit their own agenda. But quality control (although sometimes slow and seemingly worthless) does try to search out the abusers and correct the problems.

Later,
Rob

 

Hey I did Once!.

Google serps were so bad in that keyword