Don't believe the BS that you hear from DMOZ editors. Spam is unsolicited email, when some one send you an email without you asking for it and it lands in your inbox. Submission is a process that you are an active part in (the most important part) and have full control over what is submitted and if you like to accept it or not. 99% of rubbish submissions can be rejected by simple scripts without any need of human intervention. The reason that DMOZ does not implement these scripts or other improvements is because the editors are happy with status quo and give them an excuse when they do not want to include their competition or make the directories full with their own site. Spam when is used by DMOZ editors is just a myth like Boogeyman or Bigfoot.
I've seen loads during quality control checks - but they were easily fixed . I've even made a few clickthroughs myself when guidelines compliant entries were suggested - maybe 5 or 6 in some 32,000 total edits.
As a former editor myself, I have to disagree in spirit while saying that if we go with the dictionary definition, you may be right. Editors have to deal with massive amounts of submissions that involve subtle redirects, framed sites with fake URLs, sites that change after being accepted, hundreds of sites submitted by the same people (in the Autos section, you'll see a lot of this - "sub-sites" or identical sites with different names covering each and every brand, e.g. toyotaparts.com, dodgeparts.com, etc. Note that these URLs are made up and may for all I know be part of real, legitimate business). A lot of these get accepted by newer editors or those who only have a tiny section and don't realize that myacurapartsstore.com is but one of thousands of URLs which lead to the same site that has no actual content. In my experience the commercial areas get MUCH more spam - I mean useless sleazy duplicated machine-generated submissions designed to point visitors to sites of extremely dubious merit - but the enthusiast areas get their share as Mr. my[fillintheblank]partsstore.com figures out that it's easier to open acuraforums.net through yugoforums.net (again, if these are real URLs, I apologize to the owners, assumign they're legit). The end result is that I'd bet in the rec/autos/models/toyota/ category there are currently 50 sites awaiting review of which a handful may be "real" (unduplicated, noncommercial content that's suitable for that category). One of them is of course my own toyoland.com, awaiting entry since 2002 and no doubt condemned to wait forever (since not all editors are as thick-skinned and/or understanding as some of the good people who post here). BTW I still think that when sites (and for that matter editors) are rejected, an explanation of why would be nice. Openness is a good counter to abuse. Editors do make mistakes, and sites do have moments when they go down or don't work properly. A javascript error at the wrong time can lead to a site's permanent exclusion.
Davert Everything that you said is about submissions and as I mentioned before most of these problems can be detected by submission scripts and deleted before ever reaching a human editor. But in order to do that, it must exist a will to improve and correct the process that DMOZ lacks and that is the reason I say SPAM is just a Boogeyman of DMOZ.
Well... perhaps. How would a script be set up to do that? Can a script tell the difference between the awful ad-fulness of anything on yahoo, say, and a content-free site? Or to figure out when a site is cookie-cutter like other submitted sites, without requiring terabytes of storage space?
No they don't. When they become bitter and angry and weird they can quit and move on with their lives.
1- Scripts can detect multiple submissions of the same site. 2- Scripts can disallow sub-domains or submission of internal page of domain (after all is directory not search engine) 3- Scripts can detect the same IP and mark the domains. 4- Script can detect sites that are down too many times and not reliable. 5- Scripts can detect frames and if the source is listed. 6- Scripts can detect redirect. 7- Scripts can detect the number of known affiliate links 8- Script can detect the size of content in page 9- Scripts can detect the number of pages on the site 10- Script can send out, monthly email and ask users to confirm that they are still interested to be listed. 11- Script can gather information from whois 12- Scripts can give statue on submission, so people do not submit again by mistake or because they don't know what is happening. After the scripts have taken away the unnecessary sites, human editors can sort the submission by the above factors to make inform decisions, visit the site and in a matter of minutes decide to add it or not. SPAM is just another name for Boogeyman in DMOZ.
Good list gworld! Lots of errors though... DMOZ allows hundreds of duplicate submissions from some sites. Not my site. Not your site. Some sites. Subdomains are allowed under some circumstances. Like, Geocities! This would break on shared hosting sites where hundreds of customers are hosted on one IP address. Yes. I dunno. I dunno. Known? Keep an affiliate link database? Wait... what the heck is wrong with affiliate links? Affiliate links are what has built the web. But not good content. Are you suggessting that the script crawl the site, or that the script query Google/Yahoo/MSN/whatever? That sounds like an excellent idea! Except... it would just remind people that their sites have been in the queue for several years. 'ya lost me. Collect this data and do what with it? That must be the #1 request -- and the DMOZ folks have not even gotten to #1 yet. In fact, they refuse to get to #1. Hell, they don't even send an e-mail saying "Your submission has been received." YES. And, to a DMOZ editor, everyone is the boogeyman.
Generally I agree with Will Spencer's arguments. Getting info from whois is a good idea - it could presumably say which other sites the same person/company owns. though it would take a week or two for people to figure out a way around that. An affiliate link *ratio* might be nice. But along with the content requirement, the lots-of-fake-sites people would easily be able to counter that. I will say that these filters would still get rid of hundreds or thousands of submissions per week. I guess one could do something like Eve, the program that supposedly checks for plagiarism, by randomly taking phrases from the site (that are unlinked) and checking Google for them to find a "unique" index. That could be used as one piece of info by a human editor but I'd hate to leave a machine in charge of deleting sites it sees as non-unqiue. I have encountered a few bouts of plagiarism and would hate to have my site deleted because someone else copied it! Detecting frames and redirects, if possible, would be a great idea and would help.
it was meant as a joke . Google have said for a while that they remove all link benefit from an expired domain. I thought that was common knowledge
I know the DMOZ editors list their sites multiple times but my post was about IF DMOZ decides to correct the situation. That's a big IF since I believe present situation is too beneficial for editors. Sub-domains and internal page link should not be allowed since this is a directory and not search engine. If some one has a remotely useful site, I think that person should be able to spend $20/year for web hosting and not use free server like geocities, so that can be simple rule, no sites from free servers. This does not need to be an automatic removal system but more of information gathering phase for a decision system. If you get 50 submission in one category and all have the same IP address, don't you think it deserves to be looked at more closely? The whois gathering serves the same purpose, many sites with same owner and in same category. There is nothing wrong with affiliate links but if you have a page with 2 sentence and 10 affiliate link, I don't think this site will be very useful for directory users. You can count the number of pages in the site, not index the content, one page web sites usually are not very useful as resource. One of DMOZ editors has hundreds of one page door way sites listed in DMOZ. With correct decision system, the procedure for accepting or declining a site will be very fast, but I don't think that what DMOZ editors wish for.
There are also some sites which are not listed by editors but are "approved" so that each relevant section of the site ends up in a relevant section of dmoz - like if my car site's individual-model pages were used in each individual-model dmoz section instead of being listed (or not!) under the manufacturer. that has a HUGE impact I suspect.
gworld, the way you say this sounds like you know it to be fact and not merely speculation. If this is true I sure would appreciate it if you'd either file an abuse report or contact me directly either via pm or my editor feedback. There's no good reason to let any editor get away with abuse!
1) Is every one at ODP sleeping or just don’t care about running a business 2) its rather rude to submit a site and 1 year later not even get a response talk about an attitude 3) There are broken links in ODP and you telling me you’re looking out for the true internet surfer how is that? 4)don’t you think after waiting 1 year you would get a response I mean even if it said your website is trash I would rather have that then nothing 5) I think ODP is ran more like a bunch of friends or a click and in order to get in you need to be part of that click 6) You say you don’t have enough editors well if you would except some people that want to help and not keep it all with in your friends you may have a chance to make it better for surfers instead of what is better for editors
I think the answer is somewhere in between these perspectives... I do wonder about how one becomes a meta editor, though I suspect it has to do with length of service, quantity of edits, and quality of edits - and that early joiners had a real advantage as dmoz grew... There was another directory somewhere that made it very clear, with "civil service tests" and such...can't recall the name but it had a clear entry-level position for people to work under supervision... Multiple instances of the same site *are* permitted under dmoz rules as I recall, though this is a judgement call. A car review site could conceivably have hundreds of listings!
But don’t you think that’s rude? to not get a response in over a year ? Talk about some one taking a long nap i mean i would think no matter how big you get you never want a bad word of mouth ?
Oh, God save us from another DMOZ editor here. May I ask how long you have been an editor? If you still believe in what you posted, you must be new or naive. I have been asked this questions by other editors before also and as soon as they see the proof, they will run or start giving different excuses. What are you going to do if it is true and you can't do anything about it because of people higher than you in DMOZ, just keep quite and continue or quit? The abuse reporting of DMOZ is one of biggest joke on the Internet. Anyway, here is the link to my previous posting, it is post#104. doorway web sites
Unfortunately annie - people dont file such claims because the general perception is that they are routinely ignored and some are even worried about retribution. I know I would probably not say much out of fear of having my sites pulled from DMOZ True or not - thats the general perception.
I believe Annie is a meta with many thousand edits. The only ones higher up than metas are staff, which is only a handful of people and they mainly stick to backend administration of the site and servers. Later, Rob PS- Annie is a hardass when it comes to quality control...she has dotted many of my i's and crossed many of my t's, so to speak. So if she says she will check out the abuse accusation...she WILL.