ODP report for January 2006. It includes a brief mention of the fact that MSN Search is using Dmoz descriptions now in some cases. [Edited to add] Sorry. I should have given a link to the previous thread on the ODP report for 2005: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=52879
Hmm, didn't know the Open Directory project was so... umm 'open' that they actually give some sort of feedback about something.
Unfortunately the first example was telling the world that the directory includes forum sites aimed at child molestors and rapists. And how to get adverts for phone sex sites listed in Adult galleries. Not bad at all. But it is only just back at the level of 7 December. And since robozilla hasn't run since then it is headed for a big fall again. Given the absolute crap I have found in virtually every category I have randomly looked at since mid-December I'd like to know where the quality has improved. Robozilla removes dead links. It doesn't remove hijacks, redirects, affiliates, unmaintained sites that are now useless, phone sex adverts, and pedophile forums and chats. Continuing downward trend. Keeping on putting it down to "the volunteer character of the editor community" when the figure is now just 7669 seems complacent in the extreme, or spin. Like last month's report January follows the same pattern of publishing stats that don't actually show ODP in a good light. If it is to be of any use it has to address serious issues and arrive at honest conclusions.
That decline in editor numbers equates to approximately 2%. However there has been a net loss of 2% of the editall/meta editors over the last couple of weeks and that doesn't bode well either. That is twice the rate of losses of all editors in January. These are the editors who do the vast bulk of the editing and in the case of metas approve new editors too. If that trend continues at the same rate then they will be at half their present numbers within the next 12 months. Why would that trend continue? 25% of this, the most productive group, have not logged in at any point in February so far. And that includes nearly 20% of all meta editors.
On the other side, those editall/meta that will still be in DMOZ, will have no problem to recruit new editors from pedophile forums that agree with their "AFFIRMATIVE VIEW".
The more we learn about who is actually making/controlling the decisions within DMOZ, the more I understand why one by one the best are leaving...
I think this is important: Some DP'ers have noticed dmoz descriptions in MSN search recently. This explains it.
If this bothers you then I recommend that you keep the shower on at all times. The scary part is; the editors that see nothing wrong with listing "AFFIRMATIVE VIEW" web sites, also have access to kid and teens sections of DMOZ.
/nod My site has changed over to the DMOZ description, which I have questions about re: SEO considering DMOZ does not really allow for the keyword of a subject to be in the description field.