I'd like hear some thoughts on service that provided a list of DMOZ categories that show signs of life. The list could show categories that have been updated in the last month or quarter. The list would allow a submitter to pick an active category to submit to and increase likelihood of getting listed. I believe most sites might fit into more than one category so giving submitters some visibility as to where their chances are better would be helpfu. Without the list, he might submit to a category that has submissions from over a year ago while an equally valid category may have an editor that would edit and list with in hours or days. Some might argue that submitters wouldn't pick the best matched category and would overload an active category but I would guess active categories would be up to date so additional submissions would be welcomed. Quality control is still in the hands of the editors. (Some might be asking how this could be done, here's one way: scrape, wait, scrape, compare, publish list. It is actually similiar to what archive.org does where it shows an * by sites that had updates.) I think it would be a win-win for DMOZ, active editors, submitters, and users of the directory. What do you think?
And the editor would send the site to the correct category and it would end up in exactly the same place as it would have if it had been submitted correctly in the first place. Or the editor would get pissed on with some dufus submitting to the wrong category and just delete the site. Where do you guys get these ideas from?
There are sites that are listed under multiple categories. If I was submitting a youth soccer team in my area I could submit it to: Sports: Soccer: CONCACAF: United States: Youth: Clubs and Teams: California or Regional: North America: United States: California: Localities: M: Mission Viejo: Recreation and Sports or a number of others. If I submit it to the wrong one it can sit there for a year or more, if I submit it to the active one some parent might find a link tonight and find a great club to play with. You would wise to not view the directory as your little kingdom and view those from outside as dufus(s) because they don't have the unwritten tribal knowledge. There is not necessarily one correct category for each site and there are many sites not listed because they sit submitted in unmaintained categories. Now do you see how the present condition can generate ideas? If an editor gets "pissed" or mad over subjective decisions of submitters, should they be editors?
Much easier than that: The information on last category update and on editor-listed-for-category is contained in the structure.rdf.u8.gz file. See the example file http://rdf.dmoz.org/rdf/structure.example.txt (the example file is more than three years old but the format has remained the same.) Look at the <lastUpdate> and <editor r:resource=... tags. The information would be pretty useless to submitters, though, for the reasons nebuchadrezzar gave. If your suggestion is quickly reviewed in the wrong category it means, at best, that it is quickly forwarded to the right category.
That's another way to do it. I am not sure what it would take to use a single XML file with the entire directory in it, it's a huge file. My first choice wouldn't be to spider the site or parse a large XML file but they are both options amongst several ways to do it. Are you denying that some submissions sit in unreviewed categories for a year or more (either submitted there or moved there)? I think the data would suggest otherwise.
If you are submitting to cats that the site genuinely can fit into, it may be that it does fit them all. In your example " Sports: Soccer: CONCACAF: United States: Youth: Clubs and Teams: California or Regional: North America: United States: California: Localities: M: Mission Viejo: Recreation and Sport" It looks to me that your site can be listed in both. Usually if there is a speciifc topical category for a local organisation, it gets listed in both regional and topical. Scouting sites can be listed both ion locality and topical ie Scouting. Same for football teams. In which case submit to both, often, but not always category descriptions will tell you in say "Sports: Soccer: CONCACAF: United States: Youth: Clubs and Teams: California" to also submit to regional, but it depends on who wrote the cat desc. Sometimes sites will fit in three categories, but the dual listing I talked about above is more reasonable ie topical and regional. The problem comes when someone submits to the same category either many times or just tries the categories below or above with multiple submissions. If your site genuinely seems to fit then submit and the editors will decide. When an editor looks at any site they know where else the site is listed and if there is two similar cats in a tree and the site is listed in one category then the editor will note "Adequately listed" and delete.
A list of active directories would curtail the number of resubmissions in the same category as sites would be listed more quickly. If I am editing the Mission Viejo sports category, I would list the site before they resubmitted it because I would get it done in a reasonable time period.
You must keep in mind that with all the apparent flaws in DMOZ the better majority of sites that are not listed are not listed for good reason (they suck). Look at the various threads here asking why "my site wasn't listed" and you may notice that the majority of them are have a load of dead links or copy/pasted content. Neither of which are supposedly allowed within the directory. I'm not knocking your idea though, I think that any and all suggestions have potential, and should be reviewed accordingly (which I only half-assed read it). I'm just trying to make sure we all know that it's only as half as bad as it seems
The bad sites tend to self sort themselves into categories like web hosting, ringtones, mesothelioma, V1&gr@, directories, and anything else that show in the "best paying Adsense niches" threads. If we ignore the above and help the kind of sites that should be in the ODP than that would help ODP correct?
porn, travel, real state.. those categories could be drastically cut down without losing anything of value but as the saying goes thats where the money is so anyone touching does will probably be removed problem is that instead separating junk categories from rest of DMOZ everything is kept together and treated the same so applying as editor for porn or Kazakhstan culture category you will be looked upon as spammer looking to list your worthless website at magnificent dmoz
Firstly 'straight' resubmissions simply overwrite the one there and go to the bottom of the list and if the site has been deleted or moved to another category queue resubmissions make it look more and more like spam and likely to be treated as such. So resubmitting merely gets one a bad name, one way or another. But why would saying which cat is active help. Would that stop people from submitting? If its the right cat then people would submit to the wrong one and that would cause more chaos, as it would be moved to the category marked inactive. But what makes a category inactive? No submissions or no new listings, it may be there are no new sites. If one did this it would have to work right across the directory. So in a small village in regional, often no new submissions and no new sites. It gets marked inactive, but it isn't, it just needs some submissions. So which categories get marked and which don't. No would not work. If you are editing, well if so then you will know the issues and if you are speculating, because you are not an editor, that you would list them in good time, what a fine assertion when you do nothing. Easy to criticise what others do in their spare time, when you don't spend you spare time doing it. And if you are up to it, then you can volunteer. And if we had millions of editors they could all have a small local category, but it don't work like that.
They are called admins but since DMOZ importance is in decline, they are too busy spamming wiki right now to care that much about ODP.