DMOZ looks more and more like a ponzi scheme. haha It's fed by others fooled into thinking it's important.
Noone here is speaking on behalf of DMOZ. There are some people here who ar DMOZ editors but they can only speak on behalf of themself. As far as I know at this moment there is only one person that can make official statements about DMOZ and he is not posting on forums like DP.
I think it was clear from his posting that it was DMOZ editors, what did you think that he was pissing on?
As searching on Google can be hit and miss, so using DMOZ can also be hit and miss. It is good for student research on many subjects, very good for picking out sites for health related issues - our cancer categories are superb and I have used those for personal reasons, and whilst patchy the Regional categories can be very good to give you a starting point on most cities and towns. And for finding online craft shops it is truly excellent. In other areas its use is dubious - 25000 web service businesses have to be organised by alphabet and who specifically wants a web designer whose name begins with T. But if you want an original, not an affiliate hotel booking service you'll find the originals in DMOZ. Most of the traffic to the data will go through Google and AOL clones. And one or two others. Alexa, which also uses DMOZ data, ranks DMOZ as 214 in traffic independently - http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=www.dmoz.org/ - which is not bad at all.
I understand, he has said so elsewhere. I welcome his constructive comments even if I don't agree with many of them, but no-one on either side will volunteer constructive comments if they are continually flaming one another. I disagree, it is sending angry people after us who we have failed to communicate to properly that we are not what they think we are - a listing service for webmasters. If we understand where that anger is coming from we can start to make inroads into solving the problem by being clearer. Excluding the few true trolls most people, even angry people, will listen to reasonable points. They may disagree but at least they then understand where DMOZ is coming from.
If brizzie's standards impressed you, you should copy them - look back over the post you originally made and your continuing refusal to address concerns about the truth of what you're saying, how you know these facts, etc. I'm not using the kindest words and I'm probably pressing the case more strongly than is polite, but that's just vocabulary; on the other hand you're just weaseling out of proving your points by just attacking my posting style. I've never spoken on DMOZ' behalf, either. My posts are my own personal views on the matter. DMOZ would indeed be crazy to let an editor as new as me be official spokesman! There are far better spokespeople here than me. All I'm doing here is trying to sort out for myself the chaff from the wheat in the many criticisms of DMOZ we see here every day. I'm more than happy to accept valid criticism of DMOZ. That's for example why I was happy when the thread starter said he could prove his criticisms with screenshots - sadly he was only here to grandstand and has since left). The ODP needs to understand and take onboard and respond to criticisms from outside; it's a perspective which by definition we don't have. I understand that from my postings or those of editors at RZ, it looks like we're not keen to understand or hear these criticisms. This is a facet of the bad image problem, which I probably contribute to by refusing to tread gently when I see someone making a criticism about something that isn't even true, and that when asked how they 'know' it, all they can answer is 'because it's true'. I'm not sure if it's childish or arrogant to believe your own imagination overrides fact; either way, it's just adding chaff to the debate, and diluting the efforts of other true DMOZ critics which I have nothing but respect for. The ones who have respect for the adversary and don't dismiss them as not even worthy of backing up the points they make.
Interesting I made my comments about DMOZ a number of pages back and last week the site got a visit from an editor.. hmm to remove my six million year old submission or to accept my submission, or maybe just to chill out reading my travel news - interesting all the same
I just liked that post so I quoted it here if someone doesn't wants to spend 1 hour of reading 20 pages.
My, discussion gets heated around here. I've no intention of engaging in any of the mudslinging - just want to add my personal observations. I joined ODP as an editor about a year ago. Initially I edited in a non-commercial area, and have since branched out to contribute in a wide swath of the directory, including commercial, competitive, and yes, spammy categories. In visiting hundreds of categories and seeing thousands and thousands of edits by other editors (yes, they are all there, right for each and every one of us to see), I have seen no evidence of high-level tampering or corruption. I have seen a few cases of lower-level editors editing in a self-serving way in very limited corners of the directory - invariably resulting in their removal. It is also evident beyond a doubt to those who have first-hand experience that the meta community is an extremely principled, high-standard group of people who make every effort to eliminate all inappropriate or corrupt editing. Frankly, to suggest otherwise without presenting any evidence is getting rather old.
Neither... But the only record we have of the submission is time stamped received on 27/November/2005 03:23:05 GMT and it was checked by an editor on 02/December/2005 18:15:34 GMT. Editors do other things when they review sites than approve or reject. Like move to a more appropriate category. Not saying that is what happened here because that would be a status check and it wouldn't be a good idea to set a precedent here. So either your six million year claim is a slight exaggeration or you have been resubmitting and the original has continually been overwritten. Five days to get an editor's attention ain't bad you know!
Has DMOZ really been around that long? I always thought calling DMOZ a dinosaur was just a figure of speech
Actually it received a brief mention a while back, when internal discussions were being posted here. No internal discussion recently, as far as I can tell. ODP-bashing is nothing new, so it doesn't tend to get all that much attention
Cute, but I think that in this case those that cannot see (which would include you, or you would come up with more than mere insinuations) are tops on the blindness scale.
Really? You certainly wouldn't draw that conclusion from DMOZ threads on all the webmaster forums... make a comment about DMOZ and in a day or so there are editors coming out of the cracks in the floor. How did you find this one? Ahh... one of those editors. Did you get lost on the way to the Resourceless Zone again?
I am sure someone in that game being played at the moment will come up with a category not updated in six million years if they look hard enough. I would suggest scanning financial brokerage and online gambling categories.
As I mentioned: the dissemination to the outside of internal forum discussions, which is a much more serious problem than the usual ranting, drew my initial attention. I've just been reading off and on since then. I haven't previously chosen to throw my own statements into the mix in any of those many forums. If I find that I'm not saying anything new, I'll stop. But I figured giving the perspective of an editor in the middle of the ranks (neither a newbie nor a meta) might be helpful. I used to find the Resource Zone mildly amusing, but it gets awfully repetitive. I haven't been there in ages. Stating my bit in a forum that has none of the aura of pro-ODP censorship (I can see how it might come across that way) holds more appeal to me. But how did you get from me suggesting you come up with a sliver of evidence of widespread corruption to a reference to the RZ? If corruption was that widespread, I would see it. Period. I'm not saying I'm an expert at ferreting out corruption (we have others who specialize in that), but I can see fishy business when it's in front of me, and I simply haven't seen it in areas where I edit.
Interesting. Critiques of DMOZ don't interest you. Accusations of corruption don't interest you. But leaking internal DMOZ discussions worries the hell out of you? See your previous post, and then read my quote and reply. If you still don't get it, perhaps I can help...
Critiques (thoughtful opinions from which the one being critiqued can hope to learn something) interest me. Negative rants much less. Accusations of corruption interest me, if corroborated with evidence or at the very least pointers to categories where you think you see corruption. Lacking anything concrete, and given my own experience that suggests there is no widespread abuse, accusations of corruption are just that - accusations. On the other hand, communications in direct violation of promises made as an editor - yes, those bother me. Do they worry me? Not so much, since none of the recent editors (most or all of them now ex-editors) who have thought it interesting to expose such communications could find anything particularly incriminating. But information leaking out that might help spammers circumvent ODP's methods of keeping them out - yeah, I guess I'd find that troublesome - since I'll be among the many volunteers who'll have to spend more time dealing with spam and less with quality sites. Okay, you got me. I still don't get it - please help.