Shoemoney gets extorted by corrupt DMOZ editor for $5000

ROFL. Of course... no doubt the same reason I give significantly better advice on matters of psychology than those whose opinion is tainted by years of training and experience.
---------------
Gworld - You want a serious non-trolling answer... I'll take your word and give it one shot.

Funny you should ask if editors take part in serious outside discussions regarding abuse or structural methods of curbing it. I just spent a few days doing that in an adult webmaster forum. See http://www.justblowme.com/showthread.php?t=78965 . I even ignored some flames I'd usually go after to TRY and keep the discussion on track.

I told 'em up front I am not a big fan of the Adult section and if they'd just point me to a cat where the abuse was in progress instead of tossing impossible to verify vague allegations I'd consider it a thrill to fix the problems and pass the note on for the staff to kindly pull someone's plug.

I even mentioned some of the structural methods we used to eliminate the potential for spam in Regional RE cats, but my experience in Adult/ is too limited to make off the cuff recommendations how they might do the same. I've always preferred they just nuke the whole thing after bringing over sites that have value to anyone but the terminally horny, but until I'm promoted to Lord of ODP my whims don't carry that kind of weight.

One at least made an attempt to get me to a source of corruption half full of 404s and the other half owned by the same person... the resident editor. Apparently the individual felt there was an editor as competitor that'd nuked a bunch of his/her sites. I checked it out, and there wasn't a resident editor, there was one 404 and one redirect (I put them back in unreviewed), and as far as I checked I never found common ownership, not that it is always immediately visible as you know.

Two of the sites the poster thought had been nuked were in the directory in a spot they hadn't looked, the others had no sign of having been in and had no adverse notes on them. The individual had not been targeted, of that I'm certain. I at least appreciated 'em giving something concrete to check, but it was a dry hole.

I finally bowed out of the thread when it became obvious nobody had any intention of offering up a real example and all it was going to do was degenerate into little sporadic flamewars. They blew it... I really DID go in for the purpose I stated because I grow tired of hearing about such problems and hoped to take part in the fix, but it was just a bunch of "me-too" posts just like the people that bought Shoemoney's story... they believed it because they wanted to, not because they had a shred of proof.

I'll add that I have no desire to make a similar attempt in this forum for the reasons in the paragraph below.

If this forum were populated by people like Annie and Dogbows who have extensive experience and don't spend their days grinding an axe, I might see hope for such discussions here. Until DP decides they want that, every attempt to discuss any topic will be diverted to the gripe du jour of a fairly small group dedicated to changing every topic to "ODP sucks because..." These will be countered by the same few editors that have grown tired of the smears, and the thread will look like all the rest.
------------
And that's about three more posts than I intended to make in DP until their moderators (if they exist) put their foot down and decide to muzzle persistent trolls so this forum can actually have some value besides a convenient place to flame. I've been a moderator before, and if they have one here I sure hope they aren't paying 'em. All IMO... YMMV.

Regards - Rob Jones

btw - Annie. I told Chuck to give you a hug for me.

 

The Goaul'd. Theres so many of them and have snakes in the neck. Anubis, Apophis, Ra, Hathor.

 

That is the difference between this forum and DMOZ official and non-official forums, they don't muzzle everyone who doesn't support official party line.
It was a nice story about you participating in that forum but removing one editor here and there would not solve any problem, names changes but the story will be the same. The problems in DMOZ are not limited to adult section and any category with a hint of commercial interest suffers the same problems more or less. Only a change in DMOZ procedures which closes all the loopholes for the possibility of corruption and abuse will fix these problems but the question is with a long history of such abuses and editor culture that is used to side benefits if there can ever be a community will for the change or is the change only possible by forcing AOL to make the changes for ODP.

 

Well done Julian you have completed a whole post without your usual rhetoric.

And you are right, not only would a more transparent system make it harder for abuse to go undetected it would also reduce unsubstantiated accusations of abuse. I think you are being a little unrealistic in saying that all abuse would be removed, look at Wikipedia, they have their share of abusers and they are about as open as you could be.

I think that much of the ODP’s secrecy has limited benefit and that that there has been no serious examination of the benefits and risks of being more open. You talk of “the culture” and there is a distinct culture within the ODP of which the desire for secrecy and a resistance to change are two notable features. And again you are right if AOL does not force change it will not happen.

I would strongly disagree that the culture tolerates "side benefits" however you are correct in that there are a significant number of editors whose motivation for joining is such, and it is not inconceivable that a number of these have risen in the ranks undetected.

 

Yes but anyone can fight abuse anywhere even anonymous users can easily revert someones spamming attempts and constant editing ensures that even successful spamming attempt won't stay hidden for long, I run into some nice cases where links to real websites got replaced by MFA junk with similar url but most don't survive minutes unlike DMOZ where junk links can remain listed for years since editors who have editing rights never visit that category or in case of World categories there are no longer editors who understands particular language.

(OTOH I know cases in which crusading admin targeted perfectly honest and useful websites which had misfortune of their own popularity brining them many links at same time while deleting these links admins skips dozens of total spam/junk links - someone evil might say he was removing competition )

Even if AOL tried to force change it would probably be meet with fury of protests from remaining editors and would have to back down, it would probably best way to do it over night in absolute secrecy so that by the time it has happened editors find out about if from dashboard notice.

 

Is it possible to stop all corruption and abuse? We don't know since there can always be a case which is not detected, the same as there is possible that there is no such case. Should we stop trying to do this? The simple answer is no. I think a good example is case of bank robbery. Do you think that people don't rob banks because they are honest or because of the bank security which makes it difficult? Do Banks stop their security because some bank robberies happens? No, they constantly improve it and make sure that bank robbery as a crime is one of the lowest paid crimes.
The more important question here is why editors who supposedly edit for their pleasures are against any kind of real lock and key on the doors and instead insist that show us a bank robber and we will punish him while fighting any real security measure.
Why is it that secrecy, paranoia and stagnation is encouraged while no one can make a real case why this secrecy is necessary and what benefit is to the directory? We either have to believe that many in senior position just love secrecy, paranoia and stagnation for no good reason since this is a nature of a mankind or they benefit from it. I adopt for the second alternative.