I got rejected from category which had and still has grand total of 7 links, last updated September 25, 2004 and I had three new links to add plus I could have dug another dozen or more (no none of them mine). I could have picked up something boring which I couldn't care less about and added tons of websites but what would be the point of me writing bunch of boring descriptions about thing I neither care nor want to know about? Building missing categories proved to be much simpler method, too bad four of them are stuck in my test folder and nobody cares about them (even though I requested two of them to be moved to proper location just before removal). That would be nice but what if only one senior editor understand the language (and he is not even editall) and he has real life preoccupations? But it is little late for that anyway.
We still lack any kind of proof that any kind of (ab)use did happen and since when does DMOZ Metas decide what is (ab)use at Wikipedia? Last time I've checked they have no jurisdiction there. I had no complaints or warnings received from Wiki Admins - on the contrary I got "permission" to add my link to article which used (only) my site as source and which I have failed to get deleted since it wasn't pure copy/paste. And as I have said what is wrong from getting traffic from Wiki? If you have authority website on certain subject you will get tons of backlinks from Wikipedia (and DMOZ) without doing anything yourself which is the primary case with my website. And I see nothing wrong with listing quality websites at Wiki especially when they can be used as source - best way to hurt spammers is to push them out of SE. Problem I'm seeing now is that by me adding DMOZ link to Wiki they have removed extra links (not added by me) which had existed previously and left only DMOZ link to my former categories which are no longer maintained...
It's a question of attitude - why you are editing - is it to further the project or to further your own interests. Sometimes the two can live happily side by side to mutual benefit. When it appears to be heading too far along the route of self-interest, commercial or non-commercial, then within DMOZ at least metas start to get very nervous. You are obviously passionate about your subject and your website, and are a keen self-publicist when it comes to that site. Your removal may not have had anything to do with abuse per se but to do with that attitude, which is frowned upon. I did say to you before you were removed that I was surprised you were still an editor, and that was just based on your posts here as obviously I can't see your editing record nor your internal forum contributions. The idea of Wikipedia is to collate the sum of human knowledge in an encyclopedic website. It is NOT NOT NOT a means to get backlinks and drive traffic to your site. That is abuse. A link is there to validate the information not a marketing tool. But in your mind you are still seeing it as a method of getting PR and traffic and I strongly suspect that it is that attitude that got you into trouble in DMOZ and will ultimately do the same thing in Wikipedia if you don't watch it. You don't have to actually act abusively, just display an attitude to suggest it is a strong probability.
So what you are saying everything was fine for the first year and a half while I did almost nothing at DMOZ but once I've begun to add websites by the dozens I come under suspicious? No wonder editors are lazy - they don't want to be removed. Why, thank you! I just got e-mail few minutes ago that website World of Photography I'm helping my friend to maintain will be indexed by Croatian National Library (http://www.nsk.hr/) into there Digital Library - too bad I'm only responsible for html and didn't write any text there so I could brag. I have seen nothing in guidelines about editor attitude only about there actions. Would you fire somebody from work just because you don't like his attitude without finding anything wrong in how he does his work? I think you would get sued pretty quickly and his attorney would love it. If your assumptions are correct my removal was in fact illegal since there was nothing to support charge besides few forum posts. But I don't want to get backlinks from Wiki! Articles which are solely based on content from my website will get above me in SE and my site content will no longer be unique and available only at my site. If I wanted to get backlinks I could have copied most of my website to Wiki and I would have something like thousand backlinks which would basically be worthless since Wiki would always get top spot and I would have to settle for being No.2 at best for my own content! If your doing self-promotion Wiki is only useful if article already exists and you can add something unique to it and cite source otherwise your link won't last very long if your only spamming since unlike DMOZ anyone can edit and will remove your junk when he spots it. And as I have said most backlinks I get are add by other users writing articles over which I got no control of, all I can do is fix errors which resulted from my crappy English in my early works and check from time to time to make sure it wasn't vandalized. OTOH Wiki as PR tool could be very useful for fighting spam - when searching for something and you get swamped by spam sites, creating (encyclopedic) article or two (three, four...) with few links to websites with unique and useful content will give Wiki top spot and will pull out those good websites from obscurity caused by spammers, sure it would be much better if all you had to do is link to relevant DMOZ category which would give you all useful links but since most categories are hopelessly outdated...
Is that the reason DMOZ "senior" editors try to get as many as possible back links to DMOZ in wikipedia?
Search for DMOZ at Wiki gives almost 1900 results most of these pages have link to related DMOZ category although most of these were probably add by overzealous editors like me by contrast my website has little over 50 backlinks but there are few more in non-English part (minus Slovenian, Serbian and Croatian which I understand and expanded some stub articles) which I had no idea they existed until I got referrals.
Read the history of fights about DMOZ in Wiki. Didn't you read internal forums? The discussion about DMOZ and Wiki, they want to do the same thing with Google co-op now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links#Links_to_be_used_occasionally A web directory category when deemed appropriate by those contributing to an article, with preference to open directories. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:External_links All the talk seems positive about DMOZ links. Do you have another link where there is some form of controversy over DMOZ links in Wikipedia?
You didn't have a contract of employment with DMOZ and therefore you couldn't sue for unfair dismissal and there was nothing illegal. Besides, such things are subject to US law, not the more socially advanced European laws. For example, if the servers were based in Europe or AOL was a "safe haven" for data protection purposes you would be entitled to get a printout of everything logged against you in the DMOZ secret files. Besides http://dmoz.org/guidelines/accounts.html#removal Inability to function well within the Open Directory community
I don't know about any Wiki fights about DMOZ because I'm not involved with Wiki, but I've listed a lot of Wikipedia articles in DMOZ. Wouldn't it be unnatural for DMOZ to pretend Wiki doesn't exist as a good resource? Wouldn't it be just as unnatural for Wiki to pretend DMOZ doesn't exist? Good sites link to each other, that's the way it's supposed to be, isn't it? Just wondering.
Look at the tak section for DMOZ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Open_Directory_Project DMOZ "senior" editors try to do the same thing that they have done in DMOZ and get control of wiki. There are some DMOZ editors in Joe Ant as senior editors also and now they are aiming for Google co-op. It makes you wonder how can some people be so highly involved in 4 different "volunteer" project and have time to do anything else. Is it possible that being a "senior" editor is a full time job and not "volunteer" work?
What has that got to do with linking to DMOZ from Wiki pages? Absolutely nothing whatsoever. And there are only 3 comments since April. Isn't this paranoia of yours very tiring? The Wiki model is so far removed from the DMOZ one that it would be impossible.
Ivan, just to clarify where you went wrong and why your removal would be within guidelines - "Right now I'm running out of categories to which I can add my site and have to create new ones" was probably where your trouble started.* Followed by lots of references to your progress on updating your URLs, then "Your site is in test folder with note: <snip>" probably sealed your fate - clear and undeniable breach of guidelines and cut and dried grounds for removal. No second chances because of what had preceded in terms of self-interested editing. That isn't to say that was exactly why you were removed, that is all secret of course, but it is why certainly to me and others your removal was inevitable, just a matter of time. * I realise from the this was an attempt at humour. Are you one of those guys that jokes to the airline checkin girl that you have a bomb in your bag? Then wonders why they get 6 months in klink? Same sort of joke to a DMOZ Meta...
It was just a link to the past history and DMOZ editors involvement in wiki. If you are interested only in back links, all the back links that are placed by DMOZ editors to DMOZ speaks by itself and needs no interpretation. It is quite obvious that contrary to DMOZ "senior" editors claim that they don't care about SE placement, they are very concerned about it. Joe ant and Google co-op are also very different but surprisingly you will see the same names, that are or trying to be senior editors in all those sites. As I said before, It seems being "volunteer" is a full time job for some people.
Don't try and paint it as something it isn't. This discussion was about DMOZ links being placed in Wiki. And according to the Wiki policy on external links and the talk page it is acceptable and uncontroversial. Your link was about the Wiki article about the ODP where there was a battle about what that article could/should say about ODP. And it died out a long time ago. According to the Wiki policy on external links and the talk page it is acceptable and uncontroversial. The stated aim of DMOZ is to make a difference and you can't make a difference if the work is invisible. Making DMOZ more visible through links on Wiki seems a sensible policy for the DMOZ project as long as Wiki is OK about that, and it seems they are as there are mutual advantages to be had - saves Wikipedians maintaining loads of links when one to a DMOZ category will do. My concern would be that many DMOZ categories are not as well maintained as they might be and whilst 404's are being dealt with effectively there are too many placeholder and redirect sites. So such linking should only be done where the DMOZ category is up to date. Hedging their bets for the demise of DMOZ maybe. Or maybe they enjoy the volunteer ethos. But there is a difference between being involved in those other projects and the absolute control and paranoid secrecy of the DMOZ upper echelons.
I don't think it's so surprising to see some of the same names. I signed up for Google co-op in the beginning out of curiousity but haven't done anything with it. If I get bored I'll probably go play with it, if not I probably won't. Nothing sinister.
Then you would have been removed long time before I ever got in! Sure you can make up just about anything to justify that and get somebody removed just because you don't like him or simply want to make an example for others only problem is that in my case I get really pissed off when somebody tries to use me as scapegoat. Cutting part of the entire post is simple way to make up false charges against somebody as was used in my warning, when you read entire thread it gives it entirely different meaning: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=1090883#post1090883 Now if my edit recorded wasn't 450+ unique websites (aka "competitors" and these aren't submissions from public but which I found on my own) added vs. 2 deeplinks to my websites which would have gotten in anyway there might be a case but since it is not… I mean I already had 9 deeplinks before I even become editor so what would be purpose of me becoming editor and adding my alleged "competitors" just for two or three lousy extra deeplinks? This would be total waste of my time if I had some hidden goals and only self-interest of promoting only my own websites in that case I could have simply left DMOZ categories to decay since none of my alleged "competitors" would get in for years anyway especially since most of them didn't even hear about DMOZ. But I really think this post got me into real trouble for uncovering some classified secrets: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=1090742#post1090742 Warning covered that one also, I acknowledged this was my fault, spending little to much time at Wiki and forgot how things work at DMOZ. My self-interests = DMOZ interests, all I wanted was to promote my niche and relevant community websites (many of which are way better then mine so I even cooled them but my website has misfortune of covering everything and is also multilanguage since I want to build some sort of Babylon 5 for niches I like) and get more people interested in relatively obscure hobbies, games (in my case) etc. and I think most editors at DMOZ are there for the same reason or have started in that way. I have placed bomb on DMOZ internal forum and it is about to go off so better get everyone out of there before it goes! Comparing terrorism to editing at DMOZ? I have noticed that there is little sense of humor in Meta ranks and preferred method of work is shoot first ask questions never, if this is how they think they should run VOLUNTEEER project which is suppose to be FUN at lest for average editor who is doing the work no wonder whole thing is going down.
So why are blaming Ivan for doing the same thing? If he puts external links to his site then it is abuse according you but having so many useless links to DMOZ is acceptable according to you, do you see the problem and the contradiction in your conclusions?