What's interesting about the ODP's allowing of Rubylane deeplinks is that it is not in Adult, which you'd expect to be seedy under the best of circumstances. It was in /Shopping, a far more gentle world. The senior editors were quite rabid about it. No ebay store deeplinks, but Rubylane store deeplinks are good. They didn't bother much with arguments. Simple throwing their weight around the juniors sufficed.
That's where Summer got into trouble too... one gets the impression there's some sort of Shopping Mafia who don't like anyone who asks questions...
To get back to the original question... The ODP is an academic exercize. Clearly, that is what the editors want. They could put their money where their mouth is, by instituting a "nofollow" attribute. But they never will suffer the "nofollow attribute," because they are hyprocritical. They like to say they don't care about Google and that they don't toil for webmasters, which they view with unrestrained disdain, but for their "users." And by "users," they mean lost and confused bots, MFAs, and mirror sites. They view the submission queues as if they were oozing with Ebola virus, and many editors would like to turn turn off submissions altogether. It is an academic exercize. So they say. I'll believe them when they institute the nofollow. In the meatime, their words are hollow. I believe the ODP is a well-guarded ghost fiefdom. Since Google stopped giving them prominence, they lord over nothingness. It must be frustrating.
That after losing its value, DMOZ will still be a well-known brand. At least for a while (dying a slow death like seochat did).
1) most of these people have joined ODP when DMOZ financially worth the effort and was much more important than it is today. 2) To answer your question, they would love that DMOZ could hold it's commercial value and even grow to be more important but you are assuming that they have a choice. In order for DMOZ to develop, they have to change the structure which means they will lose their power and DMOZ becomes worthless to them. Therefore, they have to continue with what they have and profit as long as it is possible to have any use from DMOZ or until it's total demise when Google drops it. 3) there are plenty of evidence about DMOZ corruption but the official policy of ODP and the apologists is: We don't want to see it, we don't want to hear about it and we don't want to talk about it. When they are cornered about the subject, they will admit that some corruption exists but it is not "widespread" or "systematic" and it is better not to talk about it.
Wel known by whom? As it is, no one except webmasters and DMOZ editors have ever heard of the damn thing.
I will grant you a couple of things. An individual editor will only see evidence of corruption if they know what they are looking for, and in areas of the directory they frequent. With 690,000 categories no editor will see more than a small proportion. Secondly the only people who actually know the full picture are Metas and Admins since reports are confidential as are investigations. Who has been removed is available to all editors as it is recorded on their editing permissions log so it is possible for an editor with a lot of spare time to calculate how many editors are removed each month for one abuse of their privileges or another. But the summarised stats lump these in with resignations and time-outs. A breakdown of leavers would provide an interesting analysis. It could prove you right that corruption is more of a problem than most editors believe or it could prove you wrong. Either way the rewards for corruption are rapidly disappearing, Google has solved the problem for DMOZ, and it remains only one of a variety of issues faced by DMOZ and is a long way from the most important factor in its decline.
Well if Dmoz is a ghost and dead, then what is the point of you and others complaining about it everyday if you don't believe it is no longer useful? That doesn’t make any sense. Your actions speak differently than from what you type daily.
The proof of corruption besides the abusive listings is in the need of "senior" editors for secrecy. DMOZ management can make as much excuse as they like but if finally comes to this question that if they don't have anything to hide then why do they need the secrecy. Look at wikipedia, the editing log of everyone is open to public to see and analyze and I don't think anybody can claim that they have put the world's security at risk by doing that. The other problem as I have mentioned so many times is that DMOZ structure is build to support corruption, so even if editors can see the corruption, what can they do about, except to leave?
I think it is a stretch to call that proof - speculation maybe. But confidentiality of editor logs is not something that was put in place by editors. Wiki did not have the same potential for corrupt practices that DMOZ used to have but I notice considerable vandalism goes on there - some comments I made on an issue there yesterday have been completely deleted and with a history that goes back to hundreds of versions in a day the possibility of restoring those comments or anyone seeing it is zero. And if you read some of the talk on some pages there is more bullying, they are less polite, and often get nowhere just as fast as DMOZ. There are no perfect answers. I personally prefer some elements of Wiki but don't let's kid ourselves it doesn't have its own problems, not least a tremendous anti-vandalism overhead that DMOZ wouldn't have the resources to manage.
There is a lot of talk of ODP corruption, and a few years ago, it might have mattered, because the ODP mattered. Alas, the ODP only mattered because of Google. Other than that, it was grudgingly admitted to be rather useless. Google has significantly toned down its endorsement of the ODP by first removing the link above the search query entry field, followed by discounting the links from the countless ODP clones. Corruption no longer matters, because a link in DMOZ isn't worth that much. Though if you have 2500, even I would have to reckon it might have a measurable effect on your rankings. Unless the "corruption" is egregious, it matters little. Especially in Adult, where I doubt the model of link popularity works as Larry and Sergei intended, anyway. The largest problem that the ODP-academic-exercize faces in its dimming future is an increasing number of fossilized, abandoned, creaky categories. Obsolescence. Cobwebs. Sedimentation. Mummification. Ghost town. These are the ills of the ODP.
"Help others find information" "Work in progress" "Expect to see evolution" Now, that's something that's fun and dynamic and useful! Let's forget about DMOZ. It's done, over with, finished. Anyone with some time to volunteer ought to consider jumping in and trying out a new project from its inception. It's exciting stuff!
Is wiki prefect? No. Is it open to public scrutiny? YES. Even if DMOZ can not be open for listing the same way as wiki is, there is no reason why editors log should not be open to public scrutiny. If editors are not doing anything wrong then what do they have to hide by hiding the logs?
Personally if Dmoz ever done such a action I would not care. (Even though I can think of Just-reasons why the admins would not) Gworld I am curious though does this suggestion of yours go for every directory, major directory, well-known directory, (whatever etc) or just Dmoz?
I think any organization that claims is not motivated by profit and uses volunteers should be open to public scrutiny. Secrecy always should be the solution of last resort and not standard policy. It is interesting that at a time that courts are pushing the government to be more open about it's anti-terrorism measures, DMOZ still insists that everything has to be secret while claiming that they have nothing to hide.
And so we are back to what is DMOZ, exactly. It is not a charitable foundation, it is not an Open Source project, it was sold by the founders to AOL for money, it is a division of a major corporation whose logo and name appears on every page. Yes it uses volunteers as labour but it is very far from being community led or run, it is led and run by AOL appointees, at least one of whom is officially an AOL employee. It's funding is entirely from one corporation and draws no public funding. Why then should it be open to public scrutiny? Or even scrutiny and accountability to its own volunteers? Clearly, the secrecy and ham fisted attempts at suppression of open internal debate, indicate an organisation that is not interested and does not feel it necessary to be accountable. It will not ever be accountable whilst the project is owned by a corporation and not its community. This is why I asked the question in the first place - I think there are serious discrepancies between what some editors think they are contributing to and what they are actually contributing to. Perhaps the answer to what is DMOZ is that it is an AOL corporate asset.
Do you mean that every piece of DMOZ documents about ODP goals and social responsibility is nothing but lies designed to fool unsuspecting volunteers and public? The only problem with your argument is that AOL has never officially declared DMOZ as commercial project and I can not see how AOL as a corporation is benefiting from corruption and abuse that exists in DMOZ. While many AOL shareholders will probably agree with you that AOL is capable of any kind of deceit and foul practices, in this particular case, AOL can not benefit from this situation and possibly only some staffs benefit from corruption which is not in the best interest of AOL as public company.
http://dmoz.org/about.html - how much of that is spin and how much is reality? Or http://dmoz.org/help/geninfo.html - what about that one? But no, not every piece of documentation and not necessarily lies. Perhaps exaggerations and a few omissions like by the way DMOZ lists 40,000 Adult sites and we don't check the ages of editors. The problem with not being up front about things is the tendency for them to come back and bite you. AOL is a profit making corporation. It bought DMOZ with cash. It must see some commercial value in it, if only to appear philanthropic and get 690,000 AOL adverts out there. Otherwise it would be a misuse of corporate funds. DMOZ "is operated by a very small staff responsible for editorial policies and direction, community management and development..." i.e. it still maintains control. The benefit of the current system for AOL is that it retains complete control - it doesn't trust the editor community as a whole to act in AOL's best interests when it comes to the future of the project. Neither would a corporation want a division that really makes its own decisions without reference to corporate strategy. You can see corporate strategy by the absence of ODP attribution on the company's own clones of the data, by the absence of a directory or AOL search from some national AOL sites. So democracy and openness is 100% not in AOL's interests. And that is the solution you propose to beat corruption. It appears that AOL doesn't actually seem to know what to do with DMOZ, where it fits, etc. Since it could solve more or less all the issues within DMOZ if it so chose, why hasn't it so chosen. You assume that admins have the power and authority to make radical changes that would turn the current negative trends around. I'm increasingly convinced they don't. And you don't have to exert overt influence to prevent radical change, you simply appoint 8 or 9 people with no knowledge or experience in project management to be absolute equals on a committee and require them to always make unanimous decisions. If they ever look likely to stray into original radical thought they could all agree on you can always step in and make a staff ruling. Which would remain forever secret as it would only appear in the private Admin forum covered by confidentiality rules. Let's assume for one moment that AOL is genuinely trying to support a volunteer organisation out of the goodness of its heart. They still could not release control to the volunteers, it would be corporate madness. So if you strip everything else out of the way, at the very root of the problems faced by DMOZ is ownership by a big multinational corporation. This is why there are Admins appointed not elected, why nothing is downwardly accountable, why there can never be democracy, why there is confidentiality appropriate to business but not to volunteer projects in "the spirit of the Open Source movement". Note that DMOZ says "Open Source inspired", "founded in the spirit of the Open Source movement", the Open Directory Project. It really pushes the Open Source connections which gives it an air of hippy democracy that attracts volunteers. A major plank of Open Source is that anyone can contribute but as we know, DMOZ is a closed shop with only the end product available. You could point at the submission system as the means for everyone to contribute. But it is clogged and useless, and editors view it as optional. It is a free directory, not an open directory. A misnomer but one that is more appealing.