I was wondering why people become DMOZ editors. This poll will be anonymous. There will be non DMOZ editors voting for what they believe the reasons are for ppl to become editors for DMOZ or what has once motivated them to apply if they ever got denied. let that be an indicator of public perception of DMOZ editors as well. There will definitely be some arguing in here, but I hope we can get something out of it as well. The poll will be up approximately 5 minutes after I post this. happy voting!
If for most of English speak sites, the webmasters thinks take to long to add to DMOZ, think about Brazilian Portuguese sites. It is a DREAM to have a Brazilian Website Added in DMOZ.
It is the wrong question. Not why did you become, but why are you. Probably the large majority join to list their site. Having done that, what is the motivation to stay and go on editing. For many that answer will be very complex, perhaps not even explainable. It really is irrelevant why people join, it is important why they stay. What DMOZ also needs to find out is why they leave.
I think that question wouldn't be relevant either, since so many uninterested editors are still in position.
I became an editor because it seemed like a fun and interesting thing to do. I'm am still an editor because it really is a fun and interesting thing to do Maybe the fun I get out of it stems from always wanting to have things in order (even if it's an order understood only by myself ). On my evaluation reports (at my real jobs) - for some reason I always get high marks for attention to detail and organizational abilities . It's my hobby - it's my "escape" from real life - while I'm editing I don't have to think about the fact that I'm leaving my family and friends for eighteen months starting the beginning of next year (or any other minor pressures).
Well, because it helps local businesses to achieve better ranks (hopefully). It's fun and I take pride in being an editor. I only manage local directories and at this point I have no interest in trying national ones. Too much work, too little time...
I applied to become a dmoz editor as the category my site was in had no editor assigned to it. As my site was in the “Shopping: Recreation and Sports†category, I knew mainly all my competition and I was alarmed to see how many “con†sites were allowed to be let on without proper investigation. It would have been easy to get rid off my competitors but I resisted the temptation! I make an extra effort to contact the companies that apply and just see whether they seem genuine if their site doesn’t have a good feel about it. As I am in the trade I am editing and a member of many forums associated with them, I quickly get to find out the genuine to bogus sites / companies and if a site gets many good reviews from customers then it automatically gets added to my category even if it hasn’t been submitted by a member of the public. However contrary to popular believe its not easy to edit your own site on dmoz even if you are the editor of the category - even slight edits to my own site were monitored and trust me I don’t even touch my own site now!!
You are absolutely right. Metas keep an eye on editors to make sure there is no favoritism or personal gain.
Who keeps the eye on Metas? It seems DMOZ biggest problems are with "senior" editors since they can sell links in the whole directory.
tbh i think its only very few editors who would risk doing that - like in all fields if you don't have someone dodgy - it just won't be human! I think its human mentality to always push the limits!
I started to gain a better understanding of DMOZ and I think I added one of my sites (two were already there). I edited in categories for a technology I was very interested in but updates in DMOZ were happening annually. I did some major clean up and was somewhat disappointed with some nitpicking I got back from the senior editor. They should contact editors that stop editing to see why.
It is difficult to respond to that sort of thing without knowing what you did and what nits were picked. I saw some appalling editing in terms of click through acceptance of submitted promo hyped descriptions. At the same time I've seen such rigid adherence to thou shalt not repeat a category name in a description that the end result would have looked like a load of nonsense. The way to deal with nitpicking that is not justifiable (misspellings, punctuation, keyword stuffing etc) is to search the internal fora for the words of Staff that specifically disapprove of such behaviour, and quote it back to the nitpicker.