bird - 6:04 pm on Nov 15, 2002 (gmt 0)

So you "randomly" picked two closely related categories with about 50 links, out of a directory of around 3 million links in almost half a million categories.

I have no idea about your understanding of statistics and how the significance of individual samples is determined. Rafalk was talking about the percentage of dead links over the complete directory. In a structure of that size, it is garanteed that you'll find categories like the ones you picked. However, most will look much better.

I'm actually pretty sure (without checking) that there is at least one category somewhere in the ODP that contains nothing but two or three dead links: 100%! Does that say anything about the overall quality of the directory? If you think so, please think again.