John_Caius - 5:48 pm on Apr 5, 2003 (gmt 0)

Just to highlight another important point that people here might not realise. The ODP editing community tries hard to keep pace with breaking news stories. Because these new categories are particularly fresh, they understandably get reviewed frequently and sites are usually initially added from hand searches using Google, news sources and inter-site links. Recent examples include:

ch.dmoz.org/Society/Death/Online_Dedications/Columbia_Accident/

ch.dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Warfare_and_Conflict/Specific_Conflicts/Iraq/

ch.dmoz.org/Sports/Cricket/ICC/Events/World_Cup/

and of course:

ch.dmoz.org/Health/Conditions_and_Diseases/Respiratory_Conditions/Severe_Acute_Respiratory_Syndrome/

Categories related to these new ones also get reviewed and improved. For the SARS category we built a new category on the related subject of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome so that a related link could be put in the SARS category:

ch.dmoz.org/Health/Conditions_and_Diseases/Respiratory_Conditions/ARDS/

I think it's useful just to highlight the fact that ODP editors don't all spend all their time reviewing submitted sites or editing in the business or shopping branches of the directory. It was noted in the Google forum a few days ago that, due to the monthly Google update schedule, the ODP is actually often more up to date than Google concerning very recent events, due to the fact that it *is* human-edited.