brotherhood_of_LAN - 6:57 pm on Apr 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

>lesson of what is right and wrong about it

I don't know how it was done, but it was well done (DMOZ at least). The URL structure is "uniform" and easy to use, no wonder it's used by search engines to accompany results. I'm sure this uniformality is the sort of thing the automated engines love.

Think of all the "news [google.com]" categories spread across DMOZ. Just by getting cats with news in the URL you could well be two clicks away from most of the major news events/websites on the web, maybe a good sign of a good structured directory :)

If automation can be done, I'm all for it. Can a directory still be called a directory if its automated? :)

Things like 404 checking, expired domains, sites changing content etc can maybe be improved upon at the current directories. The only editors I would "need" are to make sure the algo put the page into the right category ;)