webdoctor - 1:08 pm on Nov 29, 2006 (gmt 0)

the editorial server borked big time and became unrecoverable. When the person(s) in charge of babysitting the server went looking for backups, there was none

Well there is definitely an RDF dump (http://rdf.dmoz.org/) - if we're being charitable, we can view this as a backup :-)

From what we know, when editors.dmoz.org went down, the ODP staff were in the middle of substantial work on the system. So it's not just as simple as "restore from backup, finished". We're also heard that the ODP staff have decided to complete their migration and backup work on the new system BEFORE making it available to the public. This is A Good Thing. I would humbly suggest that by and large most editors can wait - at least, that's what I'm doing.

IMHO all those people who think this kind of thing is easy should explain to us (in detail) how they would set up hardware and software to "do the ODP, but better". I would remind our readers that dmoz.org has an Alexa rank of 204. Think about the pageviews. Think about the simultaneous edits. Think about generating the RDF files from a database snapshot. Justify your answer. The best suggestion gets a bottle of bubbly from me :-)

would the AOL systems be down for 6 weeks so no advertising could take place. I think not. So webdoctor be specific when you say that it takes time.

NB: dmoz.org has no advertising and (we presume) generates no direct revenue. This should affect any budget you suggest for your proposal (see above).

Im not a techie, but lets say AOL affords 1-2 techs to solve the problem in DMOZ while if it was the AOL site they would have 100 techs.

Do you really think 100 techs will solve the problem faster? If we're talking the CIO screaming "get something back online, by whatever means", then remember that as far as the 99% of the public is concerned, dmoz.org is back online.

Its just ROI and nothing more, no need for any other type of analysis.......

If we're talking ROI then if there's no (direct) revenue, where the return on any investment?

good faith to the browsing public just doesnt seem to be an issue.

I would bet several beers that your average member of the browsing public hasn't noticed there's a problem - [dmoz.org...] is working just fine. The data is aging, but how exactly is Joe Q. Public going to notice?