hyperkik - 3:09 pm on Dec 12, 2006 (gmt 0)

Trusting volunteer developers within their own network servers: this is the trickiest bit, but doesn't affect most of us. However, AOL has managed to let a few technically astute meta-editors behind the firewall -- a pretty impressive demonstration of trust, I think.

They've let a tiny (statistically insignificant) number of volunteers who have dedicated hundreds, probably thousands of hours to the project behind the firewall, to make minor tweaks?

I suggest you visit Matt Cutts' blog, in relation to Google Answers and the killing of zombies.

Products from years ago often need overhauls and rewrites or else the underlying code grows stagnant, and the Answers code launched in 2002.

Has AOL ever evidenced interest in letting its volunteers peek at the obsolete code that powers DMOZ, let alone improve it or (gasp) rewrite it? Giving a couple of people enough server access to keep the zombie alive, to me, sounds like a way to avoid paying for tech staff. Spurning every offer to improve the software? To me, that sounds like distrust.