windharp - 3:00 pm on Jun 30, 2007 (gmt 0)

Does DMOZ editors have access to these trends? DMOZ appears to be growing overall however the DMOZ shopping category is shrinking.

Statistics covering directory wide numbers used to be published on a monthly basis before the crash. See [freenet-homepage.de...] for details.

Unfortunately, AOL Ops is still working to restore our toolbuilders access to the needed resources, so a lot of things still can't be done properly.

The ODP pages do have counters, so whoever wants to can monitor growth. We used to have tools to do monitoring of toplevels, but unfortunately most of them aren't available at the moment. Reason see previous chapter. But: Yes, in theory we do have access to those numbers.

When comparing these numbers, please keep in mind that due to tool runs (details see remarks in the abovementioned ODP Reports) some weeks show reductions in listed sites, while others show growing numbers. Until graphical views are available again, only longer periods of time (like one months, half a year, ...) give valid estimates.

Anybody have historic monthly figures on the DMOZ shopping category, or does DMOZ only keep track of the grand total across the site?

We usually don't publish statistics for parts of the ODP. Experience shows, that this type of information leads to "I submit my site to the category with the most additions intead of the best suited one, because this way it is listed faster" behaviour. (Which is b***s***, because it simply increases editor workload by adding "1) search correct category, 2) move site for review in the correct category" to the workflow. And if the editor is in a bad mood, he won't bother with moving an adult toy shop from the horsebreeding category.).

But of course, anbody with a broadband internet connection and rudimentary progeramming skills could download the RDF files for two dates and do a comparison. Or - if you are not interested in to many details - you can use the wayback archive.

Whatever you do, please compare numbers you got the same way. The on-site counters tend to be different from those generated by counting entried in the RDF file for soem reason.

Looking at a few numbers (for example 120k back in 2003 and about 109k now - data was taken from the same source), you will notice that in the overall trend, shopping does loose size. Looking in more detail, one can notice that RoboZilla (our automated linkchecker) sorts out about 3k sites in every go (usually several times a year). Other tools remove sites as well.

From my experience there are a lot of reasons making a shrinking of Shopping more understandable. Let's face a few of them.

1) Editing listings for shopping sites becomes incredibly boring over time. Ever looked at 100 sites selling absolutely the same stuff, tried to find the differences, and come up with a good description for each?

2) Experience shows that most people pretending to be interested in editing a shopping category are not really. They are just interested in "Make $$$ fast". Of course there are exceptions, but they are the minority. (Brings me to what you have hears: Yes, it is more difficult to become an editor in a Shopping category. I don't think anybody needs a more detailed explanation why, huh?)

3) Our listing criteria changed over time. Nowadays we have much more strict guideliens than a few years ago on affiliate sites, product subsites, and other sites you would typically find in the Shopping branch. In a human edited directory like DMOZ, it takes many years till the remains from the olden days are sorted out.

4) Sites shut down a lot faster in Shopping. THey simply stop to exist, are bought by other companies, stop selling stuff, or disqualify as a shopping listing in another way. I don't have numbers to prove that, it's just my personal experience from a few years of editing. Thinking about it, the difference to the normal branches most likely are tge sites of those "Make $$$ fast" people who at some point realize that it's pretty hard to do that in the internet. :-)

I could go on with many other reasons, but from my point of view those are the most important.