willybfriendly - 4:24 pm on Jul 21, 2007 (gmt 0)

The ODP founders have another: and one of the most important unique aspects of the ODP is its definition of "use." The project simply CANNOT give that up: it would cost it its community also. And that WOULD be death.

I would suggest that inflexiblity is death. It is the rigidity of rigor mortis.

There are many ways to organize and categorize the web. I have seen editors completely revamp one particular category, moving the bulk of the true authority sites several levels down into "regional" categories, irrespective of the content on the site.

It was the equivalent of moving Yahoo to:

Top> Computers> Internet> Searching> Directories> Regional> North America> United States> California> Cities> Sunnyvale

and then justifying it because that is where the corporate headquarters are located.

Of course, these authority sites went from a page with a handful of sites and a Google PR of 5-6 to pages with a multitude of sites and an PR of 0.

Once the reorganization was complete and the SE Serps adjusted themselves to reflect the "new and improved" cat structure (yes, DMOZ can still have a major impact on some SERPs) the editor mysteriously vanished. The entire cat now needs a new editor.

Oh, some garbage sites remain in the upper level, while the authorities are buried.

The issue was reported. The dialogue was pretty much the same as this one - stonewalling on the part of DMOZ metas.

The new structure may make sense on one level, but fails the test you offer - does it serve the interests of the surfer? Is it better for the surfer to have to click through 6 additional levels into a regional category in order to find a site of general interest on the subject? Is it better for the surfer to have a handful of sites appear in the top level that lack the information needed to be of general interest?

Perhaps it is time for DMOZ to re-examine its definition of "use" and to adjust to the realities of the times.