hutcheson - 12:18 am on Jul 10, 2007 (gmt 0)

>If these employees review an average of 30 websites a day, 100 people could add a million new listings per year.

Ah, very good, someone has Done The Math.

But don't forget this: the majority of websites aren't listable. You might have to review 3, 5, 10, or 1000 websites (depending on the category) to add one listing. The ODP gets about 10-40 suggestions for every listable site.

However, I think your programming estimates are a bit low: it's probably more like 10 man-years' effort -- so far as I can tell, that's about what it cost the ODP. That might mean Richard Stallman and a friend for a year, or 100 Microsofties for a decade. But there aren't that many Stallmans.