Duskrider - 2:20 am on Jul 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

So why has nobody built a better mousetrap than DMOZ? Why does everyone whine and complain, but nothing better has come along?

Simple. DMOZ is the best at what it does, and I think it's the best that anyone with an all volunteer, unpaid, untrained workforce COULD do.

Most of the 'problems' that most webmasters who submit to DMOZ complain about like slow turnaround, slow or no response, unedited cats, corruption among editors, apathy among editors, etc... they all center around the editors. This isn't surprising considering that all of the editors are unpaid. It should be stated that I'm in NO WAY blaming the editors that are there and do their job faithfully and helpfully to the benefit of the directory. Soliciting volunteers is great, but they tend to not hang around for long, and the amount of volunteers you get that are really decent will be small. That leaves volunteers who's only real concern is either mucking things up, or listing only their own site. This is counter productive, of course, and only leads to tougher restrictions on editor acceptance... which leads to less editors overall... which makes it harder to get listed... which entices webmasters to apply as editors for the sole reason of listing their site... which makes it necessary to more throughly screen editors... which leads to less editors...

You get the picture.

These problems are also in no way the fault of DMOZ itself. It's my belief that almost any system that follows the same structure is doomed to... criticism, due to lack of editor support. That's what it all boils down to.

You may say that WikiPedia would have the same problem, and maybe it does, but you don't have a whole plethora of webmasters crying about it because WikiPedia doesn't exist to list websites, as DMOZ does (even if it says that's not its real job). The job of WikiPedia is to list information. I'm not trying to list my website on WikiPedia, so I'm not going to be upset if they don't list me. WikiPedia also has a great feature where, if an article has been deleted, you can view the reasons why... DMOZ offers NO feedback.

So while DMOZ may be frustrating, maddening, and even hated in some circles... I think most of us know, deep down, that any such venture to directly compete would end up almost the exact same way. As almost any DMOZ editor will tell you, it certainly isn't the tools, the site, or the structure. It's the human element that gets us every time. If you were to build a directory that is only edited by machines and tries its very best to list good sites in such a way that they're easy to find, you might have something.

Something tells me it's already been done. Maybe I'll go look it up on GOOGLE.

[edited by: Duskrider at 2:21 am (utc) on July 20, 2007]