gibbergibber - 9:52 am on Jul 24, 2007 (gmt 0)

-- This thread presents the question: IF DMOZ is so bad, as any number of posts have argued, then why hasn't a competitor emerged?--

For the same reason that there aren't many airships any more, it's an out-of-date concept.

Directories have a huge number of problems on the modern internet:

1. There are too many sites appearing, disappearing and changing for any human-edited directory to keep up with even a fraction of what's out there.

2. With a search engine you can look for relevant terms within a site rather than general types of sites. Sometimes references to the term you want appear on sites you'd never have dreamed would carry them, for example discussion of a sports team on the off-topic forum of a site dedicated to cookery.

3. A search engine is so simple: tell it what you want, it goes and finds it. It's a far quicker and easier to use.

4. Not all sites can be neatly categorised because they cover a wide range of topics.