tedster - 7:07 pm on Aug 30, 2012 (gmt 0)

I don't believe in the "it was coincidentally Panda on the Penguin day" theory

Neither would I - Panda also runs on specific dates and those dates have not been shared with Penguin so far.

I have seen a lot of sites that claimed they were not the cause of their own undoing but on close inspection, they were. At the same time, I have also seen sites that took a terrible drop in Google search rankings and traffic for no reason that I could find, none that the site understood and none that Google has explained either.

It seems clear to me that something goes on with Google that generates some kind of false positive or arbitrary traffic drop, but we're really not close to understanding it - nor is there a lot of recourse except the Reconsideration Request. I have seen those work out well when the case is made intelligently and in detail - but not always.

At any rate, I doubt that DMOZ itself, or even its clones no matter how spammy, is the issue.