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What is the average time it takes an editor to list a site?
With Dmoz its a pointless question, as it depends on the luck of the draw as to when (or why) a volunteer editor drops by the category you submitted to
It can take anything from 10 minutes to get listed, to indeed over a year. That's Life in DMOZ - you gets what you pays for!
My guess would be 4 to 12 weeks is about the sort of period you could expect realistically
One of my sites (in the same catergory) took less then 3 weeks, this other site
is taking over 6 weeks? Whats going on?
I do add "customers" links same / next day
Still adding "free sites" schools / council links etc...
Under the right conditions / with the right people + tons of effort / could become "a half decent directory"
There is a gap in the market - for a new directory
with - low cost site submissions
with - fast turnround of sites added
Anybody interested in participating - sticky me.
What if my editor is having a mid-life crisis and does not care to much about
dmoz?
How far could they take a "very small directory"?
What if my editor is having a mid-life crisis
1. There are a lot of mid life crisis situations in DMOZ, hence the delays ;)
2. Any more senior editors up the direct parent/child category tree can edit a lower category. As can Editalls, Metas, and some other good people.
3. Bottom line is that nobody can tell when you will be looked at. You can look at the date of the last edit in that category at the bottom of the category page. If it is sometime in 2001, then fear the worst :(
4. As they will tell you, they are all volunteers and cannot be "made" to edit anything. They will also point out that entry is free!
For the ODP to get submissions under control, they'd have to make one of the following changes:
1) charge for submissions (but the big spam sites would still pay, the small non-commercial sites couldn't).
2) make it very difficult to submit, e.g. the Zeal way. However, the ODP doesn't want to select its submissions by how keen the submitter is to get it listed. Spammers and affiliates are very keen to see their site listed. Honest web surfers often submit sites they're not affiliated with, just because they think it would be good to have them included, but they have no conflict of interest. They'd be the submissions that were lost.
So the ODP follows the status quo because it considers the quality of other directories, e.g. Yahoo, to be inferior because of the bias brought in by the different submission methods.
But if you want to start your own directory then go ahead - but first look at why JoeAnt, GoGuides, Hotrate and all the others haven't taken off yet. Simply, it's because they're not doing anything different from the ODP. Zeal works quite well because they offer something different, i.e. non-commercial entry into the MSN results. Unless your directory can offer something new, I don't see how you're going to get enough incoming links to make the PageRank high enough that any site would gain any benefit from being listed.
My thoughts for a "commercial directory" are this - the site admin would / should be easier to control / manage when it becomes commercial / money is involved:
Ensure the directory team / managemant is structured from the start for "commercial" use.
1) charge a small fee at the outset - small enough so that anybody can pay ($16 - £10 - 15 Euro)
2) site submission is reasonably easy
3) regarding the site admin - 1 person can easily verify 200 sites per day (if the demand is there - £2000 per day?)
4) make the directory big enough / popular enough and you could have something that perhaps could achieve simialr popularity to dmoz - but with commercial footing - should enable sites to be reviewed and listed same / next day.
Question is: how many seo / webmasters would it take to esatblish such a team?
We have had "paying customers" come along to have their siytes listed even though the site / directory is in a very early stage of growth.
Would like to be able to complete the list ASAP, also would like to include US schools / local government etc...
I agree that PR would require a large number of inbound links
SEO / webmasters could perhaps participate with the goal of being business partners in a very large commercial directory, without infringing on each of their own "independant" web business developments.
Active discussion / participation could evolve and shape such a "co-operative" new commercial directory.
Question is: how many seo / webmasters would it take to establish such a team?
The answer is, bluntly, that you will not be able to do it. As has been suggested, look at JoeAnt and GoGuides. JoeAnt has about 1000 editors and GoGuides about 150. As a rule of thumb, 5% will be active. And you can see how many JoeAnt adds to its data base daily (as you can with ODP)
Both these directories started with a nucleus of ex GO editors, and in spite of that, 2 years later have not built sizable data bases. To get anywhere, I would guess you would need at least 10,000 editors to sign up, and for 500 to 1000 of these to edit volume numbers of sites
ODP is a volunteer organization. If you have an interest area you want to see edited, volunteer. Wondering when other people will do a task you want to see done is not a good idea.
It's a puzzling thing to see people complain here that other people don't share their interests.
