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The other thread started by pearl ( [webmasterworld.com...] ) who said quite unabashedly that she wouldn't do anything to help her competitors as editor sparked an idea.
Given that there is a significant population of potential editors who want sites listed, but who might be biased editors in specific categories (or who work with many sites in disparate categories), why not give them an incentive to edit a category that needs help? Specifically, let them edit a category that they have no commercial interest in, but (one hopes) they like, or at least understand. As an incentive, give them several review credits - say, after a month of being an editor in good standing, they can submit three sites for review by a high-level editor (guaranteed turnaround, say, of 5 days). Thereafter, every three months, or every twenty edits, etc., they would get another credit or two. I don't know what the right measure are, but I'm sure those with access to typical editing stats could come up with something appropriate.
Will this pose an even greater burden on overworked high-level editors? Perhaps not, if they are leveraging every "review credit" into dozens of reviews, adds, changes, etc. by the new editors.
The benefits would be simple: the (potentially) selfish interests of the new editors would be redirected to orphan or non-commercial categories that need help most. Instead of burning keystrokes at WebmasterWorld complaining about the site they submitted two years ago that's still unreviewed, the new editors could be cutting the DMOZ backlog and know that, for a limited number of sites, they would not have to worry about getting caught in an abandoned queue.
If some of the new editors are SEO pros, so much the better - they are far more likely to keep affiliate spam and bogus deep links out of DMOZ.
I've advocated a paid review option in the past, but I think this approach would expand the editing corps while minimizing conflicts of interest and keeping the 100% volunteer structure.
Would there be problems? Sure. Some new editors would bail out after their first listing or do a slapdash job to build credits, but with a bit of quality control I don't think it would be any worse than what exists now. Within the ranks of the new editors, it's likely some really good ones would emerge to start the next generation of high-level DMOZ devotees.
My latest rejection (2 hours ago) was because the public category description and the internal category charter were fundamentally different so what I submitted was in line with the public category description but totally against the charter that metas go by. A victim of a clerical error. Nothing more, nothing less. But the point is:
The meta folks have been very helpful and the meta who last rejected me even got back to me and explained the predicament and he did encourage me to re-submit with the added knowledge of the internal restrictions on that category.
[edited by: Laisha at 3:08 pm (utc) on Mar. 4, 2003]
[edit reason] Please read the charter for info on dropping the URL [/edit]
The reasons I won't apply at this time:
1) Servers are much too slow and I get very, very frustrated waiting, waiting, waiting for pages to load. If I'm going to volunteer my time I want it to be productive. Come on AOL/TW, put the danged comparatively few pennies into somewhat responsive servers.
2) The couple of categories I'm interested in are 9 or 10 levels down with a handful of listings in each. Can't find any rhyme or reason as to how or why sites are listed in certain categories. I know the topics, but danged if I can figure out where anything goes.
3) All of the politics reflected in the discussion above and in other threads.
Just my 2 cents. I'll probably revisit the idea again in a few months.
Jim
>2) The couple of categories I'm interested in are 9 or 10 levels down with a handful of listings in each. Can't find any rhyme or reason as to how or why sites are listed in certain categories....
>3) All of the politics reflected in the discussion above and in other threads....
These are all valid reasons, and I won't try to twist your arm, but:
1) The site is slow because of a surge of non-editor use on servers that were not intended for it. It's _especially_ slow for non-editors right now, because the editors are getting higher-priority (and usually much faster) access. It's not always this bad, and from the editor's side it's usually much better.
1a) New servers are coming on line...We now have the European public-side mirror, the separate (internal) forum server, and staff is working on both new servers and new ways of distributing the work among more servers. (The ODP was never envisioned as a mass-server farm like, say, Google: there is a core of editing functionality that really needs to be serialized -- which in the current software means on one system. So adding servers isn't going to be a matter of just depositing cache in the memory bank.)
2) The internal forums are a good place to raise and address issues like this. (You should have seen the way Arts/Literature was fragmented when I joined -- the second category I asked for, I intended to disband it utterly.)
3) True, if you don't get along with the community, editing will be much more stressful: and it is inevitable that we lose some otherwise competant editors this way. But the politics out here are _normally_ much more confrontational than in the internal forums. One of the rules for editors is "respect other editors...and show it in communications", and editors are removed when (according to meta concensus) their communications are causing too much stress. (And staff will remove metas for hostile communications also.)
3a) But: you do have to be willing to take constructive criticism of your work. It's not personal: you're in a group of people, many of whom want things done well, and want to do them well (even if it's not immediately clear how.) 99% of the time, it's well to remember, those comments are because they think you can do better -- and they think you want to do the best job possible.
I can't say editing is always fast, but when it's as slow as the public page has been lately, I log off. I can't say all taxonomic issues will be resolved to your satisfaction, but I can say that after 15 months all the major issues I saw as a newbie had been addressed. I can't say there won't be any hostile posts, but I can say that day in, day out I have found it a very congenial community to work in.
While the ODP on the public side is so slow it basically is unusable (this being in my mind a SERIOUS problem), the ODP has made a change that makes things go much faster as an editor. As for the issue of politics, for the average editor this shouldn't be a major concern. Only if your ultimate ambition is to edit a top level category, or become an editall or meta, should you need to worry about the political games. If you are just an editor of a few small cats, so long as you review sites promptly and do everyting by the book, odds are everyone else will just ignore you.
That is precisely what I see as part of the problem. I've spent countless hours editing cats where I had nothing to gain, only to be ignored or rejected when I applied for a cat which was related to the area where I do have something to gain. I made the mistake of challenging the submission of a site which a top level editor felt was "suitable" for a cat I was editing. I've been getting rejected for just about everything I've applied for since then, not to mention that there haven't been any new submissions to my cats since then either. The only reason I don't resign totally as an editor is because I feel certain that the site I openly acknowledged as having a personal interest in will be deleted altogether. The politics have dampened my enthusiasm of thinking that my time is either appreciated or that I'm a part of the DMOZ community.
As far as "everyone else will just ignore you" -- perfect!
Jim
Congratulations on your appointment.
Oh, and I'm no meta - just a catmod.
Congratulations on your appointment.Oh, and I'm no meta - just a catmod.
Sorry to read that, kumquat. :( However, in your case you didn't just quietly edit your cat. You got involved in the politics, rather than knowing what to kiss, and when. However, consider the possibility that the reason you are getting rejected isn't the reason that you think it is.
However, in your case you didn't just quietly edit your cat. You got involved in the politics, rather than knowing what to kiss, and when.
Are you still an editor, rfgdxm1?
I don't hesitate to tell metas or other editalls if I disagree with them, and I would guess I persuade them about half the time, and they persuade me the other half. I don't fear reprisals, reprimands, backstabbing or anything of the sort. Of course, that may just be because I treat my co-editors with respect. Those who scream "politics!", OTOH, may not. Just a thought.
As for other editors with proper privs dumping stuff in "my" cat... that's a misnomer, and the very wording of it gives us a clue as to the mindset of the editor doing the complaining. No one "owns" a cat. Those of us with higher privs are expected to know where we can edit, and if we choose to edit in a particular cat, then more often than not, it's because we know what we're doing. If the listed editor for that category disagrees with any changes, he can discuss it with the other editor directly, or take it up in the internal forums. If he properly presents his position, and it's judged to be correct by other editors, then things can be set the way they were.
I thought that it would be appropriate to get experience in a low level, non commercial category - and work up from there.
The higher editor...not even be aware there is an editor in the lower cat. Particularly for editors high up the tree, just no way they are going to remember every subcat that has a local editor.
Now this is truly scary. If the public -- supposing they can access the DMOZ site -- can just scroll down to the bottom of a cat page and find the names of the editors (if there are any), what possible excuse can a higher DMOZ editor have for not knowing?
Forgive my outsider ignorance, but it's almost incomprehensible -- or totally laughable.
The higher editor...not even be aware there is an editor in the lower cat. Particularly for editors high up the tree, just no way they are going to remember every subcat that has a local editor.
One of the joys of being a low level ODP editor is that nobody knows you are there!
Assume a site for a grocery store in Hicksville, Illinois has been submitted incorrectly to the top level Illinois category. Quickest thing is for an Illinois editor to add it to the Hicksville Grocery category if the site is suitable. In the example given, it is a question of balancing two things.
1. Clearing the backlog of unreviewed as quickly as possible. I.e it takes time to check if the site being added to a category with an editor (ref message 109 above)- and the chances are that the low level does not have an editor.
2. Risk offending a new low level Hicksville Grocery editor
Balance of probability is that option 1 is followed. I am not arguing for or against that course, just explaining!
There are several ways that sites get added to a category.
The first is when you navigate directly to the category, access the unreviewed queue and add sites in or add a site directly without it having been submitted to the unreviewed queue. In this case, you're navigating the category itself and you can see whether there's an editor or not. You can also see how recently that editor last logged in. Senior editors may choose to leave the cat to be reviewed by the editor if they're logging in regularly and on top of submissions. If the editor is logging in rarely, the unreviewed queue or quality of listings is out of control or there's just a particularly good site to list in the category then the senior editor will probably go ahead and do some editing anyway. As noted above, the resident editor doesn't own the cat and higher up editors or ones with editall+ permissions are perfectly entitled to edit there as much as they choose.
The second way of adding a site to a category is when a site is incorrectly added to another category. For example, if a breast cancer site is submitted to the top Health cat then one of the top Health editors reviews it. They have two choices if they think it's worth listing - either send it to the unreviewed queue of the Breast Cancer cat or list it directly from the edit-the-submitted-site screen. As you can see, they don't have to navigate to the Breast Cancer cat to list the site directly in it, hence unless they make a point of checking, they won't see whether that particular cat has an editor. As before, if it's a good site then there's no problem with the senior editor adding it directly. There are automated systems in place to show whether the site's already listed.
If the editor doesn't have editing permissions in the target cat, for example if the site should be listed in Shopping and the senior editor only has permissions in Health, then the only option available is to add it to the unreviewed queue in the target cat.
Hope that makes it clearer. :)
There are a lot of threads around here talking about how difficult it is to be accepted as an ODP editor. Actually it's not that hard - you just have to be a genuine kind of person, read the guidelines thoroughly, apply for a simple, ideally non-commercial, cat, find three decent, straight-forward sites and write non-hyped, non-keyword-stuffed descriptions for them. You'll see from the kind of editors who post here that there are a lot of very honest, helpful editors out there, despite what is suggested by the spammy affiliate link farm owners.
I wanted to help (category had no editor).
Was rejected within 30 minutes with standard email not explaining why I got rejected.
I won't apply again.
At the very least they could have explained why I got rejected, instead of slapping me in the face.
There are a lot of threads around here talking about how difficult it is to be accepted as an ODP editor. Actually it's not that hard - you just have to be a genuine kind of person, read the guidelines thoroughly, apply for a simple, ideally non-commercial, cat, find three decent, straight-forward sites and write non-hyped, non-keyword-stuffed descriptions for them.
Exactly John, and anybody who isn't willing to take the time to do this, isn't ready to be an editor.
Don't know why you didn't get any feedback on your rejection - I agree that that would have been more pleasant. Doesn't the standard e-mail give some suggestions as to common reasons why editors get rejected?
The non-commercial bit I mentioned was the category, not the sites you suggest. Travel categories are obviously highly commercial, particularly as there are thousands of travel sites doing business online, more than in most industries.
My site is a huge photo gallery about Malaysia and the only commercial thing about it is that I managed to sell a few images recently, enough to cover my hosting expense.
For the rest I'm not involved in the travel business (I'm in mobile communications), but know very well Malaysia having travelled for 12 months as a tourist through the country. I explained this in the application.
If DMOZ rejects qualified people they have only themselves to blame.
Hint:
Title
should be the title of the company or the title of the website, not including any text like 'welcome to' or 'homepage'.
Description
two sentences, one saying what the website is for, one saying what features it has. No hype, no 'and more', no keyword stuffing, don't repeat what's in the title.
Example
WidgetLand
Community of widget owners to find mutual support in their obsession. Includes news, reviews, a discussion forum and 'ask the expert' feature.
