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Who can find the site with the most DMOZ listings?
What do most of these sites have in common?
They are all related in some way, or owned by AOL (Time Warner)
[dmoz.org...]
Also, the guidelines lean toward saying that the ccel listing for macurius should wipe out the newadvent listing.
Of course, one can argue it is a judgment call. Problem is, there doesn't apear to be any judgment involved, the pages are added at will when created.
I can only imagine what would happen how this discussion would go if that happened: "ODP meta-editors eliminate competitor! Religious bias, not to mention heresy, alleged!" (You might not be able to figure out who asked the CCEL webmaster to have the Wace "Dictionary of Christian Biography" scanned, but you could pretty easily figure out who'd done most of the proofreading.) And I happen to know that the URLs for DNB entries at CCEL haven't stabilized yet. Besides which, IIRC, at least one ODP meta-editor contributed some work to the CE -- and before any conspiracy theories get started, it was before even joining the ODP, let alone being meta-tagged.
If we DID build a Macarius Magnes ODP category (which might be a good idea, by the way), the CCEL would probably [eventually] get two listings in the same category. They are both high-quality resources, but partial books, so the CCEL's "works" index doesn't have a single "Macarius Magnes" entry page, and its "WWEC" index is only just beginning to be cross-referenced to sections of books.)
The CE and DCB can't "wipe out" each other. They are both scholarly works with some overlap in scope, but with radically different traditional, confessional, scholarly, and editorial perspectives: so each one's biographical article is _highly_ "unique" within the meaning of the act.
The DCB has some extended articles that we should eventually deeplink in the ODP, but it also has many very short articles: one sentence or a short paragraph, similar to the Micropedia or encyclopedia.com articles. I'm not expecting that it will ever be exhaustively deeplinked. In fact, having spent a _lot_ of time doing web searches on obscure figures, I can say this with some confidence: Across the board, topic for topic, the CE entries are more extensive than any other single online encyclopediac resource, and its entries of broader interest than any other specialized encyclopedia online. If we started dumping encyclopedia PCPs, CE would not be the first one to go -- more likely the last. We'd be more likely to link its parent website even deeper: since PCP days, it has turned into a major e-text archive -- and we freely deeplink those down to author or book level wherever topically appropriate.
The CE and DCB can't "wipe out" each other.Yes that would be extreme. I should have said that the ce listing should not have been allowed, given the level of content in the ccel listing (which I still can't find). I don't think a listing should EVER be removed as long as the content of the site stays within the guidelines of the category within which it is listed, and it remains updated if that is a factor in its listing. But that's just me.
Note that the Gorky page is quite full of information about Gorky, and it is listed in Arts/Art_History/Artists/G/Gorky,_Arshile, which has one listing other than the Encarta one. These are two important aspects in the decision of whether to list or not. If the information about Gorky was brief (e.g. a short biography or only oney one paragraph about Gorky), or if the listings in the Gorky category provide more comprehensive and quality information about Gorky, then the Encarta site shouldn't be listed since it is not very useful relative to the rest of the category's contents.
Wow, am I glad that's not true! Can you imagine how useless a directory would be if only the single website with the most content was listed for each topic? Talk about frustration for searchers!
I certainly would never use such a directory. Luckily, this isn't the standard at ANY of the ones I know about.
I think you may be misunderstanding what the ODP means by "unique content" or "original content." Unique content doesn't mean there is nothing else on the Internet about the topic--it means that the -specific- information is not available on another site. These Macarius Magnes articles aren't copied from one another. In fact, the CE one was written earlier. They're both original (copyrighted in fact) and they're both informative. As far as I can tell there are three sites about Macarius Magnes out there, and no reason whatsoever not to list all three of them. If I were doing a Sunday school essay on him or something, I'd want to find all three.
If it makes you feel better, we did cull a rather useless category containing deeplinks to a news site that we built up during the very early days. I don't think it will be the last time we do that either.
They're both original (copyrighted in fact) and they're both informative. As far as I can tell there are three sites about Macarius Magnes out there, and no reason whatsoever not to list all three of them.You better get to work then. :)
If it makes you feel better,It does, as does the frankness with which we are having this discussion.
I'm glad we had this little talk. Macarius Magnes enthusiasts the world over will thank you for bringing him to our attention. :-D
Speaking strictly as a user, the IMDb tends to be the first site I go to when I'm looking for information about a movie or actor. Frequently, the more comprehensive sites on a movie or actor are more resource-intensive and bog down my computer.
Speaking strictly as a user, the IMDb tends to be the first site I go to when I'm looking for information about a movie or actor. Frequently, the more comprehensive sites on a movie or actor are more resource-intensive and bog down my computer.
The relevant issue is what would an ODP user searching for a specific actor do? An ODP editor assumes their audience is ODP users.
Obviously there is a perception among the hoi polloi that ODP editors sit around and set quotas for website listings: "Lessee, Tiddlywinks Journal is a T/W magazine, monthly, 22 years old: that allows 18 listings (with ODP staff sticking in an extra 5 without editing community consensus); Near Eastern Archaeology, not related to T/W, quarterly, 50 years old, 7 listings (which editors haven't gotten around to adding yet.)
But that never happens. In effect, it would be looking at the REVIEWED sites from a GLOBAL perspective, and DMOZ from a LOCAL perspective. We do the exact opposite -- look at the REVIEWED sites from a LOCAL perspective, and place that in the GLOBAL context of the ODP.
We'd say: we have 17 listings about Archaeology in Jordan, none of which adequately address Jerash and its environs in the Neolithic era. Therefore we'll deeplink this rather short intellectualistic-vanity-fluff article from Omni magazine (while caring absolutely nothing for how many other links Omni magazine has, just as the outside webmaster cares absolutely nothing for how many other links on a topic the ODP has.) But we have 15 articles about the water system in Iron Age Jerusalem, so the four-page article from Time/Life really doesn't add anything useful--it's an incompetantly bumbling summary by a scientifically illiterate journalist from the NEA article we already listed. And we don't care how many entries either the NEA or Time already has.
Now, it's understandable that this 180-degree phase difference occur: we're merely treating OUR site exactly like the submitting webmaster is treating his. But it still makes communication difficult sometimes. Webmasters are frustrated because, in effect, they somehow expect us to treat their site like our site. But the only way to avoid that frustration is to get over unreasonable expectations.
Which leads to an answer to the original question. How do you get lots of listings in the ODP?
Above all things, you DON'T set up yet another website in a highly competitive area, break it up into a zillion little domains, and submit every one. We don't like that. The submittal guidelines say that we may hunt down and destroy every listing for every website that you every had any association at all with. We do this with reluctance, but we have done and will continue to do it.
Instead, you pick an underserved general area of the ODP, and create unique, authoritative content on subjects within in that are POORLY served by current ODP listings. (This is what the Catholic Encyclopedia did way back when.) You found a reputation by providing information from recognized sources -- published material, recognized scholars, etc. (ALL of the sources listed above except the free-website-hosts do this!) You build that reputation by consistently generating some of the more substantial pages on each subject, making each new page contain even more content, and more types of content, than the last. (That's what IMDb does.) You encourage other people interested in your general subject to donate texts to which you offer a wide distribution (as CCEL and Project Gutenberg do. You add a page or two a day for five years, carefully crosslinking relevant material, till your site is the largest on the web in that particular niche (like CyberHymnal.)
How can you find authoritative content on areas neglected in the ODP?
Hmm. Persons. The ODP has categories for lots of important artists, authors, musicians -- but many of them have very little biographical information. Pick a SERIOUS public-domain biographical dictionary: those multi-column biographies would be a significant addition to most categories. Earlier volumes or editions of the "Dictionary of [British] National Biography" or "Grove's Dictionary of Music" are splendid sources for articles that are almost a sure thing for probably 80% of the historically-important figures in the Arts.
History and Geography: Old National Geographic articles (before 1923) would be appreciated in many categories.
Literature: pick a focus (Russian Drama, Westerns, Puritan Sermons, Chinese novels in translation). E-texts of books are almost certain to be listed if the Author has a category. If the author doesn't have a category, a "Genre index" mentioning several related texts is almost sure to be considered in our "Genres" category.
Now, if you're a web developer or a website host, these created pages should each have a link "sponsored by" or "developed by" to your own home page. If you're a local company, then a personal spread on each local tourist attraction or cultural center would do nicely: not the usual "Flat Rock Park has many flat rocks, which can be seen from its beautiful visitor center" but "Here's a series of photographs I took last fall along the Tilted-rock Trail in Flat Rock Park" or "Here's what my friend the High School Biology teacher has to say about the unique lichens on the rocks." If the core of your content is unique, then links to related content on other sites (like maps, weather, articles, official pages) are features; but if the unique content ISN'T prominent, we may not see it, and think you're just doing a beegees.com mass aggregate plagiarism scam on us. We're sensitve to that, and we don't appreciate it.
OK, so these may not be _exactly_ the subjects that you wanted to draw attention to. But you asked about getting lots of links, not spamming the competitive categories (where links are worth proportionally less because of the competition) And your personal banner ad at the top of the page, your personal sponsored by link at the bottom will give Google link popularity.
Ads are OK, but don't overdo them -- if yours are no worse in size, color, layout, bandwidth load, and obtrusiveness than new-advent.org, they won't be a problem. But (except for explicit sex and violence) we don't care what those ads show -- after all, geocities shows whatever ads it feels like on all its free sites. Affiliate links are OK!
And some commercialism is OK. I talked to one webmaster who was selling a unique collection of prints of famous paintings. They had a website in "Shopping", but wanted to get another website (a "vanity domain") also listed, featuring prints by their best-selling artist. Of course we wouldn't list the vanity domain in Shopping. But it had enough graphic images (nicely thumbnailed) of that artist's pictures that it qualified for a listing in Art! And I _begged_ them to create pages for other specific artists. They had a good template, they had unique graphics; for a few hours work apiece they could have had almost as many listings as they wanted -- and they could even have gotten direct sales from them. Some booksellers have free online books. Obviously the direct tie-in isn't always possible. But it's OK if it works. So long as someone could visit the site for "authoritative" free content and get it without the commercial intent seriously interfering, then it's OK.
Don't "bait and switch" -- once you put content out there, leave it. Don't pile on more ads. When we catch people doing this, then we have, we do, and we will go through and remove all the listings they were ever associated with. (This has happened becuase people got greedy about the volume of direct sales from their information pages.) Remember, you asked about getting links. These are not doorway pages, these are not retail sales pages, these are links for link popularity, and content for reputation-building.
I've emphasized "authority" here. Let's say you're an ordinary affiliate spammer of medical products, or even an ordinary maker of car wax. You may be able to churn out thousands of words on the general subject of the product you're selling, but that doesn't make it "content." We will probably consider it just ad-copy, and (1) try to ignore it, (2) nuke the whole site if we can't easily ignore it or can't easily get past it to what we'd consider "real" content. Make sure we know where the content is coming from, and what basis there is for thinking that your content provider can tell a hawk from a handsaw on a good day.
If you try this, don't think of it like your usual "doorway pages", you can consider it the cost of bribing the ODP for a listing. This is not like buying billboards on interstates; it's like Texaco sponsoring the Metropolitan Opera. We don't list billboards; we do list opera sites, even if they have a "sponsored by" notice. And this kind of bribery works -- as the figures already cited show!
Cost of this kind of bribery: I can create very thoroughly proofed and very carefully formatted pages from hard copy at about 5-10 pages per hour. Your mileage may differ: I'm probably a faster reader than most, but also probably a bit more perfectionist. A couple or three hours should be enough for most DNB articles; two or three days should be enough for many books. Make sure it's not already available online before scanning it: we'll probably check that also, so you don't bribe us with someone else's work.
It's not instant. You're building content and a reputation, and both of those take time. All of the sites mentioned have taken years to build.
Note that most of the mentioned sites also built content-building-and-consuming communities as well as original content -- that's one way of leveraging your work. But you have to have some work to leverage! We see dozens of sites daily where someone created a "creative writing" or "classified ads" or "training-hamsters-for-prize-fighting forums" or "directories" and then expected the world to come supply the content. Our reaction is "Instant delete for inadequate content or incomplete site." Like links, communities are a feature only if you have a solid core of your unique content.
And I'm not making a recommendation. I do occasionally make specific recommendations, based on the kind of content already generated by a webmaster. This scheme I described won't fit into all site promotion strategies; and some people may be unable to resist temptations like changing the pages after they're listed to send users to popup hell. Such people should NOT even start such a program.
But if this results in more good unique content becoming publicly accessable, I'd be delighted. And if some webmaster gets a bit more publicity, knowledge, reputation, honor, pleasure, or satisfaction as a side effect ... I'd just ignore that, for the sake of the public good.
I am new to this forum but I am truly impressed by the professionalism of the membership.
