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Asking around, I was pretty stunned by some of the other editors and old pro's here when they told me this was now the standard MO for alot of tight categories.
Is this what the ODP has come too?
Have you ever:
- offered cash to edit or include a listing?
- offered cash and thtey accepted to edit a listing?
- as an editor been offered cash to edit a listing?
- taken cash to edit a listing?
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 4:50 pm (utc) on June 23, 2004]
Not reviewing a site does leave it in the queue, does it not? If not reviewing a site does in fact leave it in the queue, then how do you conclude that that does not affect the site being included in the directory? If no one reviews the site ever, it will remain in the queue forever, right? Meanwhile, the editor of the directory and any editalls go ahead and add their own sites as they please.
Just because you happen to review some sites all over doesnt in any way imply that all sites in the queue are reviewed. Just because lots of people CAN review submissions in every directory does not imply that every site IS reviewed. Why else would you have a 3 minute to 3 year waiting list. By the way, is there a way to tell the longest a request has been in a queue? From your description, it sounds like the limit is forever, not 3 years.
If I read your last post correctly, you admit that editors abuse their privileges ("It happens..." and "And the simple fact is, most abusers already do this"). Well if you have a problem with editors abusing the system and lying about which sites are theirs, why are you arguing with me? We are in agreement. Editors at DMOZ abuse their privileges. You even admit that the process you have in place to prevent this doesnt work. So we are in agreement again. Why the denials and attacking when we are in agreement?
You and flicker both are still pretending that the only problem with DMOZ is that sometimes spammers get through and get their spam sites listed. Once again another diversion on both your parts.
I am not and never was talking about your spam problem.
I am and always have been talking about the bias from editors. If your site is biased by the editors adding their own sites all the time, who cares, as long as it is a quality site? That is flickers point.
Well if you dont care about having a biased directory, nothing. If, as you say you are trying to build an unbiased directory, then obviously YOU should care. But apparently that seems to fly right over both your heads.
If you are going to do deep linking for your editor's sites, you might as well charge for it, because you are no different from the paid directories at that point, except that the paid directories arent pretending they are unbiased like you are.
You obviously are angry about this issue, too bad you direct your energy at people who use DMOZ (customers in the non-DMOZ world, enemies in the DMOZ world) instead of trying to fix it. Just think, if you did something to fix your process, you wouldnt be having this conversation on every board every couple of months.
DMOZ has a universally bad reputation for a reason, and it is not because spammers are abusing the system.
*I* am an ODP editor. Please explain to me, and all reading here, exactly *why* as an unpaid volunteer I am obligated to review any site? Do you think that the head of the ODP should issue an order that I must review certain sites? And if I got such an order, *why* would I not respond with a simple "FOAD"? The head of the ODP can review and add any site at his pleasure. If he chooses not to, then I wouldn't expect him to give me an order to do so.
>Just because you happen to review some sites all over doesnt in any way imply that all sites in the queue are reviewed. Just because lots of people CAN review submissions in every directory does not imply that every site IS reviewed. Why else would you have a 3 minute to 3 year waiting list. By the way, is there a way to tell the longest a request has been in a queue? From your description, it sounds like the limit is forever, not 3 years.
>DMOZ has a universally bad reputation for a reason, and it is not because spammers are abusing the system.
The DMOZ has a universally bad reputation? ANYONE on the planet who can figure out how to use the editor feedback function can use it, and I'll get that in my e-mail inbox. And YES, I have editorial privs in commercial categories. I've yet to get a complaint of that nature. I guess I must live in a different universe than you.
Stepping into the unreviewed queue of any human edited directory from the perspective of an editor is an eye opening experience when you see the stuff that comes in and the unreviewed queues.
Ask most anyone who was frustrated that their site wasn't getting listed, became an editor, and stuck around to contribute to the directory. It hits you like a brick wall when you see a directory from the inside and becomes pretty easy to understand why there are (sometimes huge) backlogs of sites in some categories.
Please try to keep the discussion civil.
Where does that come from?
I have not seen the 1000 or so sites that get listed each day complain - compare that to a couple of gripes around the forums each day.
I have NEVER EVER seen one single complaint from any user of DMOZ data about a site not being listed or anything like that.
You said it, not me. Yet another angry editor from DMOZ.
>>>Please explain to me, and all reading here, exactly *why* as an unpaid volunteer I am obligated to review any site?
You jumped into the end of a conversation with wild accusations of what I or someone else is demanding of you. I havent seen any demands in this thread. I suggested a way to prevent editor bias.
But I'll answer your question anyways. Did you volunteer to review sites for DMOZ? Does volunteering to do a task obligate you to do that task? Some would say it does. If not, why did you volunteer?
Far be it from me or any other customer of DMOZ to expect (not demand) you as an unpaid volunteer to do what you volunteered to do.
But you missed the point of my post. I was asking hutchinson how leaving a site unreviewed somehow *doesnt* affect its chances of inclusion (his claim, not mine). Your post seems to agree with my point. You dont have to review any site and neither do the editalls above you. It can sit in the queue and "FOAD", which was exactly my point, thank you.
This scenario has been played many times over, only difference is the heros (DMOZ editors) remains the same, the villians (apparently the complaining webmasters) keeps changing. We, the bad guys are fighting a losing battle.
I am too old for that and besides I have not yet recovered for the last injuries.
Now let me go and hide somewhere.
(2) Editor abuse: Our concern is shown by action: mechanisms to make cases can be reported by anyone; swift investigations of reports. Our concern is also shown by a complete disregard for theoretical speculation. If people can't show any evidence that potential abuses are occurring, we're obviously doing a good enough job.)
(3) Unreviewed sites: It happens to millions of sites a day. Nothing I do, no changes in procedures, no new petty regulations, will change that. But I show my concern by the thousand sites a month or so that I do review. I appreciate other editors who show their concern in the same way. What we do is the only thing that will address that problem; anything that reduces our efficiency makes the problem worse.
(4) Bias: The ODP controls individuals editor bias by harnessing thousands of editors, so that together we comprise a very good sampling of our target audience -- Gallup would predict the next U. S. president by polling fewer people than that! (If you have evidence that any editor is showing favoritism to his own sites, then report it. If you have no such evidence, then it's obviously not a significant problem.)
(5) Procedures: there are many ways to build a directory. The ODP has proven the most effective method attempted so far. But if you think you have a better scheme, start another one! If you think another directory is better than the ODP, use it! The ODP is content to serve a niche market -- surfers, and even among them, the minority of surfers that like to use directories. Other people may be better served by other sites, and that's fine with us.
(6) Unrealistic expectations: The ODP has a unique mission, and people used to the services provided by other sites often expect the ODP to be just an amateur copycat of the professional promotional services. If repeating this conversation every two months helps some people see the ODP as it is, and understand it is not and cannot always be what they want, it's worth it. I think it's always worth while giving people a chance to learn, if they want it.
(7) ODP reputation: So long as the ODP is non-disfunctional, the "universal hatred" that you see for the ODP in the stupid spamming community will remain. That community sees the ODP as the troll under the bridge leading from themselves to infinite wealth. (which is another form of unrealistic expectation.) That's OK: A movement is known by the enemies it keeps, and these are definitely the right enemies.
(8) Delay-based frustration: We know the frustration (among owners of legitimate sites) resulting from delays caused by spammers will not go away. But if people understand what the real problem is, then they will be less susceptible to delusions of personal persecution. Even though some people will always opt for the paranoid fantasy, we want the facts to be available to those who can face them.
The ODP policies are very clear on this subject. No editor is EVER obligated to review ANY site. If for ANY reason an editor is "uncomfortable" reviewing ANY site, then they are told to leave it for someone else to review.
That's what we volunteered for.
Even asking a question like this betrays a total misapprehension of both the ODP and the internet. There are millions of sites to review! Millions. That's a very large number. No editor could possibly review all of them. And not a single one of us volunteered to review all of them!
What you are trying to do is just pure evil -- reducing editors to the status of slaves to your own greed. Jesus had something to say about certain leaders who would "bind painfully heavy burdens on other people's backs, but they wouldn't touch them with the tip of their own finger." You're making absurdly impossible demands of editors, and offering to do exactly nothing of the work yourself.
Leave the editors to do what the editors agreed that the editors' agreement said they would do. If it's not what you want, there are millions of other websites. Review them -- review them all! Surely one of them offers what you want. But the ODP doesn't have to be everything to everybody. A good thing, because it can't.
As usual, explaining the ODP's function and priorities meets with great frustration from those who wish it was otherwise. I understand this quixotic desire to some extent. Heck, I wish that Microsoft's purpose in life was to send me a monthly stipend out of the goodness of their hearts. But I don't waste any of my valuable time lobbying them for this.
So why *am* I wasting my time explaining these basic tenets of directory management again and again? Well, because just about every time that I take the time to explain this, I wind up with a private message from a submitter for whom the light has gone on. There are webmasters and SEO's out there listening and thinking, and every time I explain who our users are and how we organize information for their benefit, some of them grasp this and are from then on able to use this information to their advantage--which, since they've understood what I told them, is also to ours. We do have a lot of interests in common with the webmasters of legitimate non-spam sites, after all.
Other folks prefer not to do this, and that's their right. But if you go on waiting for apples from an orange tree, you're eventually going to starve to death:
1) We are not a listing service for webmasters. We are not employed by webmasters. We do not have a linking arrangement with webmasters which we could be failing to live up to (i.e. "you link to us and we'll link to you.") Our only interaction with the webmasters of the sites we link to is that they sometimes (not always) like to submit their sites to us because this increases the likelihood that we may list them, and we encourage this because it sometimes (not always) provides us with a valuable source of new sites worth reviewing.
2) We don't care about the sites' Google rankings or how their businesses are doing. All we care about is how our directory appears to the people who use our directory to find sites or our data to enhance their own webpages.
3) We don't care what webmasters think about the importance and value of affiliate sales sites or lead generators or empty forums that they swear will gain traffic if we'll only list them. We only care that our users hate these sites and don't want to see them in the categories.
4) We don't care which site gets listed tomorrow and which site gets listed two years from now. We just want to continuously add good sites to the directory so that it is larger and more comprehensive the next time one of our users looks at it.
5) We don't care if our editors ever review a single site from the submissions queue. We just want them to add more good sites no matter where they find them.
6)We don't care if an editor adds only one site a month. That's one site a month more than we would have had if he wasn't there, and his presence does not impede any other editors or slow the review of any individual site down.
7) We don't care if an editor adds his own site or his mother's site or his dogsitter's site. We just want him to add only quality sites with only unbiased descriptions and refrain from deleting or defacing any quality sites from competitors, and we'll kick him out if we catch him doing otherwise.
8) We don't care if your particular site ever gets listed. We only care that our directory continues to grow and expand and maintain high quality.
If you understand these things, you'll have a much better chance at being able to have a mutually constructive dialogue with the ODP. It's usually a futile exercise to try to get an organization of ANY kind to change without understanding or caring what that organization's goals, priorities, and intentions are. This is not an exception.
(1) Malicious webmaster abuse: "bait and switch" or "deceptive spam". This is a major problem for any directory; thousands of attempts are made daily; dozens of pages that slipped in are reported daily, even though some of these problems are concealed (compared to, say, editor favoritism toward their own sites, which can't be serious if it's not visible.) We have multiple QA feedback mechanisms and multiple internal tools, and we're spending a great deal of effort towards improving both.
(2) Editor favoritism to their own sites. (Under this heading we'd list as an extreme case "editors deleting sites they disapprove of.") Some editors join to list their own sites. And some of them stay around to list thousands of other good sites -- a win-win situation for all concerned. (I was a slight variation on this: I joined to have the ODP host the links page of my incipient site.) The ODP guidelines strictly forbid this; violation can lead to removal of editors (and in extreme cases leads to immediate removal.) Our abuse reporting system seems to handle this well -- there is no backlog, and only a few cases are reported daily (out of thousands of sites listed.)
(3) Bribery -- what started this thread. Taken very seriously; editors are removed if it is felt they can't be trusted -- and sometimes even false accusations can destroy that trust. We get very few reports of this; I'm not sure that would be the case unless it is very rare -- even rarer than editor favoritism.
(4) Accumulative personal biases (I seem not to list French-language or Gambling or Islamic or Personal Page or Web Design or Photography or Auto Manufacturing or Country Music sites, for various reasons; all other editors have similar limitations). This is potentially serious; and every now and then we find a huge hole in our taxonomy resulting from it. Those holes are found by people with different biases. [Which is obvious, once you think of it; most people don't think of that without help, though.] So the obvious best approach is by efforts to build a diverse community and ongoing efforts to be as tolerant as possible of every kind of personal bias, in order to build the most diverse community possible.
Well, those are all pretty obvious to anyone: the editors' guidelines and submittal policies address them directly. But there are other sources that are not so obvious to people who don't have experience in sampling procedures.
(5) Collection procedure bias: editors list the sites they find. Obviously, any bias in the kind of sites they find will be reflected in the directory. This we regard as an extremely serious problem, especially since we have such an efficient "collection procedure" in the "site submittal process". And we are always in danger of giving favoritism to websites that are being promoted by their owners via the submittal process. Any editor knows that there is a very poor, maybe negative correlation between submittal urgency and site quality, and there is a very high negative correlation between mass deeplink submittal and site quality.
There is no good solution to this -- it is a permanent systemic problem. The ODP provides editors with ready access to multiple search engines (which have their own biases). And we are always insistent -- even visitors to outside forums may have heard this -- that editors' job is NOT TO REVIEW SITE SUBMITTALS. We say over and over again, if an editor never reviews a site submittal, they can still be doing a great job. But if an editor only reviews site submittals, he is NOT doing his job. And we put this criterion into practice. Every time an editor asks to edit a new category, we ask -- can you find two or three good sites for this category without depending on either site submittals (or, of course, your own personal sites?)
And even though dependence on submittals is the most serious, most pervasive, and most badly flawed bias, it is not the only one. Anyone who has ever complained about Google (or Altavista, or Inktomi) search results will know that editors can't depend on search engines to find the best sites.
Editors' personal knowledge, use of other kinds of resource sites, and outside research provide some correctives to the biases mentioned above. Of course, these also have intrinsic bias, but they are not nearly as pervasive as the other sources mentioned; they tend to be self-limiting and mutually correcting. And so it is with good reason that this source of information is so highly regarded within the community; this is why it is worth risking the possibility of editor abuse to accept people who have inside knowledge of niche industries; this is why the guidelines don't place arbitrary limits on what an editor can do -- if it is good for any editor to do something, it is good for me to do it and let them do the next good thing. And if my personal knowledge enables me to do it more efficiently, then I should be the one to do it.
----------------------------------------------------
This is, of course, a concern 180 degrees at odds with what most other directories do, and what most commercial submitters want. The bias you see on most of the web is strongly toward commercial sites, and strongly towards self-promoted sites.
The ODP has (1) a much better balance than any other major directory, including strong representatives of both kinds of sites, and (2) a deliberate institutional bias towards informational sites, which -- we are convinced -- is a unique service we provide to the surfing community. Thus, exceptional informational sites are deeplinked freely while retail sites are deeplinked -- never. (What? NEVER? ...) And if you ask us about our concerns with bias, we'll tell you: we aren't finding enough of the good information resources, because those folk all too often aren't self-promoters.
So: yes, we desperately need help addressing intrinsic bias; but the bias we need help with most is that we give too much attention to webmaster input, and not enough to surfers' concerns; too much attention to sites that are already well promoted, and too little to knowledge that's not already represented by other web navigation sources (such as personal editor knowledge from off-web sources.)
That's more of a personal opinion on my part than any kind of ODP policy, mind you, but I know I'm not the only one who has it. There's much more urgency, for many editors, in filling out an empty or nearly-empty category than there is in adding one more site to a category that's full of thousands of sites already. It's simply more important to our users.
I am full of admiration on the efforts that you have put to going through all technical aspect of the directory plus I do not know how to put it, but lets say your vision on what the DMOZ should be. I doubt even those paid for the job will show such dedication.
But perhaps, sometime to defend the view that one strongly believes coupled with seeing one too many spam attempts at polluting the directory that you have place so much effort in cause you to view webmasters' complaints to be suspicious, dubious.
Unfortunately, by being over protective about what you view as distinctively eithier black if not it is white, the directory (certain portion of it at least) has become exact opposite of what you or any editor with good intents wants it to be. Duplicate entries for informational sites over commercial sites? Look again.
I submitted my site about 1 year ago, it was in the review queue for about 2 months. The editor in charge of my editor claims that my site is not Netscape 4 viewable. Fine, I admend with my limited knowledge and test it with Netscape and then request a review at ****. Was told, it is under review.
Waited for afew weeks more, I submitted another crappy site (real ugly, 1 silly logo created with Imageready, thoroughly commercial) to it. Guess what? Listed within the week. Must have been considered a 'quality' site.
I know that is not right, but it is to prove a point. Later, I downed the site, Robozilla raise a red flag and it was duely removed from the same category, yet my original one remains in the queue.
The situation on this thread is a repeat of what I see as a vicious cycle. Someone voice his frustration but he has to put every point across with caution otherwise he gets hit from all directions by the various editors that are regular here. No webmaster will enjoy that kind of pain - well, no normal webmaster at least.
Does bhd735 or the others before him in their anonymous state has anything to gain personally at all. Can you really trust claims as their site really their site?
your mischaracterization of my post is laughable. You know full well that I didnt say *nor imply* that DMOZ editors must review ALL websites. The post I responded to asked why he should review ANY website.
Big difference there that you again pretend to miss to make a point that is totally irrelevant to the conversation. If you volunteer to review websites it is not "pure evil" to expect you to review ANY websites. Trying to pretend that I am turning DMOZ editors into slaves for my enrichment, where's my whip? Oh, and I dont understand about the web being made up of many, many websites. Gee, I didnt know that, thanks for the rediculous clarification. You really should try to stick to the point. If you have valid responses, use them.
So to recap, here are three issues with DMOZ that I have brought up in my posts and hutchinson etal have mischaracterized as my personal vendetta, my clinical paranoia, my pure evil, *but have yet to answer in any sensible way*.
1. Editors at DMOZ use their position to submit their own sites with no oversight.
2. Editors at DMOZ prevent competitors from adding sites to the directories they manage by never reviewing those sites.
3. Editors at DMOZ see no problem with the bias that results from these action.
You think you are doing DMOZ a favor by ranting and attacking every person that questions your procedures? Gee, the only ones that complain are evil spammers abusing our system for their own enrichment. What we do is perfect and beyond reproach. Anyone who says otherwise is evil, evil, evil.
Well if you were in a company that had bosses, you would have been most likely fired by now for the damage you do to DMOZ. But go ahead and keep doing what you do, it is probably more cathartic for you to attack evil enemies than to solve real problems.
And I'm not that interested in motive here.
Anyone may show their good faith interest in the quality of the directory: by reporting a problem. This doesn't merely get a little problem fixed. If enough people do that, those who see all the reports may notice patterns that the public, or even other editors, will be unaware of. Some of our current internal quality programs and some of our editorial guidelines have been driven by these outside reports
Some people spent months and reported hundreds of cases to us. They may have been driven by an ulterior motive: in some cases, I strongly suspect, a desire to improve their competitive position. I don't care! They made an enormous contribution to the quality of the ODP, without ever editing or even suggesting a site. I abase myself in the dust seven times and seven times again before them.
People are still trying (with, I think, varying success) to do similar things. As a result, the ODP will be better tomorrow. I'd like to see more people trying. (Testing schemes, just like directories, have biases, and the more different perspectives you test from, the better coverage you get.). You don't need a pattern to start out. All you need to do is demonstrate your ability to tell a hawk from a handsaw, by finding a hawk in our workshop! But if you don't have that, you have nothing that could possibly help us.
This is idealism only insofar as ice-cold pragmatism is an ideal. It's not "black or white": it's "There may be a lion in the way or there may not. I don't know. I'm from Missouri. Show me the spoor, or I follow the route that I know goes to where I want to go."
As for other people sharing the ideal, I'm sure they do. Dozens, perhaps a few hundred, people have given more time than I have: to editing, to refining the process, to building the community. I may have spent more time than most refining its apologetics. But don't mistake other people's quiet productive work as a lack of concern or of passion.
You seem to have a mental block about this part, bhd735.
THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE. Other forms of editor abuse are possible, serious, a concern of ours. This one, which you repeatedly bring up, is NOT TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE with the system we are currently using. If there was a site I wanted to prevent a competitor from adding to the ODP, I literally would have no way of doing this. Failing to review it myself does not in *any* way make it less easy or less likely for another editor to review it. You asked earlier in the conversation "What, do the higher-level editors look in every corner of the directory?" Yes. Every submitted site automatically reminds every editor all the way up the tree of its existence. It is impossible for a site to get lost; it is impossible for one editor to intercept another editor's review of a site. It NEVER HAPPENS, because that is not how our system functions.
Is that a little clearer? I'm not unconcerned about the idea of editor bias in general, I'm completely unconcerned about THIS KIND of editor bias because doing it WOULDN'T WORK. All submitted sites are continuously available to be reviewed by any editor along its category path. There is no way for one editor to put dibs on it, place it on hold, or remove it from the consideration of his colleagues.
It sometimes takes a very long time for a site to be reviewed, but it is never, ever for the reason you speculate. Ever.
1. Editors at DMOZ use their position to submit their own sites with no oversight.
Not true - there is oversight
2. Editors at DMOZ prevent competitors from adding sites to the directories they manage by never reviewing those sites.
Not true - each category has lots of editors who can stop by and edit
3. Editors at DMOZ see no problem with the bias that results from these action.
Not true - I think every editor is conscious of this.
I am claiming that sites go unreviewed for years because of the bias of the managing editors. I understand that any editall CAN review that site at any time they choose. Any editall can also invent a new energy source any time they choose. It doesnt mean it happens. And it doesnt mean it happens regularly. Obviously there is lots of proof that sites go unreviewed for years. You, yourselves advise people that waiting a year is normal.
So how can you continue to claim that an editor that doesnt review a site has no effect? Of course it has an effect. They didnt review it so it is still in the queue. Yes, someone else CAN review it. Whether they do or not is apparently a random occurrance, at a minimum the competitor's site is delayed longer than the non-competitor site.
Yes, I have an agenda. I am trying to push here is for DMOZ to live up to their word. They claim to be an unbiased representation of what is useful on the web. They currently ARE NOT. They are a representation of their editor's sites and their editors choices of sites. Their editors are biased because they are competing with other sites in the directories they manage. This is a completely flawed practice.
This can be proven, if anyone at DMOZ cares to make an effort. Take a directory and sample it over time. The waybackmachine is helpful for this. If you see a directory managed by an editor with their own site listed, observe the changes to that directory. First thing done is editor adds site. Second thing done is nothing. directory does not change for years. If you find one of these, then you have one too many. Odds are you have plenty of these. If I can find one out of one that I checked, and I have, you can too.
You say you have mechanisms in place. Just report it. Oh, yeah, you guys sure take this stuff with an open mind. That is a sure fire way to get your listing removed from DMOZ alltogether.
Quality by complaints is nothing. Demming taught a whole generation of corporations you dont get quality from inspection. You arent even doing the inspection part. You are waiting for that 1 in 1000 to complain before you even bother to look at anything.
QED
No, you aren't. What you're pushing for is for DMOZ editors to live up to YOUR word.
>They claim to be an unbiased representation of what is useful on the web.
The ODP's claims are easily found on its website, and this is not its word, as anyone may easily verify. Here's what the guidelines tell editors to do: "In short, editors should select quality sites and lots of them."
"You claim" that the directory consists of sites "chosen by editors." And if you'll just grant that "four million" is "lots?" we'll agree that editors are living up to their obligations.
Here's what the policy says about editors and their own sites: "Everyone is welcome to apply to join the ODP, including those who own, maintain and promote websites. Editors may have business or other types of affiliations relevant to the categories they edit, and MAY ADD THEIR OWN SITES or sites with which they are affiliated."
That's the ODP policy. Editors may add their own sites. Editors can't change the policy.
The policy says further: "However, it is contrary to the goals and policy of the ODP for editors to add only their own or affiliate sites, to engage in self cooling or other forms of self promotion, or to exclude or disadvantage a site that belongs to a competitor for the purpose of harming the competitor. Inappropriate actions may include excluding competitors' sites from the directory simply because they belong to a competitor or intentionally editing their titles or descriptions in a manner that distorts their content or diminishes the chance that users will find or view those sites."
A site that is left in unreviewed is not "excluded", for the necessary reasons several of us have mentioned. "Exclusion" would mean "deleting a listing"; when investigating abuse, we generally also include "deleting all submittals of a listable site."
If you know of a single eligible website that has actually been "excluded" by an editor who is a competitor, then ... report it and see what happens. If you don't, then ... so far as you know, there are no problems, and if there is an ethical bone in your body, you'll be singing your choice of part in the next paean to the ODP.
Now we see why they are such staunch defenders of the status quo. Not because they believe the content is unbiased or that their systems prevent bias, but because they are guilty of the very bias I have been talking about.
cbpayne said "When I was first accepted as an editor, the first thing I did was add my own site."
hutchenson said "I joined to have the ODP host the links page of my incipient site."
No wonder they take it so personally. Portraying themselves as UNPAID volunteers when in reality the first thing they did when they joined was pay themselves with a valuable link.
Recuse yourselves from this discussion, you cannot be trusted because you have proven your own *personal* bias.
DMOZ claims on its website:
"...the Open Directory follows in its footsteps to become the definitive catalog of the Web. " One definition of definitive is authoritive, complete.
That doesnt say unbiased, but it certainly implies unbiased. You cant have a complete catalog of the web if competitors sites are excluded.
Sites that are in a perpetual queue are excluded just as real as sites that are deleted. They are not present in the directory.
Here is the DMOZ rule quoted previously:
"However, it is contrary to the goals and policy of the ODP for editors to add only their own or affiliate sites, to engage in self cooling or other forms of self promotion, or to exclude or disadvantage a site that belongs to a competitor for the purpose of harming the competitor. Inappropriate actions may include excluding competitors' sites from the directory simply because they belong to a competitor or intentionally editing their titles or descriptions in a manner that distorts their content or diminishes the chance that users will find or view those sites."
Funny how DMOZ recognizes that there is more than one way to show your bias and they specifically state some in the rule. The rule quoted does NOT state that the ONLY offense is deleting sites of competitors. It includes messing with their titles and descriptions and it also clearly says the words EXCLUDE OR DISADVANTAGE.
Either way, the end result is the same whether you delete a site of a competitor or never review it. The site is not listed (or is delayed being listed, possibly in perpetuity). Sounds like exclusion to me and most definitely falls under disadvantage. To claim otherwise is just more biased editall BS.
It goes like this.
Say a new editor joins the ODP and does not review your site. This does not impede anyone else from reviewing your site; it does not slow down the review of your site. In fact, there's literally nothing he can do to keep others from reviewing your site as they normally would.
So... this editor's presence in the ODP has not hurt your site's review, or, for that matter, any site's review. In fact, your site's review process is identical to the way it would have been if that editor had never joined the ODP. The ODP's userbase, on the other hand, gets the great benefits of the sites this new editor has listed. So the existence of that editor has no effect on you or your site whatsoever, but benefits our users a lot. Yep, we'll take that editor.
>Now we see why they are such staunch defenders of the status quo. Not because
>they believe the content is unbiased or that their systems prevent bias, but
>because they are guilty of the very bias I have been talking about.
No, it's because as we've been trying to explain, perhaps a little too patiently, THAT ISN'T THE BIAS PROBLEM WE FACE. You're inventing 'problems' that aren't problems for us. Try just once to think of this from our users' perspective, would you? Do our users suffer if our editors list sites of poor quality due to their relationship with the sites? YES. This would be a serious problem. We are very concerned about it. Do our users suffer if our editors delete a competitor's site or give it a misleading description? YES. This would be a serious problem. We are very concerned about it. Do our users suffer if our editors take bribes and extort them for cash? YES. This would be a serious problem. We are very concerned about it. Do our users suffer if our editors list sites of acceptable quality with which they are affiliated? NO. In fact, they benefit. So from our POV, this is NO problem at all.
Since you *still* seem to have the idea that you are being harmed somehow by the existence of people who are not directly doing something to benefit you, this probably will not make sense to you. I am sure there are others here who are grasping the basic premise, though. A webmaster who joins the ODP, lists his own site and several others, has done us a *service*. Rather than get our panties in a bunch about it, we thank him for benefiting our users with his additions, and encourage anyone else who's capable to do the same thing. "Bias," from our perspective, is listing an unacceptable site or deleting an acceptable one for personal reasons, or giving a site a title or description that is not impartial. Listing a quality site in the first place can never be bias, because *every* site added is a valuable addition as far as we're concerned.
I've been enjoying this conversation.
It seems to me that BHD735 has a good idea about not having editors be category editors for the area that they are commercially involved in. Since there are tons of sites they can edit in hundreds of other categories there would still be plenty for them to do without risk of them purposely leaving their competitors in the queue in hopes that no other editor will get to them right away.
That way category editors can really focus in on a category that they don't have any conflict of interest with and try to catch all the good sites that the users would most benefit from. Sounds like a win-win all around.
I'm not sure I'm following what the complaint is about this suggestion. Seems to make good business sense to me.
BettyB
I understood what you said the first two times. You apparently dont understand my point of view as a customer as opposed to from an editor's point of view.
Perhaps if there are so many editors willing to jump into every directory in DMOZ regardless of whether there is an editor for that directory, you can explain why there are 3 year backlogs for INACTIVE directories. If, as you have claimed 3 times now, the managing editor does in no way slow the process by *not* reviewing a site in his directory, why is there a wait for completely inactive directories? Shouldnt there be a whole herd of editalls jumping at that submission?
See that is my problem with your explanation. It doesnt explain the facts. The facts are submissions can take 3 years, even in inactive *managed* directories.
My first post in this thread stated that my site got listed in DMOZ and that is fine with me. I, as a webmaster, am not being harmed by this bias. So you can stop trying to say I have an axe to grind because I am not getting my demands met. In fact, I am actually benefiting from this bias, because I am now part of the exclusive club DMOZ.
I, as a user, however, am being harmed by this bias. The same way that everyone else is when they use google and get the most heavily advertised/linked sites first instead of the ones with the best content. You dont have the same problem as google obviously, but you do put up biased pages. And they are not biased towards some personal preferences of your editors. They are not biased towards the best content or towards the least commercial pages as some have tried to pass off. They are biased by business interests. Editors have businesses and they compete for listings. There is nothing pure about this. There is nothing okay about this.
If DMOZ fails to review (or delays forever to review) sites for competitive reasons, they are not making a definitive catalog of the web. They are making a definitive catalog of the editall-competition-safe web.
If we put in a rule saying editors weren't allowed to edit in any category where they had a site themselves, it would cut into our efficiency and our effective use of editor expertise. I have listed at *least* a hundred other sites in the same category my site was originally listed in. It would do the ODP a great disservice to prevent me from doing this.
Look, it's not bias that our directory is incomplete. That's just the way of the web. At the heart of it, the reason some sites wait three years for review is that there are millions and millions of websites out there to be reviewed. It's not just that there's a spam-clogged backlog of submissions (though there is that), it's that so many new sites are created every day that it can take a long time for us to get to a new one, and we're treating the websites which were never submitted with as much urgency as the ones which were. Even so, I assure you that submissions cannot be swept under the carpet. They will all be reviewed eventually. If a particular editor is biased against a site and doesn't want to list it himself, I'd rather he didn't, frankly; he would probably give it a biased description or something, which would be much worse from our POV, because it would negatively affect what our users see. As long as the editor is fairly listing sites on a regular basis, it doesn't matter if he declines to list any sites that are owned by his ex-girlfriend or support a political position he doesn't like or are viewable only on a browser he despises or have backgrounds in the color purple. Someone else will get to those in due time.
I agree with you, it *would* be biased if the editor really could 'guard' a category against such submissions, or 'hide' them from other editors. But this cannot happen in our system.
So... why not focus on the *real* bias problems that the ODP and other directories face? We've enumerated them carefully for you. If you know of any others, we're definitely interested. But which individual site gets reviewed more quickly than another is a matter of zero importance to us... and given our communal model, this is unlikely ever to change. If you think a different model could build a better directory, then by all means go for it. I'm a big directory fan, personally.
Absolute BS.
I joined because I believe in the bigger picture of and goals of DMOZ, I enjoy spending my time looking for sites (the list of submitted sites is a poor source of new sites) - please do not quote me for something I didn't do....and didn't say I did.
YES - I added my own site when first accepted as an editor (thats not why I joined)... but I notice how you conviently ignored the rest of my message to attempt to bolster your argument (certainly damaged your argument because you did that).... I also added all my competitor sites - they were not even submitted!
Either way, you are asking us to take your word for it. Your actions speak louder than your words. The first ACTION you took was to add your site. That speaks to your motivations louder than anything you claim afterwards.
I guess ethics and conflict of interest are outside of your comprehension. In the real world they are real issues and people take them seriously. In the financial world you go to jail for lesser offenses.
[edited by: bhd735 at 2:03 am (utc) on July 8, 2004]
Hmm...I just checked and my 2 sites were first listed by other editors. And the last changes for both listings were by superior editors, so I didn't juice up the descriptions to give my sites an edge. Only thing in unreviewed in that cat is a 404 page that used to be listed, but now appears to be gone for good. Not all editors are just interested in listing their own sites.
Why?
Let's compare the two methods and the outcomes:
1) Current situation:
Category editor chooses (with your blessing) not to review sites that are in competition with their own. Editor therefore leaves competing sites in the long queue of sites for someone else to edit.
Example: John Doe sells scooters. John becomes ODP editor for the scooter section. John lists some sites with information on scooters. John lists his company's ABC Scooters site.
Scooter Heaven, Scooters R Us, Newfangled Scooters submit their listing. John does not list them because he'd prefer not to have competitors placed in there right away or because he doesn't want to provide a biased description.
Result: John's site is in the listings, other three equally good scooter sites in queue for 0-3 years.
Directory users only learn about John's site.
2) BHD735's suggestion:
Category editors work on categories in areas that they do not have a conflict of interest with.
Example: John Doe sells Scooters. He becomes an editor. He works on the bicyle section. John adds articles about bicycles. John adds all the good commerical sites about bicycles that are submitted and that he finds on his own. John submits his scooter site to the scooter editor. Scooter Heaven, Scooters R Us, Newfangled Scooters submit their listing. All sites are equally placed in queue and reviewed by the unbiased editor of the scooter area.
Result: The best bicycle sites are added because John Doe had no conflict of interest in placing them in there. The Scooter sites all get looked and reviewed and placed based on their quality. Directory users now are assured that they get the most comprehensive directory results for both the bicycle category and the scooter category.
Which seems to make the most sense for the end user?
Is the concern that you won't be able to get enough volunteers if the job is to edit sites that are not related to the editor's own commercial interests? I can understand and that is perhaps a valid concern. (Although if that is the case, it is further proof that the motives for editors is not 100% altruistic.)
BettyB
