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Nowdays I only pass through when I submit new sites. In the regional area where most of my sites are placed everything seems to be showing "This category needs an editor".
For the first time ever I have a site that seems to be still waiting for a review after several months. That's not a beef, just a comment, but when looked at in the context of no editors being available, I'm beginning to wonder if this volunteer dependant model is showing signs of stress?
Any ODP people in our midst able to advise the size of the unedited backlog?
Also, just to remind you, in order to rank in Yahoo and AOL, you need to rank in Google. To rank in Google, you need to be listed in DMOZ. If you are listed in Dmoz then then you will also find your way into thousands of smaller directories and engines including just about everything.... and you heard an editor in this thread say, "In *very* rare cases, we still [review their site] anyway - especially if the poster is really nice".... nice? Where in the guidelines does it say anything about being 'nice'? Rare case or not, that is the way it is... and that's the way it always has been, and the way it always will be.... because its run by volunteers who are not accountable to boss that pays them just to do their job so people can just get their sites listed or rejected. Re:'You get what you pay for'... BUT YOU WON'T TAKE OUR MONEY... that is your own rule/fault... so don't think you're not responsible to us. I don't care how you do it, but do your job... if you can't handle all the submissions, put a moratorium on submissions, until you clean house, review the backlog and get up to speed... or, hire some editors, or pay the existing editors you do have, so they can afford to work more... but you can't wield all that power and not be responsible to everybody... surfer or submitter.
Also, if your going to reject a site, you need to send a form email saying why.... everybody else does. Then you won't have people emailing editors asking if their site was reviewed, and if you bust them for spam they will know not to submit crap again. if they were just slack-jawed and gave you a half functional site to review, you will tell them to stand in the back of the line again after they corrected their site... and if they don't like it make them go before a central public forum review board... make them post their case... then the corrupt editors will be less likely to screw competitors, and the good editors won't waste their time replying to spammers.... and the webmasters will have some kind of larger review board that they can go to if they feel they were not treated fairly.... and THAT will solve half your problems...
So just to consolidate the points:
1.) Charge businesses to submit their sites. If you still want a free submit, fine, but offer a bizex.
2.) Reply to and notate every submission.
3.) Create one single public official review board where every thread is dealt with... including posts about corrupt editors, and rejected site owners have some type of recourse.
...and if you don't have the resources to do this, then its time you all come back to reality and charge people for your services... go non-profit if you want, but its time you address the limitations of your system. If you can’t be fair to all businesses, then I suggest you kill the business cats and focus on sites that help us be better humans, or whatever... but you can’t give that much weight to the businesses that are in there and not offer a way for new businesses to get in. (And BTW I know its all the engines that ‘weight’ those sites so heavily, but you are ultimately responsible and accountable.)
You are encouraged to apply for a small category to show that you can do a good job in a relatively minor area. This doesn't mean that the category is obscure - it just means that you are not going to be let loose on a category with 100s of entries with no history - something that people would complain about (with justification). If you haven't read the guidelines before you apply then you will be rejected. Incidentally I agree with your points about an answer email to prospective editors as a courtesy.
>>Second, if you think that business owners should take time away from running businesses so they can volunteer, that is crazy. We understand money.... we make money, and pay in money...
Do you really think there are no successful business owners or managers in the ODP editor ranks?
>>Also, if your going to reject a site, you need to send a form email saying why
Why? Do Google when they give a PR0? In fact there is considerable effort made to place a suitable site. On the other hand the professional submitters and spammers may find a detailed explanation of why they have been rejected extremely useful in future attempts. This would also lead to interminable debates about whether a site is an affiliate or not (as it already does on resource-zone), taking even more time away from editing.
>>but you can't wield all that power and not be responsible to everybody
How come the ODP gets singled out for this criticism all the time? The ODP is responsible to its charter, surely. Presumably the reason why so many people use and give value to ODP results is a justification for its ethos. If its results are not of value, then it will stop being so important.
dogboy, you place great weight on businessmen and professionalism. Yet, I would guess that if all business owners submitted their site in accordance with the ODP guidelines (in other words, acted in a businesslike and professional manner) then the problem of waiting time would be solved overnight. Goodbye to mirror sites, vanity URLs and affiliate spam. Maybe some ODP business editors can give their view of the percentage of sites that they deal with that they are able to list in the category submitted to immediately?
The fact to which you allude (Google considers the ODP more valuable search-engine-spider-fodder than L$/Z) tends to suggest that there are communities and constituencies well served by the volunteer-community approach, and so ODP/Netscape/AOL has severely limited its options:
1) Promised to foster a community of volunteers.
2) Promised NEVER to charge for listings.
3) Promised NOT to cut off outside submissions.
4) Promised NOT to publicly divulge information about volunteer editor activities.
5) Promised NOT to restrict how its database is used by ANYONE, even including search engines (so long as proper attribution is given)
6) Promised NEVER to require an editor to list (or to review) any particular site.
7) EXPRESSLY DENIED any guarantee that any site would be listed, or that any site listing would be permanent.
Our experience thus far strongly indicates that:
7) Spammers are the single largest cause of spam, and communicating with them brings more spam: it is always better to cut off and ignore all such communication.
8) The nature of the community makes it IMPOSSIBLE to "represent" it "officially" in any one public forum.
You may not be aware that:
9) Information theory can show that one of the most effective measures against a variety of spam is a "randomly delayed response" which, as it happens, is how the current editor approach to the unreviewed queue appears.
10) The ODP is adding listings about 3 times faster than Yahoo. Looksmart was losing money, before they began shrinking and going PPC. This would seem to suggest that the ODP model is (so far) the optimum way of harnessing resources to this kind of project.
11) The backlog is relatively stable (neither rapidly nor monotonically growing OR shrinking), so drastic measures are not needed.
If you have further suggestions about how to manage the ODP (or how to start up a competitor), you might want to bear in mind these facts and constraints.
Some shopping cats have submissions that are 85% spam. If those weren't there, the useful sites would be listed SIX times faster. I rest my case. Submitters are the problem.
Most -certainly over half - of the sites in the queue are garbage or already listed or duplicate submissions, and they deter editors from enjoying their volunteering as much as they could. Some categories are fun to edit and rarely get spammed, but a good number of the 'competitive' areas are drowning in site submissions which are not going to get listed.
And then there are the editor notes dealing with the ongoing assult by site owners who dispatch submissions to all manner of categories. You've heard of career criminals with "rap sheets as long as your arm," right? Some sites have associated spam-related editor notes just as long, involving dozens of editors over just a few months out to a few years.
I wonder how many editor man-hours are consumed each month in trying to put sites in the right pigeonholes and fighting spam submissions. Whatever the number may be, it will be impressive.
Questionable clicks from LookSmart: $49.00 for the opportunity to get them and $0.15 for each alleged click.
Inktomi paid inclusion: $39.00 for the first page $25.00 each additional page per year.
AtlaVista express inclusion: $78.00 for the fist page and as low as $38.00 per year for additional pages.
Teoma paid inclusion: $30.00 for the fist page, $18.00 for each additional per year.
Lycos/FAST paid inclusion: $18.00 membership fee, $12.00 per page per year and a free **bonus newsletter**
Overture: All the paid clicks you can handle and free upgrades like MatchDriver.
Open directory site review and listing followed by Google inclusion and traffic along with use of the search engine you probbaly use 90% of the time. FREE, Priceless and sometimes Timeless.
There are some thing in life money can't buy. For everything else there is MasterCard, Amex, Discover, or whatever else is your wallet.
talk to the editor above you, and also get involved with the discussions in the general forums, and also within your forum of interest, get your name around.
I like this one. It defines perfectly how Dmoz editors think/behave.
Oh, well...
1. I've wanted to become an ODP editor for years. From time to time, I apply for consideration and never receive a response. I suspect this is related to my second point (see below) but if it is, I'd certainly enjoy a response from the ODP. Otherwise I don't know how to proceed. I'd love to prove that I could do great work, but it's hard when you're throwing applications into a void that never responds to your feedback. This is quite different than my experience with Open Source projects. I've taken a train for 5 hours to volunteer at the KDE www.kde.org booth at LinuxWorld NYC, I've donated a good chunk of money to Gentoo ( www.gentoo.org ), etc. Why? Because when I submit bug reports, comments and suggestions, I actually get positive feedback and my input seems to make a difference. If DMOZ followed that tradition more closely, then the directory quality would improve at a much faster rate.
2. I've noticed major changes at ODP. Over the years, my web designer directory <snip> was gradually linked in over 25 regional categories on DMOZ. I presume because editors thought the directory useful for it's large # of design firms browseable by state and/or city, so there would be a link in Kentucky, a link in Michigan, etc. Then one day *poof* all but one was removed, and the link that remained was relegated to an obscure category, far removed from it's most relevant category. Meanwhile, shoddy web designer directories remain in 2 or more categories, which is disheartening for someone who has put so much into a site.
3. I think that a change in the editorial process at DMOZ is needed. Some of my thoughts on this matter:
a) If editorial notes can serve to bar a site from being listed, it is pretty academic to mass-submit a competitor's web site in order to blacklist that site. Therefore, the public should be able to view the editorial notes on submissions or domains. This would reduce the number of bad submissions, and let the COMMUNITY monitor the editorial work at ODP so everyone can work together to make the best possible directory. If everyone can be a community watchdog then it is much harder for folks to abuse the system.
b) A URL search that presents the status of it's submission would be helpful. This would help reduce editor workload, or comments from curious webmasters. Status could include: Pending Review for [category], Currently in Review for [category], Listed in [category], Rejected for [category] [reason and editorial notes]. Otherwise, folks like me make a request every few months because there is no way to determine the current status of a submission.
c) If this is truly a community project, then where is the source code for the site? If the source code is in Netscape's hands entirely, then how can any improvements be made that can't be justified from a corporate profit-oriented perspective? Is the source code actively maintained? I'm not clear on these issues. From the user's perspective it looks like the same code that has been used for many years, which would seem to imply that no modern techniques are being employed to help reduce workload.
d) It would be nice to allow a more lenient entry into DMOZ, but then to sort listings in order of an "Editorial Score". A senior editors approval (yes/no) of a particular site would be worth more than a novice editor. This would be cool as a tie-in with the Google Toolbar, whereby DMOZ editors could click a thumbs-up icon, or a thumbs-down icon and apply the positive/negative score to the site (in cumulative fashion) in real-time. In this manner, if 1 senior editor poo-poos a site for subjective reasons, and 1 senior editor and 1 novice editor cheer the same site, then overall the site moves up the list and not down. Of course it would be nice if Google allowed this for their search engine listings as a way to affect PR, but that's out of the scope of my message.
Just some thoughts from a web developer / marketer / open source advocate...
Sean Pecor.
Sean.
[edited by: engine at 2:20 pm (utc) on Sep. 30, 2002]
[edit reason] no urls, please [/edit]
<Information theory can show that one of the most effective measures against a variety of spam is a "randomly delayed response" which, as it happens, is how the current editor approach to the unreviewed queue appears.>
You spent some time considering "is" before deciding upon "appears", didn't you. My God man, if this is what you guys are acting on, it goes a long way toward explaining things. The trouble is, you DO spend so much time sifting through ill-intentioned, BS spam, that you "appear" to get a bit jaded toward the good, hard, honest work that a lot of us do to make a living.
I suppose our main bitch is that if you were consistent, it would be tolerable. But to have a commercial cat managed by an editor that allows everything you abhor (sure, you can't catch 'em all) REALLY frustrates the hell out of us who are doing solid work and unfortunately depend upon an acknowledgement from a biased, unchecked, oppourtunist to do as well as we can. What we're asking for is even the smallest acceptance of the fact that things are bad, and really bad, so that you and us and the whole deal can move FORWARD. :-)
MC
I personally don't give dmoz a second thot anymore. I submit my site or my client's sites once and then forget about it. In the past year I haven't had one single site accepted into dmoz (and before rcjordan torpedoes me...no..they're weren't spammy sites - they were legitimate business sites).
I've also applied be an editor several times and been immediatly rejected each time and I mean the same day. Almost felt like they had an autoresponder set up to fire off rejection notices. I applied once using my nick from WebmasterWorld and that rejection came the fastest hehehe.
I don't understand why all the editor rejections. There is an obvious backlog of sites to be edited but the higher ups seem to be overly suspicious of anyone wanted to be an editor. I get the feeling that the belief is that if someone wants to edit they must be a spammer or have sites of there own to add etc. Far be it that any of us are honest webmasters and just want to help from the goodness of our hearts.
second thot= second thought
client's= incorrect apostrophe
immediatly= spelling
sites of there own= their own
... this isn't being petty, this is what it's all about. The vast majority of rejections are for submissions that have not been spell-checked, have not followed the clearly explained procedures, and that show very little evidence of any attempt having being made to understand the format, structure and disciplines involved.
I know that posting here is informal and speed-typed, but that is not the case in a directory striving for accuracy.
All the reviewer has to go on is what they see on their screen, and it has to be good. Goes towards competence, m'lud. Mat
thanks mat but rest assured that my applications/submissions were spell checked and grammatically correct. I tend to be a bit lax when hammering out posts in the forums.
I know and understand the ODP guidelines perfectly well.
btw - 'thot' is oilman branded shorthand :)
No appearances -- I'm absolutely sure that is true. And I'm absolutely sure that a lot of able, enthusiastic editors go well beyond merely jaded to fully petrified....and leave in disgust.
But we have to deal with life as it is, in which jadedness is endemic, spam is prominent; and we have to think of changes in ODP submission procedures primarily in terms of how well they manage our #1 problem.
For instance, the idea of giving instant feedback on a site submission status -- seems great, at first glance. It would, you'd think, save editors the trouble of answering such questions by hand, in e-mail or forums; you'd think it would cut down on unnecessary repeat submissions. I'd like for it to be possible. But it won't happen. The fact is, experience says quicker feedback to spammers results in an increasing rate of ever-more-deceitful submissions. (Well, if you thought about it a bit, you might expect that too. A career criminal wants to see the evidence against him, so he can plan the next crime better. He wants to see the police blotter, so he can know which false IDs to drop, and what new aliases to establish.)
What we need is better, more flexible, more programmable ways to detect patterns of large-scale submissions and dispose of them automatically. And free-lance editors, as well as staff, are always playing with various approaches. (I don't think we'd be holding our own without those tools.) But still, often humans do a better job.
>But to have a commercial cat managed by an editor that allows everything you abhor (sure, you can't catch 'em all) REALLY frustrates the hell out of us who are doing solid work.
That is so right -- it makes the whole directory look bad. It probably irritates browsers and other webmasters too. We're trying to work out some way of collecting better feedback about things like this. For now, though, send e-mail to any meta-editor. Mention the category, the sites that you think shouldn't be there, and why. The more detail you can give, the better. (For instance, any tips on how you happened to notice those particular problems -- sometimes those can be turned into generalized tools or searches.)
We don't like hearing stuff like that, but we do appreciate it.
MC
I've done some work in Shopping, and I try to help out there when I can, which is not very often, for the following reasons. My editing style is to try and clean up one whole subcat at a time - this involves reviewing unreviewed submissions [5 to 10 minutes for each submission that deserves a listing], investigating dead URLs that would be worth keeping if I could find a new URL [can be up to 30 minutes if the Google cache tells me it's an invaluable resource], and cleaning up existing descriptions, titles, and redirecting URLs [MMV on time - I've spent an hour on a particularly neglected category before, and I'll probably spend more when I start work on my next Shopping project].
Consider a neglected category with 50 unreviewed submissions [15 of of which are listable, 30 of which are affiliates or spam, and 5 of which are dead] as well as four sites that have gone dead and provided invaluable content to the category [hence, are worth investigating more thoroughly]. This is my time I'm spending, because I want to help build the directory. My time does not belong to any submitter who made a website and wants it listed. I volunteered my time because I want to help bring the content available out there to the users of the directory. That means those people who actually click on the links and use the content, not those who use the Add URL links at the top of category pages.
The extent to which Shopping is overrun with affiliate sites and spam submissions is deplorable. It makes me depressed to edit there. I am a volunteer, which means I dedicate time to the project when I have time and when I feel like it. I very often feel like editing, and I do edit quite a bit. In Arts/Movies. There is relatively little spam.
Several regular submitters of individual movie pages actually provide descriptions that are in line with the editing guidelines, which cuts down my editing time quite a bit - although typing 'Review of the film by Mr. BlahBlah' doesn't take long, it adds up when you've got over a hundred pages to review by the same submitter [note: deeplinks to individual movies are permitted in Arts/Movies/Titles - this is specific to the Movies category and is not a general editing guideline]. Other submitters who are not as considerate with descriptions are considerate enough to submit pages with relevant, unique content.
I am very grateful to these submitters for suggesting their pages, because they are helping make the ODP even more comprehensive. I am *not* (and will probably never see a reason to be) grateful to submitters who don't take the time to find the most appropriate category for their sites or the submitters who spam the directory. It makes me happy to see new submissions in other areas of the Movies category (not Titles, that is) because I get to read more about movies - a subject in which I am interested and on which I enjoy spending time.
Perhaps this is not very interesting to most of you who frequent this forum, but I hope it may help put things in perspective. Shopping/ Business/ and Computers/ and their subcats are not the only categories in ODP. There are some smaller categories with active editors where unreviewed submissions are practically nonexistent, because the new submissions get reviewed very rapidly. An example of such a category is the Arts/Movies/Titles/S/Star_Wars_Movies/ category which is getting close to 1000 sites.
It is unfortunate that there are not enough active editors to make that a reality in Shopping/ or Business/ or Computers/ but it does not mean the ODP editors are to blame because they can't keep up with submitter demands.
Thank you for reading. :)
Mat
A one in ten chance when they are so short handed is wrong seems to me that 90 percent of the editors are SEO peeps so whats wrong with a few more?
I used to be very active in these forums and still visit regularly. I have not posted much in the past few months for one simple reason – I became an editor for ODP (been spending my free time there). I was always told by editors “You should see things on this side”. Guess what, they were not exaggerating.
What amazes me is to see some of the posts in these threads. For all of you webmasters that work so hard with your PR and rankings in Google have you not learned the old cliché by now – “Content is king”. The ODP is no different – have unique content and you will surely be listed in the appropriate category. Yes this can take weeks, months, and even a year or more. Blame it on the editors – I think not – it is your own brethren submitting 10 or more domains with the same content disguised in various ways. It takes me approximately 5-10 minutes to review an appropriate submission. It can take literally hours finding the mirrors etc. for a inappropriate listing and making sure it gets tagged as such. Add it up – how many of you have waited needlessly because of this (simple answer – anyone that is submitting to dmoz).
Before you start bashing editors take a look at your fellow webmasters.
There has been a great deal of information posted in this thread as long as read between the lines.
My 2-cents ;)
I edit a few cats and I wouldn't dream of abusing my position - ever -whatever the rewards. I think (no - I am VERY confident that) most editors fall into my position.
ODP is just SO easy to kick - isn't it? Well I don't think I like that any more. C'mon. It's free. It costs YOU nowt. It relies on hours of effort from people much more dedicated than me (and God knows I have put enough in). Yet it returns profit for countless people and returns sound human ratified results to even more.
Don't like it? Fine, clear off to Yahoo and pay their annual fee if you prefer.
Hmmm... might not like that eh? Or as Joe Surfer, you might actually like returns that are NOT paid for by a deep pocket.
It's so easy to kick the easy target that won't kick back. Maybe it's a lot harder to recognize a good thing when you see it.
If they ever lost the ODP, I suspect the people who criticize would regret it a hell of a lot more than they realize. Come on guys, respect where it is due.
Anyone who knows the seo world is fully aware of the work being done by some very dedicated and skilled people in their roles as ODP editors. I am just one of the many that appreciates their VOLUNTARY efforts.
When I started this post it was not to encourage claim and counter-claim from entrenched positions, but rather to try and get a wider perspective of the editor "crisis", as in lack of them, not bash the few who are trying to shoulder the load. The genuine ODP editors have nothing to be defensive about.
The 2 constant sentiments that seem to be surfacing in this thread are:
1) why are there so many editor rejections when it seems to many that ODP is suffering slow die-back due to editor shortages.
2) the volume of spam is killing some commercial categories.
In earlier posts in this thread I seem to recall seeing that the average no. of cats per editor is several hundred. Given that junior editors will only have a few, then others must have many hundreds to look after.... voluntarily! That model just can't be sustained.
Surely the only way to fix this is take in a new influx of editors or shut the gate on new submissions until the crud & spam is cleared.... or both.
And back to my original question which seems to remain unanswered... just how big is the unreviewed pile? What is the magnitude of the problem... or is the problem imaginary?
>> I like this one. It defines perfectly how Dmoz editors think/behave. <<
OK I will give you an example. I was granted a new category to edit. There were 21 sites awaiting review. When I look at the list, it is 21 deeplinks to the one site, all with the same title and description. The site was already appropriately listed elsewhere in the directory. The deeplinks were submitted to an informational category, but the site was selling stuff, again not appropriate. Over the next few weeks another 7 submissions were made in that category, and I know that around 20 others were made in other categories. Multiply this by hundreds or thousands of other sites per day, each and every day, and you can see what I am talking about.
>> If editorial notes can serve to bar a site from being listed, it is pretty academic to mass-submit a competitor's web site in order to blacklist that site. <<
These are thoroughly checked.
>> Therefore, the public should be able to view the editorial notes on submissions or domains. <<
We don't tell spammers nut'n.
>> A URL search that presents the status of it's submission would be helpful. <<
We don't tell spammers nut'n.
>> Otherwise, folks like me make a request every few months because there is no way to determine the current status of a submission. <<
Resubmission quickly becomes interpreted as spam. Once in Topical (by Subject) and once in Regional (by Subject) is enough. We'll let you off if you submit twice; you may have believed that the submission process didn't work properly. After that it is sit and wait, not resubmit. If your site didn't conform to the Guidelines then it isn't going to be listed. Period.
>> If this is truly a community project, then where is the source code for the site? <<
It is the Directory Data that is Open, not the computer program code that runs it.
>> Is the source code actively maintained? <<
Very. There are continual improvements in many areas, and a lively discussion for new feature requests and the occasional glitch fix.
>> It would be nice to allow a more lenient entry into DMOZ, but then to sort listings in order of an "Editorial Score". <<
See [directory.google.com...] for what you require.
>> In this manner, if 1 senior editor poo-poos a site for subjective reasons, and 1 senior editor and 1 novice editor cheer the same site, <<
You want THREE editors to review each site? That's going to slow the listing process down just a little, don't you think?
>> I've also applied be an editor several times and been immediatly rejected each time and I mean the same day. <<
Could be many reasons why: Applied for spam-laden or too-large-for-newbie cat, or small cat that had a vast number of unreviewed. Maybe your application was poor, in terms of submitted sites or how you described them. To be bounced same day, shows that there was an obvious problem.
>> There is an obvious backlog of sites to be edited feeling that the belief is that if someone wants to edit they must be a spammer or have sites of there own to add etc. Far be it that any of us are honest webmasters and just want to help from the goodness of our hearts. <<
Yeah Right. I was witness yesterday to a brand new editor that did 300 edits in under 24 hours, prolific by any standard, did a lot of inappropriate stuff, with sites he was obviously affiliated with, and tampered with competing sites. Said editor was bounced out within 48 hours, but has left a mess that is going to take someone else at least as long to clear up. Some get in through the net, and that slows things down even more. Most volunteers aren't volunteering out of the goodness of their heart. In many cases this is, unfortunately, rubbish.
Hutcheson speaks truth, as does furiosity (welcome to WW).
>> The extent to which Shopping (unreviewed) is overrun with affiliate sites and spam submissions is deplorable. <<
As I said above, 85% or more in some places.
>> If diligence has not been applied, if the required procedure has not been followed, what is a body to do? <<
You probably wouldn't believe the junk that appears in many applications.
>> they said I should send it again - not saved so another day wasted? <<
Never trust the computer to do anything, save frequently, backup often.
>> seems to me that 90 percent of the editors are SEO peeps so whats wrong with a few more? <<
There are probably a few, but I know a large number of very active editors are university students, teachers, housewives, and people not even remotely connected with computer or internet industries. Probably half of the editors are not even resident in the US, there are editors from nearly every country of the world. I can't see what bias an editor from Australia could have for a category of canadian sites selling socks for example.
>> "Content is king". The ODP is no different – have unique content and you will surely be listed in the appropriate category. <<
TheContractor speaks truth.
>> I edit a few cats and I wouldn't dream of abusing my position - ever -whatever the rewards. I think (no - I am VERY confident that) most editors fall into my position. <<
There are one or two, but like the example above, he was shown the out-door within 48 hours.
>> why are there so many editor rejections when it seems to many that ODP is suffering slow die-back due to editor shortages. <<
Most applications are for categories that are not going to be granted to newcomers, or are from people that have other motives for joining.
>> And back to my original question which seems to remain unanswered... just how big is the unreviewed pile? What is the magnitude of the problem... or is the problem imaginary? <<
The unreviewed pile is probably over half a million submissions, but so what? Around three quarters of that is spam, affiliates, and other unlistable junk. The rest of it will be reviewed and listed sometime. At present at least 4000 sites are added to the directory every day. Four Thousand. So, no-one is slacking. Nearly four million have been listed so far, and an automated tool runs every three weeks (used to be 2 or 3 months) to flag any 404 links that are listed. This process occupies vast amounts of editing time, finding new URLs for old sites. It isn't ideal that new sites sometimes wait years for review, but that is the way it is. In another new category that I accessed a few weeks back I added the only two sites waiting for review: one had been there a year, and one had been submitted about 5 hours before.
[edited by: g1smd at 2:26 am (utc) on Oct. 2, 2002]
The backlog is, I believe, fairly steady in the 100-200 days range -- say several months.
The ODP attitude toward user submissions is a bit different than, say, Yahoo!'s, and very different than LooksMart's; and this may cause some confusion. The ODP does not offer submitters a service! It allows anyone (not just editors, not just webmasters) to offer the Project a service (that is, of mentioning sites that we might not otherwise find easily or at all). There is no assumption that people will only submit their own sites -- quite the contrary. This is part of what we mean by "open". And actually, some active, search-savvy, actively-searching editors will tell you that user submissions are their best source for good, new sites for their categories. (This fact gets lost sometimes in the smoke.) And this may be why the "social contract" says submissions will always be free -- it's the same impulse that says editor applications will always be accepted.
The "need more editors" -- "need better editors" dilemma is, um, not unknown to those who review editor applications. But whichever horn is goring today, the real question, repeated dozens of times daily, is: "Can I accept THIS editor? Should I?" (and then, repeated a few times daily, "Can we afford to keep THIS editor?") We accept all we think we can afford to. And we keep all we can afford to. (That means the ones who only review a couple of sites a month: they may not be helping much, but 10,000 of them adds up to a whole bunch of adds.)
And we do what we can to help people write good applications. So, for the record, full disclosure (real name, location, employer, business e-mail address, all websites you have some personal or financial interest in) is good. "I'm a professor at an Italian University" -- not good. "I teach mandibular basketweaving at the University of Turin" -- much better. This information is kept confidential: the only people that see it are those that review your application -- meta-editors and staff. Other editors cannot see it. (The PUBLIC "editor profile page" is completely separate -- you may put as much or as little as you want there.
Careful spelling and grammar is important to your editing, so it's important in the application. If you aren't able or willing to take the care, you'll make the directory look bad, and force some other volunteer to clean up after you. We can't afford that.
Repeat applications are OK -- give us three or four weeks, or until you are rejected, before applying again. If, in the meantime, you learned more about editing well -- that's evidence that you CAN learn something: definitely a plus.
And, if we use our neighborhood search engine, Goooogle, we can see that his good ol' site has 10 listings in the ODP using 6 alias domains.
But I insist, there is NO ABUSE in the ODP.
[edited by: Air at 3:55 am (utc) on Oct. 2, 2002]
[edit reason] please report specific abuse to ODP [/edit]
