DMOZ's ex-editors list

How does one get their sites removed from the list

[allanp73]

I was once an editor for DMOZ and was removed when I added one of my sites to the category I edited. It was a small category and I felt that my site was relevant. However, I admit I gave it a too good description and abused my editor power.
Later I found out from an editor friend that my sites not just the offending site were added to an ex-editor list. This list makes it very hard for other editors to add my sites to relavent categories. The removal of my sites from DMOZ effected the more than 200 people who are supported by my sites.
Several months later, I started a new business as a webmaster for a real estate web company. Being a fan of DMOZ I submitted the real estate sites to DMOZ. I made sure that the sites were relevant and of high content quality. One editor saw that I was the register of some of the sites and immediately added these new sites to my ex-editor page. They even added sites to the list which I hadn't registered or even submitted to DMOZ. These sites only crime was they were linked to my site. I spoke to several lawyers about this. They told me that this constitutes a "restraint of trade", however to pursue the legal action would cost more money than I have to commit.
I really don't want to pursue legal action and tried several times to contact both the editor who added the sites to the list and the staff at DMOZ, but never received any response and I know the list hasn't been changed.
So what can I do? I make my living on the Internet and many others depend on me. DMOZ is in a situation where without its link it is almost impossible to achieve high ranking on Google.
If there is someone at DMOZ reading this, please help.
I would appreciate anyone's advice.

[mosley700]

rafalk,
I apologize for the way I phrased that. It should have been limited to "openness". The "honest" part was an error on my part.

[Laisha]

Openness and honesty are completely different things.

Perhaps the term is transparency.

The lack of both openness and transparency has long been a complaint about ODP, even among editors and even among metas.

They've come a long way toward internal transparency: I'm sure many editors and ex-editors remember the days when editors were removed and no one knew for sure if, let alone why.

And it wasn't too long ago that the project had no written guidelines. Metas used to make policy with virtually no communication. Those things have been changed, albeit only after much time and (literally) begging on bended knee.

And the Social Contract, while it certainly should be scrutinized with a jaundiced eye, is yet another step toward openness and transparency.

It does seem to me that over the past few months there have been no great leaps, but then again, that's looking in from the outside.

No, ODP has never been very open to suggestions, from within or without, but they do listen and every now and then actually act.

I am most certainly not an apologist for ODP, and except for longing now and then for the "old days," -- I did, after all, meet my husband working on the project -- I have nothing good to say about it, which is why I don't say much of anything.

One suggestion, however, that has been made repeatedly and ignored is that they make the "staff@" email something besides a black hole.

[Dumpy]

In regard to contacting the DMOZ staff, since there is only two it would seem logical to contact them at their netscape address. They have shown a willingness to respond to me.

Autumn Looijen <[e-mail]>
Rich Skrenta ([e-mail])

Rich Skrenta is the co-founder of NewHoo and remains in charge of DMOZ.

I'm sure he would be delighted to hear from people with complaints, and suggestions.

[mosley700]

In these conversations one thing we need to remember is that the ODP is not the same thing as ODP editors. There are all sorts of editors, good bad and otherwise. When I fault the ODP, I'm not pointing my finger at every meta editor over there. I'm pointing my finger at ODP policy.

[Laisha]

In regard to contacting the DMOZ staff, since there is only two ...autumn...skrenta

Hmm...Are you telling us that Skrenta and Autumn are the only staff left? And are you further telling us that they want email sent to them?

[hutcheson]

>Hmm...Are you telling us that Skrenta and Autumn are the only staff left?
It's a little more complicated than that. A numberof people hired as ODP staff are "still with Netscape," of which Skrenta is the only one that has been constantly working primarily on ODP issues, and Autumn is the only other one "presently" working primarily on ODP stuff. Based on history, we can't say that others won't take on ODP assignments in the future.

>And are you further telling us that they want email sent to them?

They don't want most of the email sent to them, certainly. (But who does, any more?)

[beebware]

Oh - and staff@ email IS read, but not necessarily replied to. I know from experience that around 75% of email received to any "web advertised address" (even if it's via a feedback form) isn't even worthy of a reply (on my own site I host a copy of the ODP and have explicit instructions for people not to email me with queries concerning that data - but they still do). I would expect staff to also get a large number of "I submitted my site yesterday and you still haven't crawled my l33t romhacking warez site" style emails.

If you must email a staff member directly (and that relies on you knowing which member of staff to contact about an _important_ issue), then please do so via their profile pages ( [dmoz.org...] and [dmoz.org...] ): that way, at least, they'll have an indication of what the mail is about before opening it (over 80% of my email is deleted just by a glance at the subject header).

[WindSun]

"I have yet to see an example of an editor spreading falshoods or disinformation...."

Uhm.. I have.

And I have yet to see anyone from ODP give a good reason why that list is even maintained. It is essentially a red flag or blacklist - yet those on the list may have left for any number of reasons.

[kctipton]

I've seen it too, and that person got removed for it.

[hutcheson]

>And I have yet to see anyone from ODP give a good reason why that list is even maintained.

And you probably won't.

All Test/ subcategories are for internal purposes. They don't require justification outside that context.