Dmoz question

What would you answer?

[fashezee]

What is the best response for:

Why are you interested in volunteering to be an editor for the ODP?

[John_Caius]

cornwall: "And, correct me if I am wrong, but someone applying for a category as a new editor to DMOZ, has no idea how many unreviewed there are in the category."

That's correct, although the cats with large numbers of unreviewed also usually have large numbers of listed sites as well. It is relatively unusual for a new editor to be accepted into a cat with more than 100-150 listed sites at most. Large unreviewed queues are also typical of spam magnets, e.g. travel or gambling cats. Again, it's relatively unusual for new editors to be given these cats as their first ones as it takes some experience to deal with the spam and affiliate submissions.

So if you want to get your foot in the door, apply for a cat with perhaps 50 listed sites and no subcats, build up the category a bit and learn the ropes, then start applying for bigger cats either by applying a level up the tree or applying for another category at the same level as the one you're already editing. A great starting point is the Regional category for where you live, or somewhere else that you are acquainted with. This is probably the easiest place to gain your first editing permissions. If you live in a big city with a large cat then apply for one of the small subcats and work your way up.

[rfgdxm1]

>There are many good reasons that we encourage "good" local editors to apply for higher and higher permissions. We want to throw more work in front of them and hope they do it. We want to develop a pool of experienced, skilled, knowledgeable, trusted, respected editors that can deal with global issues (directory-wide editing standards, global spammers) or can do good local editing where there isn't a local editor ("greenbusting").

Looking at editing stats, it doesn't look like there are many high level editors (editing top level cats, editalls, metas) that aren't also doing a significant amount of actual editing. In fact, pretty much the only way to get to be editors at this high of a level is to edit a *lot*. Recently I was checking the edit totals of the editors in at the top level of the Health branch to get an idea what the minimum number of edits would be to get to that level. I think the lowest I found was something like 5,000 edits, and most were 10,000+ edits. Doesn't look like many high level editors aren't also actively editing. Probably the only way to get to these levels is the greenbust route, given that the required 3 sample sites for a newperm app is going to be a hindrance if someone wants to pick up many dozens of small additional cats. (Obviously, this requirement isn't much of problem if the strategy is to pick up a lot of cats by the means of applying for a second level node.)

[Bluesplinter]

Wouldn't this be true mostly just for metas?

I reckon not, since I'm not a meta <g>. It really started for me when I got promoted to a top-level cat. At higher levels like that, there are tons of things that need to be done, aside from just editing sites.

Looking at editing stats, it doesn't look like there are many high level editors (editing top level cats, editalls, metas) that aren't also doing a significant amount of actual editing.

I didn't say we didn't do a lot of editing, I said we had less time to spend on just editing. And a larger percentage of those edits are in wide-spread areas of the directory, not in our favored areas. When I had only two cats with a total of 1300 sites, I spent 100% of my time editing, and unreviewed sites had a very short lifespan.

Now, maybe 20% of my time is spent editing in my favored cats. I still edit a lot (just going by raw numbers, much more than before) but much of my time is spent doing directory-wide quality control, error correction, reorgs, mentoring, doing editall+ projects, etc. Heck, 20% may be optimistic <g>. And I'm just an editall... I don't have half the responsibilities of a meta.

[rfgdxm1]

True, I had failed to consider that editors of top level cats would also have to deal with concerns about taxonomy, etc. Editalls would also have some other concerns. However, like metas, the universe of editors of top level cats are is a rather small one.

[motsa]

Looking at editing stats, it doesn't look like there are many high level editors (editing top level cats, editalls, metas) that aren't also doing a significant amount of actual editing.

The problem is that a large chunk of that editing is spent cleaning up mistakes, correcting URLs, weeding out spam and duplicates, etc. The higher up you get, it seems the less time you have to actually review and add new sites. I can't count the number of times I've set myself down to just clear up an unreviewed queue only to find myself distracted by cleaning up something somewhere else.

[rfgdxm1]

Cleaning up mistakes and weeding out spam is definitely "editing". This is important and needs to be done. However, I now do see the point that because the high ranking editors have to spend so much time doing this sort of work, that greatly minimizes the the number of greens they can review. The big problem the ODP has is figuring out some way of attracting suitable and competent new editors to deal with the crushing load of greens? And, I don't have an answer to how to solve this. Only thing that has occurred to me is that some means of identify the most capable and promising of the lower editors and expediting a way to increase their editing privs. Perhaps some sort of system where the metas can easily grant much greater privs on their own initiative to those editors that they see can get things done. It already works that way with editall status. However, I'm thinking of perhaps some sort of new editor status significantly below editall. Or, perhaps just metas deciding to kick certain editors higher up the tree in the branch that they edit.