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It's been over 7 months, and my site still has not been listed. I occassionlly post
at resource-zone and the queue for my directory is still over 100?
DMOZ it under staffed and over queued. And after the pub conference, it seems editors are
having problems logging in to edit the directories.
Is there any plans for Google to hold less weight for listings in DMOZ and give more weight to
Yahoo and Looksmart listings?
As I said in a previous post, I believe that any site which is Guidelines-compliant deserves a listing, no matter how "authoritative" or "important" it is. Editors are supposed to list sites which offer valuable content to the final user, and they have the cool mark available to flag the very few ones that look like being the most authoritative. In general, I agree with kctipton that only a few of the sites that are worth a listing are also Extremely Unique and Valuable -- my (personal) interpretation of "authoritative". I'm also one of the many editors who doesn't use the cool mark at all.
This said, since it's already difficult to determine the average percentage of spam towards listable ones (this can only be guessed by experience, and varies greatly depending on the area involved), sorry but I don't understand the point in trying to determine the average quantity of "authoritative" sites in the unreviewed queue, too ...
If rfgdxm1 thinks that in the few categories where he has editing privileges the authoritative sites are the exception than the rule, be it. I'm sure he didn't want to say that non-authoritative sites shouldn't be listed, or should be left waiting in unrevieweds. Personally, I wouldn't attempt guessing absolute percentages, even basing my guess on my editall privs (or probably since I am used to see different areas with completely different situations).
Of course, I agree all guidelines compliant sites should be added. If I thought only "authoratative" sites deserved listing, I'd have deleted everything in Recreation/Drugs/Cannabis/Personal_Pages. ;) My point was simply that one can't conclude from the statement "the ODP has XXX,000 sites sitting in unreviewed" that this means that the already added sites the public sees are a sufficiently inadequate representation that the ODP is useless.
You know what? It isn't.
The value of a dmoz listing is in the other directories that use the ODP data.
I sure don't lose sleep on not having a dmoz listing for some sites. Would it be a nice link to have? Sure it would, but the fact of the matter is that a "gooooogle" of high quality sites may never get into the directory but can still rank well in engines without the benefit of an ODP link. The ODP is an awesome resource, but it sure isn't the ticket to the top of Google that some may think.
Don't sweat the small stuff.
It depends on the category. Personally I think adding any more sites to the Shopping branch of the directory is a waste of time. No user is going to browse all 5000 online sporting goods stores before making a decision, so IMHO adding one more online sporting goods store to the 5,000 already listed is relatively pointless.
On the other hand, in Society or Science there are plenty of good sites that have yet to be listed. But then you don't hear people who've submitted their history site complaining about the length of time it takes for a review.
While I feel you have a point, you aren't going to win fans around here this way. ;)
Out of curiosity, I glancd at the "what's happened to my submission" page at RZ.
It appears to represent a broad cross section of DMOZ categories.
As regards "History", the category Society:History has only a total of 11,000 entries out of DMOZ's 3,800,000. So on balance, one is not likely to find many complaining that their site is waiting for review, as not many are submitting.
rafalk appears to have failed to declare an interest as he is listed as an editor of the History catgory ;)
The public side should follow shortly (looks like it's already improved, but I'm not the most reliable tester here since a) I seldom use it, thus I can't say how was yesterday, or last week, etc., and b) I'm on a satellite connection, thus I surf faster than tne average user)
Thank You
Editors can only view the unreviewed queue of the category that they edit - meta editors and other admin type editors can view the unreviewed queues of all(?) categories.
But that's not the point. The History category is not small because there are no sites out there on the topic, but rather because DMOZ has indexed so few sites. For example Google brings up close to 1.3 million hits on Napoleon Bonaparte of which only 20 are listed in DMOZ. That's a ratio of 1 : 64,500
Compare that with online sporting goods stores the query on Google for "online+shopping+sports" brings up 3.46 million hits, of which DMOZ lists 9888 sites (lets round off to 10,000 to make the math simple). So here we're talking about a ratio of 1 : 346!
So chances are that not only has DMOZ not index all the *authoratative* sites on Napoleon, but also on balance that reviewing sites in the Napoleon queue is on the whole far better for the directory than reviewing sites in the online sporting goods stores queue.
rafalk appears to have failed to declare an interest as he is listed as an editor of the History catgory ;)
That's very true by the way. I always try to write about that of which I know. ;)
I am not quibbling here, it is an important point. Could it not be that because history sites are non commercial, that there is no real incentive for owners of those sites to submit to DMOZ.
In the event of the History editors in DMOZ not being Napoleon freaks and seaking sites, then they would only be listing Napoleon sites submitted to them, which would be few in number than an equivalent sized shopping category. Hence the unreviwed queue would be smaller in history.
I concede it is possible that I am still missing the point
It likely is mostly that his methodology sucks. He just counted the number of web pages where "Napoleon" appears on them. Which is a LOT different than the number of history sites about Napoleon. And, it may not only be that sites about Napoleon often aren't submitted, but also that the 20 listed are more than an adequate representation. If these are authoratative enough sites, the editor may not think finding more is needed. Particularly since non-commercial sites tend to link to each other, thus finding the smaller Napoleon sites would be easy from the large, authoritative ones.
Could it not be that because history sites are non commercial, that there is no real incentive for owners of those sites to submit to DMOZ.
This is very common. Owners of commercial sites have a natural inclination to want to do anything that will increase traffic, and thus the bottom line. If they do the slightest reasearch on how to increase traffic, once they notice ODP submissions are free it is a no brainer to submit. History sites tend to link to related sites. Thus, if someone owns a comprehensive history site, they know with all the inbound links that they get anyone looking will find them.
