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And, if so, sit back and wait.
Bek.
Ideally, if you submit a few sites to some under-developed categories that get accepted you should get a prioritized review for the website that you really want in.
As it stands you have to do all this irrelevant editor application stuff when really, you don't want to be an editor, you just want to submit your website.
Also, if you're just a submitter and you're not an editor you can't cause problems and you don't increase the complexity of the system.
My guess this approach would turn the 800K backlog they have going into 100K people submitting good websites in under-developed categories.
Dmoz would increase in size and quality very very quickly.
Set up your own directory that contains only sites not in DMOZ, but which meet the DMOZ submission guidelines, so they (plus or minus a few borderliners) mainly qualify for serious consideration by a DMOZ editor.
Get it populated by site submitters in the way you suggest.
It will immediately become a first port-of-call for many DMOZ editors because of its highly-qualified sites. That will mean sites in it will almost certainly get into DMOZ much quicker than many other routes.
(You can monetarise this service in several obvious ways so that it repays your efforts several times over).
You just need to ensure it doesn't become a spam magnet.
why not just get DMOZ to be smarter about submissions.
While tempting to re-invent the wheel, it's nothing I really need to be doing right now.
it's nothing I really need to be doing right now.
This is an excellent illustration of the issues involved in working with volunteers.
You are happy to volunteer ideas for other people to action. But decline to action one particular idea that is put to you.
The DMOZ volunteers have (over the years) been give variants of your idea dozens of times. But they don't think it will work (the reasons have been rehearsed many times). And they don't want to put the time and effort into doing it.
That leaves you, as a volunteer who wants to improve DMOZ, looking for other volunteers to do the work you want done.
There's nothing wrong with that. People have different skills to volunteer. Perhaps yours involved promoting a certain class of ideas.
But it could be a long wait.
Meanwhile, remember that any time someone complains that the volunteers at DMOZ aren't working fast enough, that now includes you.
I have no problem implementing it for dmoz.
DMOZ is an important resource on the Internet precisely because many thousands have freely contributed their efforts to it.
Glad you want to be part of that. Build the site, everyone will use it, everyone will benefit.
No matter how good an idea is, some editors won't ever try it -- they're busy trying out some OTHER idea, so the whole community can't get sucked into a blind alley. But once an idea gets a few dozen active participants, the forums begin to discuss how it might be made a part of the official toolset. Dozens of tools have been created; many of them are in regular use by editors, and one or two a year are made official.
Anyone may start this process -- by simply implementing a personal version of a proposal. If it works, if it can be seen to work, if it produces a stream of generally-reliable information about websites to be added or removed, then editors will almost certainly use it.
But if an idea is so worthless that even its primary advocate is not willing to put time in it, it should be consigned to the rubbish bin as quickly as possible.
Just need to add:
"Please note that you will receive a prioritized review if you have sucessfully submitted websites to under-developed, low traffic categories."
I'd assume the email is stored alongside all submissions, so that's probably the only change necessary. Though a password might be necessary to avoid other people utilizing your good reputation.
Such a small, simple change. Alas.
What I find interesting here is that you've already gotten editor opinions on your suggestion in the ODP public forum but you don't seem to have actually read any of the replies there. Just find it odd, is all.
Past performance is no guarantee of future potential. I wouldn't be interested in seeing that additional information attached to submissions. So many ways to subvert it, and yet another way for submitters to beat us over the head with what they want, rather than allowing us to work to further the published directory objectives.
I'd bet on the someone who got an A, of course. But I'd be someone who bets, in this case.
Here you have ODP editors who are telling you that past performance is no guarantee of future potential. Would it be better if we lie and tell you that you will receive a prioritized review? Heh, we won't do that, just because we don't want to lie.
The point was not to lie but to create functionality which will allow for a prioritized review for people who had successfully submitted to under-developed categories.
create functionality which will allow for a prioritized review
We've already discussed one way you could volunteer to create that for all submitters. And you do not need to wait for the existing DMOZ editors to do a thing.
So why waste more time debating what other volunteers could do when you could do it yourself?
It'd be more productive to continue this thread when you have a workng prototype to show. Couple of weeks, maybe?
