DMOZ is down

[goodroi]

I've been trying to get to DMOZ today and the .com and .org version are both unavailable. I've checked with other people in the US and they also can not get in. Is this an omen for the future of DMOZ?

[skibum]

Is this an omen for the future of DMOZ?

Many a dmoz fan has hypothesized this in the past it has never come to be. Doubt that this outage will be any different. It'll be back.

[kevinpate]

working for me in central usa. come to think of it, it was working a hour or two back too, cause I popped on to check something.

[sabai]

dmoz is down - from the UK at least

[SlowMove]

I can get in, but can't search. It's very slow at times. Why don't they get some not so &#@%$! servers?

[gpmgroup]

DMOZ is unavailable again in the UK . It seems to be down more often than not lately. Does this lack of reliabilty mean Google will get fed up with them soon?

[The Contractor]

ever try dmoz.com? Usually much faster...

edited: oops... I see you mention that in your first post..

[roots]

This frustrates me too. I usually have problem when I want to submit new page.

[Rosalind]

Dmoz is always down. It would be news if they were up reliably for any length of time.

This is probably one of the main reasons that it's used mainly by webmasters rather than the general surfing public, because it's not exactly something you can recommend to a lot of people.

[Macro]

DMOZ was a good idea at the time.

Now, it's continued downtimes, it's flaky search, it's shortage of volunteer eds, it's inability to keep up to date with deleting and adding sites, it's ever lengthening queue of sites waiting to get in (yes, yes it's a "pool"!), spammy sites, it's inability to adopt any new technology developed after 1920 ("it's by choice that we don't notify you of inclusion or rejection". Yeah, right!), editors working to their own agendas (I'll include sites only if they are W3C compliant/have green backgrounds/work in unknown-browser-x), it's dismal failure to do what it set out to do ....

I think it should be put to sleep. Closed. Shut. Email the volunteers (after they've done flaming me here :)) that the party's over, and sell or pay someone to take away all the assets.

[victor]

Macro:

it's inability to keep up to date with deleting and adding sites

Before even thinking about your other assertions, or the implications of your proposed actions, I'd like the numbers behind this opening assertion of yours.

Could you please point me to the research that shows:

(a) the year-on-year growth of websites that are eligible for inclusion in DMOZ; and

(b) the year-on-year growth of DMOZ

You must have the numbers and I guess they show that (a) is bigger than (b) otherwise the comment would be froth rather than fact. So a copy would be very useful.

Thanks!

[Macro]

You must have the numbers and I guess they show that (a) is bigger than (b) otherwise the comment would be froth rather than fact

Wrong. Fact is that the comment above is based on the assumption that your (a) and (b) method is the only way of determining how behind DMOZ is. I won't fall for that ;)

Also, I'm not going to get into proving that some editors work to their own agendas, that there's a shortage of volunteers, or anything else. When the titanic is sinking it's a waste of time to measure the volume of water in the hold. There have been numerous heated debates here and elsewhere... maybe you've seen them, maybe you've not.

[victor]

I have no problem with that.

Just let me have a link to the data you do have.

We might not draw the same conclusion from the data, but at the moment you are asking me to take an assertion on trust.

As Ronald Reagan used to advise (claiming it was an old Russian saying) "Trust, but verify".

I'd like to verify before commenting. And you have the data / research to enable that.

I hope you have no problem with that.

[roots]

I agree with Macro that dmoz should do something. It's shame that so important site looks like that...

BTW Is google maybe sponsoring dmoz?!