Forum Moderators: open
While DMOZ bears the brunt of the criticism for listing hijacked domains in their old categories, they are ill-equipped to address this issue. The DMOZ spider is rudimentary at best - the only way for DMOZ to address this issue is for each editor to click on all their links. With most editors being hopelessly overworked, and many cats having no permanent editor at all, this simply isn't going to happen.
So, here's the suggestion - Google DOES have sophisticated spidering and content analysis. What if, once a month, Google matched sites listed in the Google Directory with sites that showed a major change in content - it could be a theme change, a complete change in page names, etc. These sites could be flagged in the DMOZ editor's view as "Major Content Change", just like the sites flagged as being unresponsive by Robozilla.
Many of these flagged changes would be benign, of course - a major site redesign, a switch to dynamic content, etc., in which case the editor could clear the flag. In those cases where a true change in content has occurred, the editor could delete the site if it was now spam, or move it to the correct category.
This would require some programming work on both ends, but it might serve both firm's needs - a better DMOZ means a better Google Directory. (The same approach could work for Google and Yahoo, I suppose, although Google has less motivation to improve the Yahoo directory.)
On that note, how often does DMOZ update its category modifications? :¦
A friend of mine recently had his URL hijacked when it lapsed. (He was away on vacation). I set up a new URL for him, had a site built and up and running within a few weeks. I then systematically informed everyone who had been linking to his old domain that the URL had been hijacked and was now in the hands of a spammer based in India.
Without exception (including ODP), every one of those with links to his old site changed it to the new URL. Problem solved!
If it is one web designers responsibilty to maintain the quality of their site, then it is all our responsibility.
The web teams behing Google, ODP and all the other big names have the same responsiblity as the rest of us for maintaining the quality of their sites.
Its just that the big players have the $$$$ to do it on a larger scale.
JOAT :)
most expired domains converted to spam sites lapsed because the original owners had lost interest and simply abandoned them.
Point made rogerd, and I do think your suggestion has merit. However, I still believe there are a lot of scooped/hijacked domains that we do know about and I would hazzard a guess that it amounts to a great many URL's.
Perhaps we can all help one another and at the same time lessen ther load for the ODP and Google by cleaning up what we can by reporting those we find to the proper sources. It would be simple for the ODP and Google to add a "dead or hijacked link" to each category in the directories.
When we stumble across one, shoot the "trash" report to either or both of them!
<added>Of course, if you have more than a handful of URLs to report, it's probably better to send the list directly to one of the meta editors per editor feedback, which will simplify the task on both ends.</added>
