Since it's been awhile since anyone has expressed any concern for belonging to the ODP/DMOZ index I'm going to let this one slip through the filters set in place by the Directory Forum Charter [webmasterworld.com ] . . just to see if anything has changed about the answers, theories, grievances or whining/whinging.

I suspect not. Indeed, I expect that I'll hear crickets chirping . . but I could be wrong.

Fire away folks.

This late in the evolution of the WWW does the ODP matter and, if so, how?

I think a link is a link is a link. I think that as we move forward the "standard of care", for traffic development, is to get ANY link that's a link from something more than a splog or the latest DMOZ clone or the latest "SEO Pagerank directory" . . . but I just wouldn't work that hard or worry that much about links down the food chain.

So, will the ODP/DMOZ rise again from the ashes?

The days of the volunteer editor directory are long over.

stoner, I could only imagine that answer is authoritative IFF (if and only if) you sat atop the management of the ODP/DMOZ and could cite, based upon personal experience, the number of active (actually doing their job) DMOZ editors.

I don't have this data. Do you?

I know a few DMOZ metas have responded here in past years. If any are still around it might be interesting to know what the trend has been in the "editor supply".

Seems people are willing to endlessly "supply their (free) time" to sites such as Wikipedia, Pinterest, Yelp, Facebook, and others.

What about people willing to help build and maintain DMOZ?

Any stats folks are willing/able to share?

Being the operator of a volunteer edited directory for 8 years I have personally seen the supply of volunteers dwindle over the past few years.

The only thing I use DMOZ for it to see how many long term competitors is still in business; as nobody new ever gets listed, and dead listing automatically get deleted.

In 2002, there was 298 entries in my shopping category. Today its down to 38.

It took three weeks to get my first site listed in 1998. I have been waiting 8 years to get my second site listed (not to mention the other 6 site) I submit about every two years, as an exercise in futility.

The only thing more difficult than getting listed, is becoming an editor (especially in shopping).

I'm pretty sure that the most common way of becomming an editor these days,is to have it bequeath in a will :)

Baffles me how they'd let something die, that's been numerously proven (by Google) to automatically give good weight if your site is in DMOZ.

If their having problems funding it / lazy devs or moderators ...then start charging a fee for express 'review'. Still not a guaranteed acceptance , but at this point i'd pay just to know my site's been reviewed within a month....instead of waiting 8 years (like lgn1) not knowing if it's even been looked at yet.

In 2006 I submitted an awesome information packed website with no ads. It is heavily linked from Wikipedia, forums, education and technical sites in the field. Its a great resource.

I have a task set in my calendar every year to check whether it has been accepted. Every couple of years I re-submit...just for the giggles

I have a few sites listed, a couple of which are no longer operational and redirect elsewhere. So clearly there aren't enough editors to do manual checks on the websites that are already listed.

Dmoz has not sent any of these sites traffic in a long, long time.

Fastest way to get into demos is to buy a site or domain that is already listed. I usually just submit and forget about it.

well, if there's any DMOZ moderators hiding around out there...and has access to the Web Hosting category. i'm willing to pay $500 just to get accepted. It's very legit & professional , unique domain and something that should be in there.

it's a popular 3 word .com domain. (no spaces)

btw, whoever changed the thread title rules. (send flowers ? lol)

btw, whoever changed the thread title rules. (send flowers ? lol)

Heck ya if it's a lotus it's worth more than money!

There were rumours that some editors had their palms greased but I don't know anything about it. I suppose it's not impossible. But like Webwork pointed out it's better to get it from a DMOZ meta's point of view if there is one lurking.

If it's a site about hosting you probably have some flexibility of the category it can be submitted to -- have you tried submitting to more of a regional category rather than national? Different editors have different layers of acceptance criteria. It doesn't really matter whether you get listed locally, regionally or nationally even though hosting is a national focus. What matters is simply the listing for search engine purposes rather than for traffic from them.

btw, whoever changed the thread title rules. (send flowers ? lol)

I do my best to ease pain and suffering with laughter. ;)

Send Flowers? The only flowering plant I would send to DMOZ, would be a large carnivorous Triffid

As with so many other similar threads, there's a complete disconnect between what the Open Directory Project actually is and what some website owners want/think it to be.

Many misunderstand our objectives and how we operate here. ODP is a volunteer organisation building a directory as a hobby. Editors edit where they wish, when they wish and as much as they wish within the constraints of their permissions. We have no schedules or systems to force people to do work that they don't volunteer to do. ODP is not primarily a free listing service for website owners and it does not attempt to process their listing suggestions within the time scales desired by them.

OTOH, many website owners look upon us as a source of free PR (to be followed by showers of money falling from the sky). That might have been true in the last century and maybe even in the first half of the last decade, but I don't believe it to be true today. Matt Cutts of Google has made it very clear that an ODP link is just a link.

I'm not impressed by claims of lazy editors. Certainly we have fewer than we had a decade ago but there are still several thousand of us and new ones join every day. Some will routinely process a hundred websites per day, others (who have other demands on their time) will process a few per month. As with most of life, Pareto rulez!

Neither am I impressed by claims of corrupt editors. Yes there have been some over the years but they are usually spotted pretty quickly and fired. We have a zero tolerance to that sort of activity here.

On the other hand, what do you think of the integrity of website owners offering bribes or advocating the purchase of listed but defunct websites and repurposing them? Not much I would hope.

I hesitated before responding because the general attitude here is remarkably hostile, despite the many explanations and clarifications over the years. Sadly, I confidently expect that it will continue to be so :(.

Not all of us hostile :)..But you do need to watch over some of your categories more carefully with regards to editors..I noticed that a site I had in DMOZ for the previous 9 years was removed in 2010..as were a number of other sites in the same specialist category ( as most of us with sites in that category are in touch with each other , we compared notes , the cat editor had changed in 2010 and the new one who removed some of us, was actually someone who had used work from each of us on their own site ( same category ) claiming it as their own, a few years before..

They were called out on it publicly by us,in another forum at the time ..apparently they waited to get even with those of us whose IP they had abused..and became cat editor for a short while in order to do so..

It makes almost no difference in traffic to any of us..and I hadn't even noticed that the site(s) were no longer listed in DMOZ, until I linked to another site in the same subject and went to DMOZ to see if they were in there ( they have a good site well worthy of inclusion )..and then discovered that they were not, and that a group of us were also "gone" all in 2010..

So from curiosity I went looking for the current cat editor..there is not currently a cat editor..and of the 4 "section editors" ( sorry, I don't know what you call these, " metas" maybe ? )..when looking at their contact details..

One had a website which redirects to spam site ( forex type IIRC ) in the Russian federation..

The next has on his site that he no longer has the time for DMOZ work and apologizes to anyone trying to reach him..

The third has a website which has expired in 2010..( thus no contact address which works ) ..they could be dead , for all anyone can tell..

And the 4th has a message on his site that says due to illness he will not be doing anything for at least 18 months..this message is already over 18 months old..

The is a major category like say "literature" ( that is not the category )..Where to all intents and purposes there is no-one at the helm..and someone was thus apparently able to delete some of their competitors in one block from the category..

As the metas are unavailable or un-contactable..( some of them could be dead for all I can find out ) that would leave only your forums ..and normally one does not wash ones dirty washing in public..

Plus from what I see of your forums on "questions of removal" by editors, they are pretty much of the " the editor must have had a good reason, suck it up" kind of response..

Makes no difference to me if my site is in or not, what is disturbing is that a new editor can remove sites with whom they have a "grudge" and that the "metas" who should be available when this happens are not even online at their contact addresses, have not been for in some cases nearly 2 years ..and that no one higher up has noticed..that a really large section of your index has no-one at the helm at all..

No point saying to me to apply myself..there is no-one to apply to..or at least no-one watching that category..and presumably thus any applications..

@Leosghost:
Thanks for your comments. Here are a few bullet points which might aid clarification.

- If nobody volunteers to edit in a category, it remains unedited by humans. That's the nature of volunteerism. However, we do have patrolling robots that remove broken websites from the live directory after for subsequent human evaluation. Most websites go down transiently for various reasons and so there is a period of grace. At the top of every category page is an 'update listing' link. You can use this to draw attention to broken/mis-categorised/re-purposed websites. These show up prominently on an editor's dashboard and most of us give them priority.

- Some 'popular/competitive' Topical categories (gambling and travel etc) are so spam prone that one might have to dredge through a hundred listing suggestions before finding a listable gem. This is no fun at all which is why few editors volunteer to work there. It's one of the reasons why most of my editing is done within Regional categories rather than Topical ones.

- It's a shame that some editors manage to behave in a destructive manner. At the top of every category is a 'report abuse/spam' link which can be used to point out their alleged transgressions. These are investigated by meta editors and are sometimes correct. Mainly though, incoming abuse reports are whinging about lazy editors or are out and out spam. These latter do not get the expedited listing that the reporter might have hoped for.

- meta editors (I'm one) are experienced editors who have shown themselves to be trustworthy and being capable of man management as well as having editorial skills. They are appointed by the directory's admins and have global directory editing permissions. They are the folks who evaluate abuse reports and editor applications, not the editors of the categories concerned.

Here's a fun thread from 2003, the DMOZ is Locked in a Cellar [webmasterworld.com] discussion in which it was noted that DMOZ needed more funding or to be spun off as an independent non-profit organization in order to stop what I saw as a slide into obsolescence. It's a prescient thread that caught DMOZ at the point when it was just over the hump and starting on it's downward slide.

DMOZ is now well down the hill and is pretty much irrelevant. It could have been a competitive non-profit organization, a portal of information just as the Mozilla Foundation became a competitive non-profit force in the browser wars. If DMOZ had been liberated we may not have Wikipedia today because DMOZ could have been there, innovating and growing the kinds of information it organized. But AOL and Yahoo had an interest in keeping DMOZ in shackles, as I pointed out in 2003.

There were financial interests in play that were keeping DMOZ in shackles. It was in AOL's interest to keep DMOZ stunted. Yahoo helped put it into shackles and AOL dumped it into a cellar and locked the door. Read the post from 2003 [webmasterworld.com]. It explains how DMOZ got to where it is today, a site that is on life support that is not worth submitting to.

I tried to wake people up back in 2003. I offered solutions. Some DMOZ editors reacted defensively in that discussion as if I was denigrating the directory. No, far from it. That post was a wake up call to save DMOZ from a decline while it was still viable to save it.

Jim, first allow me to thank you simply for showing up to respond - as it allows those interested to gain some measure of insight.

Do you have access to data that might address the following:

1. Number of unique visitors to DMOZ during last month or an average 30 day period?

2. Number of new sites added to DMOZ in 2012?

3. Any "clickthrough data", to indicate how DMOZ may still drive some degree of traffic and which sections tend to drive the most traffic?

Also, any word of the plans for DMOZ for the next 1-3 years?

Thanks.

1. Number of unique visitors to DMOZ during last month or an average 30 day period?

I have absolutely no idea.

2. Number of new sites added to DMOZ in 2012?

That's hard to calculate. One can't difference the total listings because several patrolling robots robots remove broken ones from public view. I'm not aware of any script that could sort the wheat from the chaff. Everything is logged so it's certainly possible to write one to analyse and consolidate every editor's activity. That's a non-trivial task and somebody would need to volunteer to write it.

3. Any "clickthrough data", to indicate how DMOZ may still drive some degree of traffic and which sections tend to drive the most traffic?

No idea at all. I can certainly see downsides in releasing the latter info though.

> Also, any word of the plans for DMOZ for the next 1-3 years?

There's a long wish list of bug fixes and editor function enhancements but I'm not aware of any firm or ground shaking development plans. Like any large corporation, AOL plays its cards very close to its chest.

Thanks for the reply, Jim.

In an increasingly data driven world I'm a bit surprised that such data isn't more readily available or that a "public good" entity wouldn't be a bit more ~willing/able to be transparent about it. Please talk to your fellow bosses.

can certainly see the downside

I can easily flip that on its head by a bit of rhetorical questioning: "What would be more relevant and probative of DMOZ's continuing value and/or utility than providing (some) evidence that it continues to drive traffic, the nature of the traffic, the beneficiaries, possible reasons for success (larger, well maintained subsection, etc.), etc.?"

I'm not inside the culture of the ODP but I've always had a hunch that the "enemy at the gate" (marketers, SEOs, etc) was, at the same time, "the great threat" AND "the great hope" for the role the ODP would place in search and discovery. The future, in that analysis, depended on how well the ODP handled its PR with the "website discovery and website promotion community" AND how thick skinned (in the phrase's positive sense) ODP's upper management was. The same community from which whining/whinging voices arose might, with a bit more positive engagement, may have been a source of "above the crowd" voices promoting the value and utility of the ODP as a continued source of value and utility.

On that latter topic I give you all the credit in the world for staying engaged in the ODP/DMOZ dialogue.

Honestly, thanks once again for stepping up to provide a bit of insight.

How time flies. I was puzzled by the tone of the 2003 discussion [see martinibuster, above], so serious, till I remembered that circa 2003 our current era SE's didn't quite hack it.

[edited by: Webwork at 9:25 pm (utc) on Sep 13, 2012]
[edit reason] Redacted copy+paste duplication of 4 paragraph post by martinibuster in this thread. [/edit]

scooter, Roger's, a/k/a martinibuster's, point was well made back then as now.

OTOH, I think jimnoble has also managed to drive home the point that the ODP "wasn't then" and isn't now what many in the SEO or internet marketing community thought it was or thought it was meant to be. Marketers and SEO saw DMOZ as a potential source of link juice or a SERP's friendly endorsement by a (potentially or once) trusted authority. Therefore they wanted in, they whined/whinged when they failed to get in, the paid editors, they became editors to do favors for themselves and their friends, etc. Lots of history from back in the day when Google cited Yahoo or DMOZ as a source of editorial review that their algo might consider in ranking sites. To the best of my knowledge Google has been steadily moving away from the rules and methods of ranking sites in those days. Worse, SEOs see Google increasingly favoring its own properties in the SERPs - so even the best SEO can still "get hometowned".

According to jimnoble the links/listings in DMOZ might be better grasped as being the work product of ~serious/concerned hobbyists who - as volunteers - work on their hobby (donate their time) and who are guided by editorial standards that give them a considerable degree of personal freedom.

And, yes, over the years there have been reports of abuses, but abuse, as a subject of discussion, has been beaten to death - so we rarely revisit "that topic".

Still, a link is a link is a link, so one ought to get them wherever they might be found - especially those that may be of some small value (versus junk or spammed links). Judged in that light I believe a DMOZ listing is worth the small effort of submitting a site x1, walking away, and not looking back.

Thanks Webwork for a fair summary :).

I've been in PM discussion with Leosghost since 2012-09-12 in an attempt to investigate the editorial abuse that he alleged. Detailed logs are available for the period concerned and preliminary indications are that there was none. I'm hoping for 'victim URL' info from him so that I can come to a definite conclusion.

As Jim has said, we have been speaking in PM about this ( I got distracted and forgot to send him a link until today ..mea culpa ) and he is looking into it..he thinks it may yet prove to have been done by "bots"..( in which case someone may have merely noticed the deletions and claimed that they were responsible ) if that were the case, it is worrying that bots can remove active sites that are in there..

I'll hear from him in PM about the specific instance..

But, in general, re the point of editor less categories ( and applying to edit those categories ) and uncontactable or non operational admins in dmoz ..

I've just checked the category again..still no editor and the overall category , ( which is huge, it is one of the 16 major categories on the front page of DMOZ ) still has the same problem as I saw before ..

5 admins..
admin #1) his contact website says the same as it did a year ( or possibly even longer ago ) ago..that he is not active in DMOZ due to personal reasons..
admin #2 ) his contact website cannot be found on the web..it doesn't even 404 anymore..

admin #3 ) his contact website is now a spam site parked at sedo, and running a parked page search engine..

admin #4) no website listed ..only a page which says

Please note that I rarely answer emails sent to me by submitters - please use the forums at Resource-Zone where editors will be more than happy to answer general questions regarding DMOZ.

and then a link to a contact form , which one has just been told, will rarely be answered anyway ;)

admin #5) no profile , no website, only an email link..and after much digging around I discovered that they and admin #4 were part of a team working on "Volunteer Development", a team whose last decision was taken in 2005, and it was to abandon the project!,

admin #4 was also last active in a behind the scenes newsletter entitled "The Next Generation" that was closed in 2008, so admins #4 and #5 may well not have been active for 5 years ..

my attempts to find out more, hit the editors "login page"..

Visitors such as myself to the ODP, and who would be interested in becoming an editor ( of an abandoned category, Jim has told me that the very specific category in question has no record of having had an editor since 2007, hence he is looking further into it ) are directed via the "help" link at the top right of every page to this page.
[dmoz.org...]

Seems very straight forward..

Except..the instruction to

Go to the category that interests you, then click on the "become an editor" link at the top.

won't work, because the "become an editor" link doesn't exist that I can find, ( at the top , nor anywhere on the page ) in any category, even the ones with no current editor..

Has DMOZ decided that it wants no new editors?

Or has no one in DMOZ discussed, taking the responsibility to make sure that the current editors and admins are actually active? and if not to remove them? and to make the "become an editor " links actually something which exists where the "help" pages claim that they do..

Reminds me somewhat of the military, certain "promotions" could only happen by filling "dead mens shoes"..and some things and oversight, that should have been done didn't happen because, "not my job sarge, no one said"..and "wasn't on "orders" so, no-one checked"...even volunteers need some system to make sure that some are not merely "taking up space" or "phantoms occupying desks" and "in the way"..

Asking volunteers to volunteer, by clicking non existent links, is Kafkaesque...;)

I should add that as I said to Jim via PM and <as Ive said here in the past, I tend to agree with the views expressed by "flicker" in previous threads on the subject..and I really cannot see how anyone can claim to "need" to be in DMOZ..

Unless it is because prospective buyer considers their site to be worth more if it is in there..or a client has set inclusion as an indicator of "performance" form an SEO..in which case both the SEO and client have totally misunderstood why it exists..

We may all be to one degree or another "marketroids" in these sort of fora..but not everything exists only to serve our quest for rankings in search engines, nor should it..( and as I said above inclusion or not, doesn't really affect traffic,or Google rankings, especially not these days, and IME removal, does not do so either ) it just is disconcerting to have been in , and now be out, without reason..( and the reason given by someone, in the absence of being able to ask, made sense ) ..but I'll leave it to Jim to clear it up for me..

Confidentiality
I'm treading two fine lines here:
Leosghost has told me by PM the category that particularly concerns him and the URL of his website that he alleged had been removed abusively. He's not mentioned them in the open forum so I'll respect that and not mention them here either.

I'm also bound by our Editor Guidelines (Google them) both in word and in spirit

The content of the ODP Editor Forum, Editors' Notes, and Editor-to-Editor email or Feedback are private and intended only for internal use by ODP editors. Editors may not publish or disclose quotes from these sources to anyone other than other editors or the ODP staff

Alleged Abuse
The category in question lies within our Arts branch and it had a named editor until mid-2007. Since then, it's been edited by editors with global permissions or by editors with permissions in parent categories. The category logs survived the 'great crash' in 2007 and I can see every editing transaction back to 1999.

I can say that very little human editing editing has taken place since 2007 and none since 2010. On the other hand, our robots have carried on undertaking routine quality control and unreviewing (moving them back to the pool of websites awaiting human editor action) any that have been unavailable for a period of grace.

This what happened with Leosghost's website. It was unreviewed by a robot on 2009-05-29 with this note: "At present this URL redirects (code 302) to <URL of ISP's suspended page redacted> (suspended.page - it might be a good idea to wait a bit if it comes back or will be hijacked. )". It's still sitting there in the unreviewed pool awaiting the attentions of some volnteer editor.

As with any category, quite a few listings have become available (transiently or permanently) in the intervening years and they are similarly awaiting attention.

I can find no evidence of editorial abuse.

New editors
Of course we welcome new editors, but not to all categories. Those that have more than 100 listings, are at a high level or are spam magnets are unsuitable and their 'become an editor' links are often disabled. That's the case with the category that Leosghost is interested in.

Any application should be treated as seriously as a job application - because that's what it is. We're particularly looking for fluency in the category's language, an understanding of the category and integrity. There's plenty of more detailed advice on this over at RZ.

Contacting Editors
There's normally no need to contact a particular editor directly. Our 'update listing' and 'report abuse' links at the top of each category pass the message into our system where it can be handled by _any_ editor with appropriate permissions.

However, all editors have a 'contact <editorname> form on their profiles. If you really must contact one, use it.

Messages to individual editors asking about submission status or requesting expedited evaluations don't serve any useful purpose and we advise editors to ignore them. Any resulting conversation ends badly all too often. Abusive language, spam bombs, threats of violence and even physical stalking are not unknown. All of these tend to be somewhat demotivating :(.

Editors Contacting You
This is rare and discouraged - for the reason given in the previous paragraph. If editors feel they must communicate, they are strongly advised to use throwaway email addresses to protect their privacy.

Editor Websites
Editors with personal websites are able to link to them from their profiles. These websites are not obligatory, not part of DMOZ and editors can maintain them or not as they wish. I don't think their lack or functionality are grounds for complaint.

Summary
I've treated this thread both as an abuse report (unfounded) and as an opportunity for educating other members here. For the latter, none of what I've said is new or unavailable in other publicly available documentation. For more info, try DMOZ's help link on its home page or RZ.

Thanks for the opportunity :)

It has never been "suspended" to my knowledge Jim , nor to the knowledge of the hosting company , whom I have used for it since may 2009, ( I have just phoned them, they are adamant that they have no record of it ever having been off-line, or suspended ,and that there have never been any incidents on my account, my hosting is on auto renew as are all my domain names ) I've never been told by any customers of it of it being off line, let alone suspended..

I think your "bots" may well have a problem..

Nevertheless , thank you for looking into it:)...If you say that there has been "no abuse", then I certainly believe you..

It would appear that someone noticed the removal and claimed the "credit" for having it done..

Amazed that you say that that particular category has a spam problem ( I would never have thought so , but you are in a far better position to know that than I am ) , but I looked at many other categories in various areas of DMOZ yesterday..I found no "become an editor" links on any of them"..
It would surely be better to allow applications and then "vet" them than to allow no applications at all , particularly if there is not currently an editor for those categories..?

Edit ..Ps, my account with the current hoster dates from 28 may 2009, the previous hoster ( who I had still 30 days hosting paid with when I changed hosters for that domain ), did indeed put up a "suspended" notice as soon as I told them that I would not be renewing with them, in spite of the fact that I had paid in advance for 12 months hosting and still had 30 days to go...When I complained ( and I re-pointed the DNS within the hour to the new hoster ) the old hoster informed me that it was normal in the industry to do this! and that as I would no longer be a customer of theirs, they were not interested in my complaints..

Maybe then it was just precisely during that time that your "bots" went looking , and that someone later claimed to have been responsible..knowing that there is actually no way to verify any such claims ..

Btw ..your discretion in your public replies is much appreciated .. and re-inforces my respect for you ..

I think your "bots" may well have a problem.

I suppose that's possible but I've never seen false trips from that particular one but I also don't know if it allowed 'days of grace'. It's no longer in use AFAICT. I guess it's incompatible with our ~2 year old 'new' back end.

It's interesting that your site was unreviewed within a day of you changing hosts. I'm thinking time zones...

Amazed that you say that that particular category has a spam problem

I didn't: I was speaking generally. That particular cat is too large for a beginner.

I don't think their lack or functionality are grounds for complaint.

Um, a competent directory tries very, very hard not to link to junk.

If the editors' sites that Leo mentioned have turned into junk, yet DMOZ is still linking to them, that IS grounds for complaint.

Let's see now. This forum permits users to link to a home page on their profiles. Would you criticise the forum as a whole if some of them don't work :)?