Sep 24th 2007 3:00PM
Welcome To The DMOZ Blog
Hello and welcome to the new DMOZ blog, the official source for information, insight, and updates about DMOZ, the Open Directory Project ( ODP ).
DMOZ is made up of thousands of passionate, volunteer category enthusiasts and experts from all over the world who donate their time to arrange their respective portion of the web. Thanks to their work, DMOZ is a starting place for browsing and searching the web. DMOZ data is also used by thousands of search engines and web portals to help people quickly and easily find information on the web.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of DMOZ's death have been greatly exaggerated.
The editor community is very much alive and thriving. Thousands of new sites are added and updated every week, and we continue to receive hundreds of editor applications and suggested sites every day.
We thought now was the right time to open the door and start a conversation with the Web community about what's happening with the largest human-edited directory.
We intend to use this blog to:
- Provide authentic messages about DMOZ and the efforts of our volunteer community.
- Highlight enhancements, both current and future.
- Allow editors to showcase their categories and describe, in their own words, why DMOZ is so important.
- Recruit new editors. If you have access to the Web and are passionate about a category, find out how to apply.
Additionally we want to hear from you.
What do you think about DMOZ? Why do you use the directory or data? Is there something you would like to see fixed? When you've been around as long as we have, some people are bound to have great things to say, while others might have a few choice words based on their personal experience. Either way, we want to hear it :)
We plan on posting every week so grab the RSS feed or sign up for an e-mail alert to receive notification of new entries as they are posted.
Bob Keating
Managing Editor, DMOZ Staff
DMOZ is made up of thousands of passionate, volunteer category enthusiasts and experts from all over the world who donate their time to arrange their respective portion of the web. Thanks to their work, DMOZ is a starting place for browsing and searching the web. DMOZ data is also used by thousands of search engines and web portals to help people quickly and easily find information on the web.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of DMOZ's death have been greatly exaggerated.
The editor community is very much alive and thriving. Thousands of new sites are added and updated every week, and we continue to receive hundreds of editor applications and suggested sites every day.
We thought now was the right time to open the door and start a conversation with the Web community about what's happening with the largest human-edited directory.
We intend to use this blog to:
- Provide authentic messages about DMOZ and the efforts of our volunteer community.
- Highlight enhancements, both current and future.
- Allow editors to showcase their categories and describe, in their own words, why DMOZ is so important.
- Recruit new editors. If you have access to the Web and are passionate about a category, find out how to apply.
Additionally we want to hear from you.
What do you think about DMOZ? Why do you use the directory or data? Is there something you would like to see fixed? When you've been around as long as we have, some people are bound to have great things to say, while others might have a few choice words based on their personal experience. Either way, we want to hear it :)
We plan on posting every week so grab the RSS feed or sign up for an e-mail alert to receive notification of new entries as they are posted.
Bob Keating
Managing Editor, DMOZ Staff
21. It's great you opened up this avenue of communication. My main suggestion is that you communicate better with those who submit sites. A few years ago I submitted my site and got no response in spite of following up a couple times. The site (www.dougbrittonbooks.com) has continued to grow with several hundred unique visitors per day (most people visit to read online Bible studies) yet still no response from DMOZ.
Posted at 5:59PM on Sep 25th 2007 by Doug
22. "I've been using dmoz for the past 3+ years mainly for SEO/SERP reasons. I would have to say that a more transparent approval process would be greatly appreciated by much of the webmasters. when submitted valid request to change a description, not just changing a description for SEO, you have no idea whats going on, if anyone ever going to or did look at it; its just goes into a black hole until one day your realize its been updated or it hasn't."
I can understand that. If an update request does not comply with our Guidelines, sometimes we'll try to rewrite it anyway(if we feel it can be improved on), but other times the request is so out of whack that we'll just delete the request.
We really don't have the time to contact the submitter and give a mini course about writing an ODP compliant description, or describe what was wrong with the request. We get many requests and our Guidelines are available to the public.
It would be nice if we had a system that would allow you to check on it yourself, but right now we have limited resources that are needed for more important tasks in the Directory.
Posted at 7:00PM on Sep 25th 2007 by crowbar
23. First of all, congratulations for the new blog. I am glad that you have decided a new approach to visitors and webmasters.
DMOZ is a respect directory, of course, but as every website in the world, it requires some changes to adapt to the new tendencies. Just some small suggestions: the navigation through the different categories and sub-categories is not intuitive and sometimes archaic, it definitely needs a face-lift; and the category of "World" does not fit in a web directory nowadays anymore, instead, there should be a portal for each language/region (If I am not mistaken, DMOZ is not just a U.S. directory, right?).
If we also get into the matter of the admission of websites, I think it should be much more friendly. The times of admission are too long and the webmaster should receive e-mails regarding to the status of the submission of the website. If the website is not accepted, he/she should receive a message with the complete reasons of that decision.
You guys have a great directory, but remember that for it to be an "open directory", needs to be completely open, and in that matter you still have a way to run.
Antonio Bustamante - Madrid, Spain
http://www.tecnobot.com
Posted at 7:17PM on Sep 25th 2007 by Antonio Bustamante
24. Good to see DMOZ taking a (long awaited) step forward in the right direction.
P.S. The links above the search box at the top do not work.
Posted at 7:20PM on Sep 25th 2007 by WEBOSIS
25. "It's great you opened up this avenue of communication. My main suggestion is that you communicate better with those who submit sites."
If a site owner contacts me politely, I will always respond to them out of courtesy, but, many of us have had less than pleasant experiences doing that, including threats against ourselves and our families, so we are encouraged not to.
Editors are just ordinary people volunteering our free time, not employees. I think all of us would enjoy being of help to you, everybody wants to be liked, but we all work for a living and have limited time.
Posted at 7:28PM on Sep 25th 2007 by crowbar
26. "In the future, I hope that the corruption and coldness, is weeded out of the ODP."
Corruption does exist, and I know that because editors get caught doing it and become ex-editors very quickly, but it isn't as wide spread as many seem to think.
It hurts all of us any time one is found because 99.9% of us are honest and a crooked editor is a big slap in the face to all of us. It's sickening. We hate crooked editors, they've betrayed a trust.
As far as what you call our coldness, I suppose that after answering the same questions over and over, the answers which can be found in our FAQ or our Guidelines, I suppose we do get a little cold sounding when we state the facts or have to tell someone no.
That really is our fault and I find myself doing it unconsciously sometimes and forgetting that I'm talking to a person and not just answering a written question or statement. I apologize for that, :).
Sometimes I sound like I'm giving a speech, too, I don't mean to, I just slip into it.
We are sympathetic to your frustrations, or I'd be in watching Fox, instead of typing with one finger.
Posted at 8:21PM on Sep 25th 2007 by crowbar
27. Thanks crowbar, I believe some of what you are saying, I'm actually an editor myself since 2003, and I believe that the kind, intelligent, and honest editors do outweigh the rude, ignorant, and corrupt, but it isn't 99.9% vs. .1%. I wish it were.
Posted at 8:39PM on Sep 25th 2007 by daisy
28. Would you be able to highlight or otherwise indicate those posting officially as staff in replies? It is hard to make out who are users and who are staff and which are offical DMOZ replies. Thanks and this is a really welcome addition.
Posted at 10:06PM on Sep 25th 2007 by reprint
29. Bob,
I look forward to hearing great news about the directory. This will be great if a renewed interest in providing quality will come of this.
Posted at 10:53PM on Sep 25th 2007 by Stephen Pitts
30. The end of my last post was cut off. I'll try again.
The truth is, if we (editors) were employees instead of volunteers a great percentage of us would have
been fired long ago, for inappropriate or self serving behaviors, or just for not doing our jobs very well.
On that note, a huge percentage of us would never have been hired in the first place.
The things that are going on, whether due to corruption or ignorance would never be tolerated in any sort of professional organization.
Posted at 11:15PM on Sep 25th 2007 by daisy
31. Would you be publishing this blog in multiple languages, maybe translated by the volunteer editors?
Posted at 11:40PM on Sep 25th 2007 by codepoet
32. Good move.
To an outsider DMOZ is a directory with a long waiting list. The community keeps wondering why it takes so much time. Hope lot of interaction here for a better tomorrow.
Posted at 11:45PM on Sep 25th 2007 by smo
33. I recognize that you will be innundated with complaints about webmasters submitting sites and corruption within DMOZ. As both a webmaster and a former editor I can attest to both these issues being true - there is vast preferential treatment abound in DMOZ which is a serious problem.
I made this suggestion at the resources forum years ago and still stand by it. I believe a vast majority of the problems in regards to DMOZ are that the editors and the real webmasters are not being in contact readily enough. If real webmasters had a chance to talk to real editors, then perhaps both corruption and the long wait times would be slightly eliminated. And the only way to do this, in my opinion, is to charge webmasters a minor fee for submission (something like five or ten dollars). Alternatively, you can use the same process of certification that Google and Yahoo do to ensure that the submitter is in fact the owner of the domain (using a meta tag or hosted file).
Either way, if your intention is to survive in the long term and not only that, but provide a strong directory of choice you need to add new technologies to eliminate the only problem that slows down all the other processes: Spammed sites.
Posted at 12:48AM on Sep 26th 2007 by Decius
34. Congratulation to all AOL Staff - After resource zone, this blog also help to dmoz friends. Newletter is also nice option to get information.
thanks
Posted at 1:02AM on Sep 26th 2007 by Paavan Solanki
35. What is the point of having a blog and comment if you are going to censor it like internal forum and RZ?
Posted at 3:14AM on Sep 26th 2007 by Julian
36. launched my posts to DMOZ a couple of years ago, but never was blessed with a listing. come back to earth DMOZ.
Posted at 7:07AM on Sep 26th 2007 by Paul Dimeo
37. This is great! Thanks to Staff.
Posted at 7:48AM on Sep 26th 2007 by organic
38. Is DMOZ anything other than a much-abused resource for a select few SEO's to control which of their friends & clients gets links from the directory?
Local listings for categories that have next to nothing in them have been known to take MONTHS to appear. How can anyone even justify the existance of such a rubbish service?
Posted at 8:15AM on Sep 26th 2007 by Farhad
39. thats great to see web 2.0 practice becomes more and more valuable!
Posted at 8:17AM on Sep 26th 2007 by tobto.org
40. Hi, I would like to make the following points:-
Corruption, long waiting times, lack of respect and arrogance from some editors towards webmasters, editors self supporting their own sites and declining competitor sites coupled with zero feed back for declined sites has caused dmoz to suffer credibility issues over the years.
If AOL is serious here about genuinely wanting to make a difference then they need to seriously overhaul the current “volunteer” set up arrangement.
I think that if AOL can work on changing the image of DMOZ (this blog is a great start by the way) by stamping their claim on the directory, being heavily involved in its processes rather than it being left to run its own cause and can clear the deck of some of the existing issues by perhaps a) making editors more accountable for their actions and b) possibly making editors more transparent to webmasters so that we know exactly who we are dealing with and what sites they are connected to, this would lead to significantly improving the quality of the directory and enhancing webmaster relationships and some of the editors integrity would not be in question.
Another good starting point would be the introduction of an AOL staff member who is prepared to put their name to being overall responsible for the directory?. From my own experience as a web designer I hear far too many stories from clients that are running blue chip websites that have been excluded or passed backwards and forwards between data pools in what looks like a clearly engineered plan to avoid their site being listed and they have absolutely no recall or line of management at DMOZ that will take up responsibility and look into the issue
Currently the good editors of the directory are unfortunately grouped with the rogue elements that hold the directory back so the directory needs the firm hand of a blue chip organisation like AOL to bring it back on course.
The comment made by an earlier poster about paying for a listing review is a very good idea. Spamming and junk sites would not be even submitted to DMOZ in the first place if they had to pay a non refundable listing review fee in the same way that Yahoo directory operates. But for this to work, webmasters would need to be assured that their site was A) 100% going to be reviewed accordingly (ideally in a set time scale) and B) it was by an AOL authorised employee that had no relationship or vested interest in the site not being listed and C) if rejected a proper reason given for the decline that the webmaster could work on improving to get their site up to standard for the future. This would not only mean improving webmaster relationships but DMOZ Could become an authority in helping to improve content on the web in general.
I hope my comments prove useful as I would certainly like to see this directory given a lot more credibility than it currently has in the webmaster community but serious attention to it is required in the meantime, a lot of work needs to be done here!
Posted at 9:33AM on Sep 26th 2007 by David Johnstone