Dec 8th 2009 11:48AM
2009 Year in Review: Editor & Community Achievements
Directory & Community Development
Greenbust Effort & the Purple Push
makrhod headed up two projects to process long-standing edits. During the first, she encouraged editors to process greenbusts that had accumulated over time. The result was that greenbust edits were completely cleared for all directory branches except for World, and even there the number was considerably diminished.
In the Purple Push, makrhod again organized editors to process all update requests. This effort was completely successful. Thanks to the efforts of many editors, the directory was declared completely update-free (for a little while, anyway).
Both of these were incredible achievements and representative of the amazing collaborative efforts of our editors. Thanks to everyone who helped with these initiatives!
"Foodbusters" Initiative
The Shopping/Food editors held a week-long "Foodbusters" challenge to process the unreviewed sites in this area of the directory. This resulted in 211 new listings in this area.
Typo Fixes
Between March and July, bluestar fixed over 38,000 typos in titles, descriptions, category descriptions and submission notices across Business, Computers, Games, Health, Home, News, Recreation, Reference, Science, Society, Sports and parts of Regional.
Geocities Updates
Geocities closed down in November rendering thousands of listings obsolete. Beginning on the day of Yahoo's announcement in April and continuing throughout the months leading up to the closure, editors worked tirelessly to find replacement sites (where possible) and remove any outdated listings.
Addition of Current Events Categories
This year, editors dedicated a great deal of time to updating existing categories and developing new categories to cover timely events. Examples include:
Editor School
A new class entered Editor School this year. This mentorship program pairs newer editors with more experienced mentors to help mentees gain additional knowledge and experience in editing.
Official DMOZ Blog
Keeping this blog running throughout the year is a collaborative effort between the editor community and AOL Staff. Editors help with all aspects of the blog including editorial calendar development, writing and editing posts and responding to common questions and concerns from our readers. artisands, hiraeth, glippitt, lisagirl, mollybdenum, imrankhan, crowbar, jensarentoft, laigh, and stevek have each contributed at least one post in 2009; and chaos127, johndouglas, laigh, mollybdenum and photofox have kept everything running smoothly.
International Growth & Development
Expansion in World/Thai
Thai editors, under the leadership of vorapon, have done a phenomenal job of building out the Thai language categories. In 2009, the number of listings has doubled from 2000 to 4000.
Creation of World/Sinhala
This year, editors under the leadership of sirisusara created a new category for sites in the Sri Lankan Sinhala language.
World/Punjabi_Gurmukhi Script Changes
Editor hswaseer has been busy converting the titles and descriptions from transliterated Punjabi into Gurmukhi script.
Expansion of United Kingdom Regional Categories
Editors in the UK regional categories made tremendous progress this year. The England category topped the 125,000 listing mark; Scotland increased by 30%; and the Isle of Wight increased from 600 sites and 30 locations to 1800 sites and 60 locations.
Expansion of World/Russian
The World/Russian branch increased by approximately 9000 sites. Editors in this area performed over 80 topical reorganizations and created a Russian sub-forum in Resource Zone (link). An additional 250 editors joined this branch; additionally, two Russian editors were granted meta privileges and an additional two were granted top-level privileges in World/Russian. In 2009, there were 25 posts and 3200 comments on the unofficial Russian DMOZ Blog (in Russian).
Personal Milestones & Achievements
New Editor Achievements
wszp joined the project this summer and has to date made 708 edits including 273 unique adds.
Use of DMOZ RDF Data to Improve Directory Search
Over the summer, tanstaaf1 created a site to improve DMOZ usage and promotion of the World/Russian and World/Ukrainian branches through improved search functionality. The site is built on the RDF data and provides better results than the built-in ODP search because of an improved ability to handle Russian and Ukrainian morphology (inflections, word forms). For each category displayed in the search results, the user may view listings and (based on permissions) edit that category or suggest & update site listings.
You can give this a try in English & in Russian with these sample categories:
In Memoriam
Sadly, we lost two of our long-time editors in recent months. Both ianillo and brmehlman made countless contributions to the directory and to the DMOZ community overall during their many years of volunteer service. They will be greatly missed.
Greenbust Effort & the Purple Push
makrhod headed up two projects to process long-standing edits. During the first, she encouraged editors to process greenbusts that had accumulated over time. The result was that greenbust edits were completely cleared for all directory branches except for World, and even there the number was considerably diminished.
In the Purple Push, makrhod again organized editors to process all update requests. This effort was completely successful. Thanks to the efforts of many editors, the directory was declared completely update-free (for a little while, anyway).
Both of these were incredible achievements and representative of the amazing collaborative efforts of our editors. Thanks to everyone who helped with these initiatives!
"Foodbusters" Initiative
The Shopping/Food editors held a week-long "Foodbusters" challenge to process the unreviewed sites in this area of the directory. This resulted in 211 new listings in this area.
Typo Fixes
Between March and July, bluestar fixed over 38,000 typos in titles, descriptions, category descriptions and submission notices across Business, Computers, Games, Health, Home, News, Recreation, Reference, Science, Society, Sports and parts of Regional.
Geocities Updates
Geocities closed down in November rendering thousands of listings obsolete. Beginning on the day of Yahoo's announcement in April and continuing throughout the months leading up to the closure, editors worked tirelessly to find replacement sites (where possible) and remove any outdated listings.
Addition of Current Events Categories
This year, editors dedicated a great deal of time to updating existing categories and developing new categories to cover timely events. Examples include:
- Influenza
- A-H1N1/"Swine Flu"
- Healthcare Reform
- President Obama
- 2010 Winter Olympics
- Copenhagen Climate Change Conference
Editor School
A new class entered Editor School this year. This mentorship program pairs newer editors with more experienced mentors to help mentees gain additional knowledge and experience in editing.
Official DMOZ Blog
Keeping this blog running throughout the year is a collaborative effort between the editor community and AOL Staff. Editors help with all aspects of the blog including editorial calendar development, writing and editing posts and responding to common questions and concerns from our readers. artisands, hiraeth, glippitt, lisagirl, mollybdenum, imrankhan, crowbar, jensarentoft, laigh, and stevek have each contributed at least one post in 2009; and chaos127, johndouglas, laigh, mollybdenum and photofox have kept everything running smoothly.
International Growth & Development
Expansion in World/Thai
Thai editors, under the leadership of vorapon, have done a phenomenal job of building out the Thai language categories. In 2009, the number of listings has doubled from 2000 to 4000.
Creation of World/Sinhala
This year, editors under the leadership of sirisusara created a new category for sites in the Sri Lankan Sinhala language.
World/Punjabi_Gurmukhi Script Changes
Editor hswaseer has been busy converting the titles and descriptions from transliterated Punjabi into Gurmukhi script.
Expansion of United Kingdom Regional Categories
Editors in the UK regional categories made tremendous progress this year. The England category topped the 125,000 listing mark; Scotland increased by 30%; and the Isle of Wight increased from 600 sites and 30 locations to 1800 sites and 60 locations.
Expansion of World/Russian
The World/Russian branch increased by approximately 9000 sites. Editors in this area performed over 80 topical reorganizations and created a Russian sub-forum in Resource Zone (link). An additional 250 editors joined this branch; additionally, two Russian editors were granted meta privileges and an additional two were granted top-level privileges in World/Russian. In 2009, there were 25 posts and 3200 comments on the unofficial Russian DMOZ Blog (in Russian).
Personal Milestones & Achievements
New Editor Achievements
wszp joined the project this summer and has to date made 708 edits including 273 unique adds.
Use of DMOZ RDF Data to Improve Directory Search
Over the summer, tanstaaf1 created a site to improve DMOZ usage and promotion of the World/Russian and World/Ukrainian branches through improved search functionality. The site is built on the RDF data and provides better results than the built-in ODP search because of an improved ability to handle Russian and Ukrainian morphology (inflections, word forms). For each category displayed in the search results, the user may view listings and (based on permissions) edit that category or suggest & update site listings.
You can give this a try in English & in Russian with these sample categories:
- Moscow, in English (the capital of Russia)
- Kyiv, in English (the capital of Ukraine)
- Петербург, in Russian (that's Saint Petersburg, the second largest city of Russia)
- Київ, in Ukrainian (that's Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine)
- Харьков, in Russian (that's Kharkiv, the second largest city of Ukraine)
In Memoriam
Sadly, we lost two of our long-time editors in recent months. Both ianillo and brmehlman made countless contributions to the directory and to the DMOZ community overall during their many years of volunteer service. They will be greatly missed.
21. I have tried to list number of sites. Those all are quality site. But I was unsuccessful. Though, I never tried to list my own site. Can anybody suggest me what to do?
Posted at 11:05AM on Jan 17th 2010 by ARITRA GHOSE
22. For people having issues related to the Open Directory Project there's a public forum at http://www.resource-zone.com/ which is sponsored by members of the ODP community...
It works better than commenting on an innocent blog post ;-)
Posted at 2:28PM on Jan 17th 2010 by bjfs
23. Dear Editor, I have suggest a site to DMOZ on December 30, 2009,and i was wondering when it will be listed in DMOZ.
Catetory: Regional: Asia: China: Travel and Tourism: Travel Guides
Title of Site: Travel in China
Site Description: Introduction of the attractions in China and some traveling tips.
Thank you very much.
Posted at 3:41AM on Jan 18th 2010 by Crystal
24. First off, Happy New Year!!! May 2010 be better than 09, let's be healthy and prosperous.
Just a quick query, if you don't mind: I just recently found my site listed in DMOZ ( thank You, by the way, am honored) , but listed under a "bookmark" and wanted to know the difference between being listed as a regular resource website and a "bookmark".
Your reply would be highly appreciated.
Posted at 1:55AM on Jan 19th 2010 by jiuding-tech
25. @jiuding-tech - see comments 21 and 23 above
Posted at 4:14AM on Jan 20th 2010 by Eric-the-Bun
26. Thanks for the great content and information on legitimate online businesses. I search the net looking for this type of content to give me ideas on future articles that I am going to write on this same general subject. Appreciate reading your article and information on this particular subject.
Laura
Posted at 12:21AM on Feb 18th 2010 by Laura
27. Seems like Dmoz standards have just gotten lower: they link gay male sex sites like this:
And while nice people like myself send an application to volunteer, I am denied in 3 minutes. Because you know, it only takes three minutes to determine a good candidate when a bot reads it.
I see dmoz becoming the low class directory of the future.
Posted at 7:15AM on Feb 18th 2010 by preeti