What’s So Bad About Doing Automated Status Checks?

That is a question I see posted a lot around the net about DMOZ policies. Why not create a system to allow submitters to check the status of their suggestions? Well this question leads to a more important one, What possible benefit could this provide DMOZ, its users and the editors? The answer to the later question is very little.

There is nothing that it would produce that would be beneficial to DMOZ itself. Given the limited resources available, implementing something of that scale would probably (I am not a techie ) not be possible at this point anyway. The limited resources at DMOZ are better directed at more important issues.

The benefit to users is arguable, but dependent on who is defining the users. The ones using the data to find information would have little benefit from this implementation. Those are the users that DMOZ identifies. The only benefit I could see would be in that if they found a useful site they wanted to suggest, they could check to see if it was already waiting or if it needed to be submitted. While this could be useful and a nice addition, its not a necessary one and resources are probably best directed elsewhere IMO.

The benefit to the DMOZ editors would be zero. There is nothing beyond the possible elimination of some the requests for editors to check the status of site suggestions, that the editors would find useful to make their editing more enjoyable, productive, or easier. Since most editors do not respond to feedback or forum requests for status checks, it would be a minuscule benefit at best.

On the other hand, what is so bad about DMOZ providing an automated checking system? Well for starters the limited server capacity would be further drained by adding a system such as this. There are enough technical issues and slow loading times as it is, adding more load on the system would only worsen those issues. Also, the biggest threat to quality of the directory is from spammers. There are some areas of the directory where the vast majority of the suggested sites are not ever going to be listable. Making it easier for a spammer to know how quickly their spam sites are being caught and removed, would in the end make it harder for the editors to find the quality sites available to them. Any features that are potentially more harmful to the quality of the  directory than beneficial, are not likely to be implemented.

<Disclaimer>Note as always, everything posted above is an opinion of just one volunteer. Any official comments or announcements will be found on the Official DMOZ Blog which is administered by AOL staff. <End>