DMOZ - 10 Years Of Slowly Dying

Well today marks the 10th birthday for The Open Directory Project. Seems about time for the “oh the days are numbered for DMOZ” comments to start springing up again. Next month, I will celebrate my 4th birthday with the project and I have heard those comments since day one. Must be a slow and agonizing death.

The fact remains that the directory is still alive. It has survived and continues to grow, even after needing a little life support, during the Great Crash. Through times of terrible stewardship from its corporate parent, baseless smear attempts, unfounded allegations, technical difficulties, some real abuse, and bombardment of spam attempts, its still moving forward. All be it more slowly than the editors would like.

The reason that this project is still going, is because of its life blood - its the volunteer editors that drive the directory to do better.

So Happy 10th Birthday DMOZ and thank you to my fellow volunteers. Volunteers, who over the years have added millions of sites, thousands of categories, and hours upon hours of thankless dedication to this community and project. Also thanks to all of you for allowing me to participate and contribute, in some small part over the last 4 years and counting. Its been a roller coaster ride at times, but one that would be worth doing all over again.

I hear rumblings that some more improvements are on the horizon. Obviously I am not at liberty to mention what I have heard, but any improvements are going to be welcomed and long over due. Hopefully, we can look forward to an “Official” update on the DMOZ Blog some day soon. If for no other reason, to bump that last post down to second tier.

[updated] Updated slightly to reflect that today is the official birthday of the project. [/updated]

Official Blog - DMOZ Is Like Gold

The title DMOZ Is Like Gold caught my eye today. I thought to myself, thats great another “official” posting is on the blog. That’s gonna be good news, posts have been rather few and spread out lately. Then I read the post and my heart sank. The blog post was to thank another blog for ’showing DMOZ some love’ by including it favorably in a post. Unfortunately the love being shown was, misplaced and out and out wrong.

Firstly to be clear, the article that the DMOZ Blog is applauding is a direct copy of an article written by another blog a couple of weeks earlier. So we are not even officially thanking original content for the love, rather only a copy. Thats kind of ironic, but certainly not funny in the least.

Secondly, editors have long been battling the magic bullet theory. This article basically continues all of the mis-information that editors have tried to correct for a long time. DMOZ is not more important than other quality links, in the grand scheme of things. Plenty of well placed, high ranking sites have no DMOZ listing. On the other hand many listed sites in DMOZ fair poorly in search results.

Here are some other problems with the article:

1. Getting a site into DMOZ is like Gold. Google loves links from DMOZ and your site will reap the benefits. - I have never seen any evidence to support that theory, in fact most that I would consider experts say that there is no more weight given to A DMOZ listing than any other quality link. Therefore, its good to have as many quality links as possible, but plenty of sites are very successful in search results without a DMOZ listing.
2. Find the perfect category for your site and check to see if it has an editor. If you see a link “Volunteer to edit this category” try and find another relevant location. Pages without active editors take much longer to get listed into. - Wrong. Most categories in DMOZ are without a named editor, having a named editor does not mean a faster review time. There are a couple hundred editors with permissions to edit in any given category. They are just as likely to be editing in a category without a named editor, as a category editor is to edit in one with their name on it. Suggesting a site to a category other than the most relevant category, will do the opposite. Many times an editor will find the mis-submitted site and just forward it along un-reviewed to the proper category. Thus putting it back at the bottom of the pool. In a lot of cases, the editor that finds it won’t even have permissions (or interest) in editing the category it should have been suggested. Just suggest it to the best category in the first place, thats the best course of action.
3. Once you find the perfect directory submit your site every 4-6 months until listed. If you are lucky you will get in eventually. - Brilliant <insert sarcasm>! This is the worst bit of ‘advice’ yet. Not only has it suggested that you slow down your own review time by overwriting previous suggestions (if the reviewing editor chooses, they can review sites by submission date and the new suggestions would overwrite the original one sinking the suggestion to the bottom of the pile), but it has also basically just advise you to become a directory spammer. Enough of these re-suggestions and your site will never get accepted, for it will be tagged as spam and banned from inclusion.

I realize why the DMOZ blog chose to post a message about the article. Its always nice to be shed in some good light occasionally. However this article does not show the project in a good light, instead its makes outrageous statements based on incorrect advice and further adds to the mis-information that editors have tired to combat for many years. Some corrections have been made, but frankly I wish the post was removed. That is unfortunately beyond my control, so I will continue to try and provide honest and factual information to dis-spell the horribly bad advice that the original article was giving.

Shadow - What I Did Today

Been a long, long day today. Real life has been hampering but I still managed to find a few minutes here and there to get ODP work done. Here was what my DMOZ day looked like:

1. Processed a few editor accounts - New applications, reinstatements, new perm requests, etc.
2. Got back into my Indiana cleanup that I had started. I am now (having started with Localities: A ) half way through Indianapolis.
3. Logged a little over a hundred total edits.

As I mentioned it’s been a long day, so not much else was accomplished. Hopefully the rest of the week will be better.