Rolling Up The Sleeves

Tonight felt like old times! I have been here and gone and here again so much lately that getting into a rhythm and working on editing and meta tasks has been tough.

First thing is that I jumped right into my email and feedbacks.  I had quite a few regarding various topics.  Some general questions, some fan mail, some hate mail, you know the usual ODP editor mail bag.    After I had dealt with all of them that needed attention, I managed a tweet about it before heading off to the forums.

I perused the Editor Forums and also those at RZ to see the highlights I have missed over the last few days.  Didn’t appear to have missed a whole lot though.  Many of my feedbacks caught me up on the most important topics of concern.

After I had sufficiently rotted my brain in feedbacks and forums, I rolled the old sleeves up and did some abuse investigations.  I must be a masochist, because I tend to enjoy abuse hunting and investigations.  There are always a comments about whether abuse reports are ever investigated, and the answer is yes they are.  All abuse reports are taken very seriously and the Meta’s that specialize in them.  I don’t claim to be a specialist and I am not even in the ball park with the better abuse hunters, but I enjoy swatting abuse and clearing reports when I can.

To give you an idea of the amount of work that goes into investigating and resolving an abuse report, this might put it into perspective.  I spent about 2 hours working on only a couple of reports.  One doesn’t count, because it was just a duplicate report of another pending and in an area that I don’t work.  I couldn’t do anything more than just close the duplicate report.  The others took up the bulk of my time and were all positively resolved with no abuse found.

The majority of abuse reports that I have worked through generally turn out to be either a lack of interested editors in the area resulting in little or no activity, which is not abuse.  Or simple cases of correcting quality control issues such as parked sites needing removed, redirects, typo corrections, etc.  Again not abuse.

For more information on what is abuse, check out http://report-abuse.dmoz.org/faq .  The FAQ provides a more clear explanation of what constitutes abuse.  While on the subject of Reporting Abuse, quality control issues are not abuse and the Abuse Reporting System should not be used to report quality control issues.  If you see a listing in the directory that needs to be corrected or removed per the Editing Guidelines, use the update a listing link at the top of  the category and suggest the changes that are needed.  Abuse reports require the attention of Meta editors willing to tackle them.  URL updates and quality control issues can be processed by any level of editor with permissions in the category that they reside and likely will be dealt with quicker via the update link than via an abuse report.

Happy Birthday Old Friend

No other purpose for this post, other than to tell an old friend happy birthday!  So gunner:

Happy “29th” Birthday my friend!  Where would I be now, had you not suckered me in and took me beneath your wing.  I will always appreciate the guidance and friendship you have always given me.  Best wishes to you and your family.

I lift my glass to you “big brother”  and wish you a very happy birthday now and always.

Cheers!

DMOZ Blog – Finally Something New (Sort Of)

Well I have been pretty much gone for much of the last 6 months. Seems like when I do find time to edit, I get side tracked immediately after getting on line. Darn Internet Porn. I noticed today that FINALLY the DMOZ Blog has something new up. Of course its a far cry from what was originally intended when they christened the blog:

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.

Ask AOL: Editors’ Questions about DMOZ Answered

That said though, its promising to be away so long and upon checking in see that something has been posted. The message, from a new staff member is a welcomed one. Editors have long been held in the dark, asking questions trying to find answers to no avail. Its wonderful that mom and dad are interested in hearing what the kids think. I sincerely hope they take this seriously and help answer the many questions editors have had for years about the future and stewardship of the project. That will be a great help in righting the ship.

On a personal and more satirical note, I wonder if they will address the “hostile” takeover of the project by Rob Jones? I still think that was a political stunt, aimed to draw attention to a run on the White House. But hey, he promised me a position as Defense Secretary so I am all for it.

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Rob Jones 2008

• He’s from Texas
• He can’t be any worse than what we have had.
• He has got to be better than our other options.

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