DMOZ corruption solution

DMOZ has always been acused of having corrupt editors.

DMOZ editors always deny and deny. DMOZ editors claim they are volunteers that want to edit. DMOZ always say their directory has nothing to do with SEO.

Why doesn't DMOZ just use a "rel=nofollow" tag on all their links, making their links useless. DMOZ would then really just be a directory with a bunch of volunteer editors working willingly.

Using a nofollow tag will solve everything. It can't be too hard to implement either. So why not use it?

It will solve nothing. None of the 3000 or so directories that use the DMOZ database will use it. Its been discussed ad nauseum at Resource Zone.

The corruption problem is not seen as a significant problem by DMOZ editing community. There is some corruption, but in the grand scheme of things its minor and is usually eventually found and editors and edits removed. It is only the seo forum posting community that have a fantasy that its a big problem.

Who cares about the 3000 clones...Google has them either supplemental and looks at them as useless.

Plus, most people want to be in DMOZ because it gives them a high quality link. The only high quality link you get from DMOZ is the one one DMOZ page itself...and not the clones.

I would like you to answer the same question which was asked at another forum with your answer here.

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=276722

That thread has 3 pages ...7 days old when someone brought the question up. If your already not a member, sign up and respond please...I would love to see what some say.

I don't see how you can prove this either way. Saying it isn't a problem requires as much substantiation as saying it is a problem with DMOZ. It's extremely difficult to prove the motivations behind why an editor has included a submission and why he or she has rejected a submission. And of course, every DMOZ editor will give a wholesome innocent reason as to every decision they make.

Certainly it's the case that very few humans actually browse DMOZ and use it as a directory. I know this personally because it's extremely rare that I get referrals from the 11 sites I have listed on the DMOZ directory. DMOZ is now well understood to be a fairly significant influence on how you rank in search engines so many sites that are submitted to DMOZ are done so for that very reason alone, which certainly suggests there is a motivation to corrupt a decision on whether a submission is accepted or not.

You have no idea if thats the case or not. Many speculate, but no one knows. I checked a few of the better known DMOZ clones and many are NOT supplemental and most of the pages are cached, so how do you know Google does not count them? .... I do not know if they do or do not.

I see no point posting at DP....the issue has been discussed at depth and many times at Resource Zone and its not going to happen, so why do the dicussions about it continue? Only SEO's are interested in this, not DMOZ.

Let's asume DMOZ has a significant influence on search results (many people claim this to be true but it is very difficult to prove)
If DMOZ would use the nofollow tag the search engines would not follow the links to what DMOZ sees as usefull sites.
I don't know if nofollow has any influence on page rank. But if it has the PR of usefull sites will dropp.
As a result all the spamming sites that are not inlcuded in DMOZ will get higher rankings in search results.
That is the reason why some SEOpeople and webmaster want DMOZ to use the nofollow tag.

BTW - I see I am being quoted as being an editor. I have not been an editor for a long time.

A lot of questionable sites are already listed in DMOZ.

On another thread someone suggested using nofollow for only commercial sites on DMOZ - this would certainly stop a lot of corruption.

> A lot of questionable sites are already listed in DMOZ.
Please report them.
Either use the "update listing" link at the DMOZ category the site is listed in or go to Resource Zone and post in the thread special for this kind of issues.
Or if you don't want to do any of these you can even PM me.
Remember: sites that do follow the DMOZ guidelines will not be removed.
But sites that changed their content to something DMOZ does not want to list, were hijacked, are death or in any other way not working properly will be removed. And we welcome any help we get in finding these websites.

> On another thread someone suggested using nofollow for only commercial sites on DMOZ - this would certainly stop a lot of corruption.
Which asumes there is a lot of corruption. We (the DMOZ editors) know there is some corruption and we are constantly fighting these people. But it certainly is not a lot.
If you have any prove of corruption please let us know. It might be a person we did not notice yet or a situation in which we need more prove. Again any help is very welcome.

Hi pagode, well I argued earlier that it's hard to prove either way. How do you know there isn't corruption? There are too many editors to monitor, and even if you did monitor each one carefully, how can you really know whether their motivations to include and exclude sites are truly objective? You can never know - it comes down to a lot of trust at the end of the day. I'm just saying there's an obvious incentive and temptation to become an editor for reasons other than wanting to contribute to an open source directory (that we all know hardly anyone actually browses for the sake of visiting websites).



I have contacted DMOZ in the past about particular entries, mainly because they were obvious spam sites.

However, I was alluding to the number of commercial sites that are in the OPD - there's an enormous amount. This didn't use to be the case a number of years back.

pagode, you can only really speak for yourself in regards to the integrity of OPD editing, and other editors you know in particular. You can't know other editor's motivations though - and there's no denying there's an ulterior motive available to unscrupulous people to become an OPD editor. If you want to deny that, then I think your head is in the sand.

DMOZ does lists almost all types of sites including commercial ones. That is not a problem. If you don't like commercial sites just don't visit them, but notice that with the adds presented here this forum is also some sort of commercial site.


Most of these people are stopped at the door. Just look at most people complaining they were rejected as editors for several times. Those who manage to pass the first hurdle either become good editors despite their first motive or are removed very fast if they don't behave like expected. We are very good at spotting malisious editing and have no mercy for those who abuse their priveleges.
Overall: We don't care about motivation we care about what people do.
If an editor joined because he wanted to get his own site listed and he also lists many of his competitors he has done a good job for DMOZ and our users. And that is all that counts.

I do not think anyone denies that (even editors) - those kinds of editors never last long and there edits are always audited by a senior editor. What actually wrong with that?

Why must editors have ülterior motives?
I have met 3 editors in real life (obviously met more online). None of them knew what SEO was and none of them had their own sites. One was a school teacher that edited as part of a class project (the students were to find sites to list). One was a university lecturer and the other was a medical doctor - they edited categories related to their special disciplines.

Rather than question the ulterior motives of editors, what about the ulterior motives of SEO's who want DMOZ turned into a listing service for their sites? What about their ulterior motives of fantasising about the extent of corruption at DMOZ?

Hi pagode, actually I have a question as well about the DMOZ. I think bkk has a valid point about others who want their sites to continue to high in the rankings and therefore become editors to keep their sites SEO'd high.

For my site which I've submitted, I'm pretty sure the editors have seen it. The reason I say that is because there is one of those geocities sites that had a keyword in it the same as my site. But this geocities site has been down for months now. It was still listed in the DMOZ for a good time. I submitted my site and when doing a search to see if my site currently exists, you would inevitably find this other site as well. So recently, this site has been taken off the the DMOZ as I would suspect if when looking over my site, they also ran across this other link. Now I'm not saying for sure that my site has definitely been rejected or that I'm necessarily accusing anybody of anything. I'm just a little concerned, because I've put a lot of effort into my site and quite honestly I feel that it is a high quality site. I've even been given compliments on it by others who have linked to it saying it was a really "attractive" site.

Now my concern is that it is a "weblog" and therefore has a lot of "opinionated" type of posts. In the niche that my site is in, I would be concerned that an editor that maybe disagreed with the "opinions" on my site might refuse it just for those reasons, not necessarily for the quality of the site or the quality of the content on the site. I'm curious as to your thoughts on this and I'd be willing to PM you the site if you'd be willing to assess whether you think it's DMOZ quality or not.

Thanks!!

How does a DMOZ link actually help a site do that? .... its just a good link, nothing more. If a site is any good it will rank well without a DMOZ listing.