Let's take a hard look at ODP.

Question: Is there a smarter way of categorising the web making DMOZ obsolete?

ODP. What a great and smart initiative with the support of Netscape.
But as is the case with every aspect of life, when something becomes too big it becomes part and a full representation of life which is determined by fraud, politics and control.
Unfortunately DMOZ is now being managed by a largely uncontrollable group of meta's, who have a hard time taking criticism, and many of whom spend more time discussing how to keep the sliding system going rather than editing cats and finding friends to edit subs. Not really so surprising when 36.000 editors spend a huge amount of their own time (and their bosses time) on something that started as a hobby but is rapidly becoming a true burden.
Long discussions in the hundreds of editor forums are proof of just that.
The no doubt risk of letting people in with dubious intentions is only part of the problem.
Many cats nowadays also have so many faulty url's.
The above represents my personal experience having watched quite a few cats and also having been an editor, until I decided to drop out due to time wasting discussions on improvements.
I am quite certain that there are a large number of great editors out there who take their jobs very seriously.
I am equally certain that there is no point of becoming an editor just to massage the cat you have a particular interest in. On the contrary, having a professional interest (your own or associated website) and being an editor, it's better to add all your competitors and just become a better SEO in the process.

One of my sites has changed a few months ago. I have requested change of detail (and even asked the editor concerned by direct e-mail) to change the url but this far I have had no response at all. I have given up and work the current listing to my advantage instead.
For some cats it does actually help to approach the editor directly if there is no initial response to the website url forms. When you are in a cat without a specialist editor, you're often (not always) in the hands of a meta too busy with other things and not willing or able to delegate responsibility. When you are in a cat with a dubious editor you have another problem.

The backlog with ODP is huge. At least it was when I was an editor until early last summer. Last year I made suggestions to deal with that in a number of regional cats and try and help out . The then resulting and often time wasting discussions almost became red tape. That just wasn't for me.

In some regional cats, the set up is rather strange and not in line with the English Top down system. As a result, one finds many url's in cats that are obsolete, too slim or unwisely chosen.

Somehow I hope action is taken to try and re-organize DMOZ before its too late.

Although DMOZ is supposed to be non-hierarchic, there is a human tendency for it to become one of hierarchy. It does not work however. Often small cat enthusiastic editors are being told off by meta's (some are official translators by profession) with more eye for text detail than supporting the real purpose of getting a true measurement of who's who on the web.

I cannot but conclude that, although ODP was a great initiative, it has already outgrown itself. I would not be surprised if People like Google will come up with their own cat system in due course (partly) based on the knowledge and detail obtained from DMOZ, making the same obsolete.

I put forward my editorial capabilities some years back when they were "urgently looking for editors in regional places" - seeing we were English in France - fluent in french and hosting some 5 sites encompassing 2500 odd pages we thought that I could assist at the same time perhaps assisting our positions - a little quid pro quo

The response was no thanks I was not suitably knowlegeable!

Arrogance or what!!

Told them to go stick their american heads up certain fundamentals as they certainly had no idea how this area of the world was/is!

Which got me banned I think


Anyway witness today - France is still like it is - which I hate - but without knowledge you make unwise decisions and you lose which is where dmoz is - a waste of time

I've been waiting for someone more knowledgable to defend ODP, but it's not happening. I'm not real smart about this stuff, but I do qualify as "someone."

ODP is free. It's dependant on volunteers. Even with it's flaws, it's still highly successful. ODP catagorizes the ODP directory, not the web. If so many others choose to use those same catagories, it's still a choice.

Even the fact that we have this type of conversation proves that it's worthwhile. You could choose to ignore ODP and stop submitting to the directory, but that's not going to happen, is it?

As far as I know, the use of ODP is a choice, not a requirement. If someone wants to replace ODP, they better get to work on it, because until there's something better ODP will be around.

Anne

This type of discussions remind me something I learnt way back in the early ‘90s, when there were no SEs and Directories to play with, and I was working as a marketing consultant. Much less nights spent on the computer and much more hanging around in trendy places until late – how I miss those days.

I was used to visit quite often a good friend of mine, who was the owner of a well-known disco club, and spend hours chatting with him in the privé near the main entrance. Music was great (early Mediterranean progressive and tri-pop), the bar was serving some 90 different cocktails and the gogodancers were darn pretty. Needless to say, the place was always full of people, and there was always a huge queue waiting outside, too. Strict door selection criteria and several security guys helped in keeping a top quality overall atmosphere, but a lot of people was bounced back at the door every evening, and as a result you could hear everywhere any possible kind of complaints: people were talking around about how bad was that place where you have to wait for hours outside only to be bounced back because you were not considered “trendy enough” to be let in, how rude the bouncers were, how bad that people who were friends of “the right people” could skip the queue… and after all who wants to spend the evening in such a place where the music isn’t that good, the bar isn’t serving you quality drinks, girls aren’t that pretty, and they’ll sure lose clients and go broken in a matter of weeks – better go elsewhere.

I asked my friend whether he thought that all this complaining around about his place would actually give a bad image of the disco and cause him to lose clients in the long run, and he relied:
-- Look, no matter how much they complain, they always come back, and the more vocal ones today are the ones who will try tomorrow to be first in the queue, maybe trying to slip something in the hand of the door selection guys to be let in. I really don’t care much about what they say about the place: I focuse on selecting the best Djs, professional crew, quality products, and keeping strict selection criteria. Until I do that, you’ll always see the queue outside and the place full of people.

Some 12 years later, the music has changed, crew has changed, door selection is still the same, there’s always people saying that the place isn’t worth a tenth of the ticket value, and there’s always a huge queue outside.

Same things looks like is happening for the ODP: hundreds of people complaining about how useless/corrupted/outdated/mismanaged/outgrown/flawed/etc. the directory is, but there’s thousands of people submitting sites every day and more and more downstream SEs and Dirs using ODP data through the RDF dump or fetching it via scripts. It’s some 2 years that self-appointed “authorities” predict the fall of the ODP era, for different reasons ranging from rampant corruption to unrevieweds backlog, from lack of professionality to better alternatives soon available, but ODP is still there. We even had attempts to come up with something so much better that "In three months, our database will make ODP look like some kid with a 486 in a basement" – quoting here, make a search in Google for this sentence and you’ll find the origin ;-) , then look at the date of that article – whose actual success everybody can easily verify.

I’m not saying, of course, that some constructive criticism doesn’t contain seeds of possible good ideas, and might lead to actual improvements, so keep tem coming. We will be pleased to evaluate them and discuss them internally. Some ideas will be considered for the improvements schedule (which is currently quite long), some will be discarded as non feasible or not useful for the ODP mission, while non-constructive criticism (mostly coming from uninformed, or disgruntled webmasters) will continue to fill pages and pages that will make us smiling by another couple years.

Fact is, ODP will continue to target the *final user* (the surfer), and whereas not *perfect* (what’s perfect in this world?) will continue to grow as the most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web.

This implies that the chance of any good ideas coming from others than insiders are very slim. Isn't that just Foxyweb's point?
The Disco and DMOZ, although very nice little story, is comparing apples with pears.
Further, there is only one reason to be in ODP and that is to be better found on the web. Hence DMOZ has a self created responsibility to the community.
It needs lateral thinkers to deal with the complexity of the sliding quality (slower response time being of prime concern) of the system.
We can agree on at least that, can't we? I mean the slower response time?

A weeny bit more self criticism on the part of DMOZ perhaps?
And maybe some real positive feedback (attack) from the inside track to the webcommunity, rather than always having to be on the defense?

Answer: Not yet.

But you're welcome to try.

Anne

Just a comment from an average joe-webmaster (ok, maybe i would be considered an average jane-webmaster, but i digress...). I understand your points and liked the little disco story, but for at least SOME of us, there's only one reason I would like to get my site into DMOZ and one reason only - to rank higher in Google. Now, I will never be able to get my site into DMOZ because I have affiliate links (yeah, well, I personally don't see why I should be penalized because I try to make a living, but whatever...) Anyhow, not everyone submits a link to DMOZ because they think it is a cool place to be. For some of us, it is merely a way to appease the Google gods. Just a thought...

And why does it appease to the Google Gods?

Because it sticks to what it is, a collection of interesting sites for each category.

That may very well be what Google thinks of ODP, and therefore may be the reason Google values it so highly. However, I was merely commenting on the fact that the long line waiting to get into the *club* may not have anything to do with the line wanting to be in the club for the club's sake, but rather to be in the club for Google's sake.

So you are saying you want the groom and not the mother in law.

Something like that!

At the end of the day everythings about popularity. With respect to our precious sites we do anything that will push them into the required position in the mighty G. If the ODP is a useful way of improving things then so be it. It may have lost its way a little due to the sheer scale of it but until there's a viable alternative then . . . .
(I'm still waitng to included tho . . . . )

>> the long line waiting to get into the club may not have anything to do with the line wanting to be in the club for the club's sake, but rather to be in the club for Google's sake.

I agree. Actually the long line waiting to get into the club, if asked why they were there would have given many different answers, only a few of which could have been that they were there for the club's sake. They were there:
- because it was just trendy to be there
- to meet their friends (knowing that sooner or later in the night everybody pops up there)
- hoping to get some and ending up somewhere with the catch (nearly 90% of them)

Is it that much different for being in ODP for Google's sake ?

Actually, no, there's not much difference in that. Still....if I owned a club, I'd want it to be popular because people actually enjoyed going there, rather than because of what benefits they might get from other clubs by being there. After all, what if Google suddenly decided they no longer cared about ODP? Could ODP still stand on its own? Maybe the answer to that is yes...I certainly don't want to assume it couldn't, because frankly I have no idea. But it's just a thought. And with that thought...I'll leave this topic alone, as I don't want this to become a bigger issue than I believe it really is. Ciao, and happy SEO'ing in all the search engines and directories.