ODP Problems & The Google Directory

Has anyone heard of a time frame inside of which the ODP expect to get an update of their RDF dumps..

As you'll all know, it's been months since the last RDF dump and the ODP claim they have serious hardware failures and therefore simply cannot produce.

The Google directory has become seriously affected (in my opinion) by the lack of updates coming from the ODP (given that Google use their RDF dumps).

Am I just being a moan or do others feel that this situation is a little stupid??

>> Has anyone heard of a time frame

Nobody could have heard of a timeframe, since even ODP Staff -- who are working on it -- can't say exactly when it will be fixed.

>>the ODP claim they have serious hardware failures

It's not the hardware/servers that are causing the problem - it's the software that compiles the RDF dump. You can watch http://dmoz.org/rdf/tags.html to know what's going on and when the RDF generation will be succesful. This file has been updated on Dec 9th, but it still says 'RDFs *not* pushed', since as you can see there are still duplicate catids in the results. The current run is not yet completed.

Does this explain why it's been nearly impossible to get added into DMOZ?
I have a number of sites that that should by all fairness and content be in DMOZ yet can get them added for months and months now.
Thanks in advance!
john

No John.

You're not showing up in the directory because the editors are either lazy or overworked.

Look at the bottom of the category and see if there is even an editor for the particular category you are trying to get listed in. If not. That explains it. If there is an editor, you can try emailing him/her and kissing their butt.

If there is not an editor for your category, apply for it. Then you can do all the work yourself.

but it's not always that simple, sometimes there is an editor for those pages f the directory, but none is listed, i've tried to get into it but with no luck, perhaps the one editor that we do have on the board here can put in a good word for me?

I had a past editor tell me that once a site has been reviewed and not added to the ODP that it gets flagged and will never get added - anyone know of any truth to this?

Some editors may flag your site, but it is not a rule at all.

Most editors will evaluate your site based on your current site and not some bad experience in their memory.

This is not true. Only doorway pages, mirror sites, severe spammers etc. are flagged. When a site is resubmitted it should be re-reviewed to see if any problems have been corrected.

Also, many categories are in need of editors. Please remember that we are all voluteers at DMOZ, and we get *many* submissions every day.

Jennifer
DMOZ editor
jennym

And truth be told you guys do an excellent job.
I for one as an SEO think that the ODP if full of great material, and that just goes to show that a great % of the editors over there at the ODP are honest and know what they are doing..

The only reason I moan a little on this subject is that the techies over there seem to be having trouble producing a dump, which is fine if its a 10 / 20/ even 30 day delay, but it's been months at this stage

Although my question about a definite timeline in regards to the RDF dumps has been answered above i.e. there isn't one, is there any sense of feeling as to when one can be expected? Anything mentioned on the internal forums of the ODP..

By the way, Kudos to the Editors that further extend their time to run the rather cool Resource Zone. If you've not seen this site, they will inform you of your site submission status i.e. if it has been accepted or rejected!! - If you're awaiting a submission to come through, go ask those guys!! They've been of help to me before!!

Just for the record, I am not allowed to discuss anything that is discussed in the internal forums. I will on this occasion tell you that I have seen no deceptions in the answers given to the "public" side. Ettore said it very well. It is being worked on (diligently) by a very hard working, dedicated staff. We all hope this will be fixed soon.

I also don't think most people realize the *time* it takes to be an editor. I thought it would be pretty easy myself. And, it is not to difficult (thanks to many great experienced editors willing to give time and advice), but it is quite time consuming if your goal is to do a good job. We could always use some help, so maybe people should consider applying to help.

Just to clarify (and restate what Jennyfer already said). the ODP RDF dump generation has nothing to do with:
a) site acceptance timeframe - sites are reviewed and added no matter when/how/if the RDF generation is successful; OTOH, the acceptance timeframe depends on the number of unreviewed sites waiting in each category. Once reviewed and added, the sites immediately show up in the public page category. This also means they do get crawled by spiders and do show up in the pages of sites displaying dmoz categories with a fetching script, thus adding up to the LP of the listed sites. Rejected sites are not flagged if the site is not rejected for being a doorway/mirror/severe spammer/etc.
b) editor acceptance - everybody is welcome to apply for editorship. Meta editors do review all applications, but please notice that whereas we *strongly* need editors, we need *good* ones, thus we are very strict in our selection criteria. Be sure to chose a category down the path, with not many listed sites, carefully read the guidelines and suggest 3 good sites with guidelines-compliant titles and descriptions, and be sure to fully disclose your affiliations in your application.

Back to the Dmoz vs Google relationship, I wouldn't mind that much about the RDF being so late: that little boost coming from inclusion in the Google Directory sure isn't something to throw away, but as I said Google does crawl the public category pages, following links to listed sites which benefit from the ODP listing in terms of PR, category theme/path relevancy, and LP.

I hate to bring this thread back to life... but in 12 days time it will have been 4 months since the last RDF dumps from ODP ..

That makes those sites relying on the ODP for data (including Google) even more out of date than a hell of a lot of old search engines that haven't been active in ages..

Nothing more to say really .. this just has to be end of the ODP.. hoe can those sites relying on their data trust them after this??

Does anyone think this might be deliberate?? I mean, everyone knows that the ODP can still update their own pages, but it's the RDF dumps that aren't going anywhere ... could this be a ploy in order for the ODP to pull some of the visitors from other ODP driven sites? Or is that just me getting paranoid??

4 months is just so long, I mean, even on a relatively low income after 4 months, a single person could probably afford to buy new software / hardware / whatever in order to fix this!! Never mind something thats back by the lazy old Netscape. Remember that April fools joke where is said the site changed ownership to Microsoft .. I'm starting to wish that was true!!

Not really on the same topic but does Google spider the editors' bookmarks?

Nope they don't... you can tell by looking at the ODP robots.txt file at http://dmoz.org/robots.txt - They have disallowed the editors pages from being crawled!!

>>could this be a ploy in order for the ODP to pull some of the visitors from other ODP driven sites?

I can assure you that with all the server load we already have, the less visitors we get on dmoz.org servers the better for us Also, all downstream users' sites builded up with fetching scripts display ODP data live (and suck up bandwidth and cpu load).

Being dmoz.org ads-free and with no revenue whatsoever, it would be quite stupid of us to pull more visitors from... anywhere. We look for editors, and we provide content (that is, we will provide it again to RDF dump data users as soon as the problems will be fixed), that's it. No hidden agendas and black elicopters flying around here...

<added>FYI, there's a new RDF generation running right now. You can start holding your breath... </added>