Page 2 - The DMOZ Conundrum

Fathom, please pay attention as I repeat this information from my original post for possible penetration of your consciousness:

Fact One: DMOZ website says ""The web continues to grow at staggering rates. Automated search engines are increasingly unable to turn up useful results to search queries."

I believe this is just untrue, and contributes to the irrelevance of DMOZ. If you have facts to the contrary, provide them.

Fact Two: DMOZ website says""The Open Directory was founded in the spirit of the Open Source movement"

It MAY have been, but I've cited several examples of how it does not operate in an open fashion today. If you have facts to the contrary, provide them.

Fact Three: DMOZ website says""You Can Make a Difference - Like any community, you get what you give. The Open Directory provides the opportunity for everyone to contribute."

It does not provide an opportunity for everyone to contribute, unless you consider "suggesting a site" as contributing. As you and others have made clear, suggested sites do not have to be used by the editors (in other words, may be ignored completely). If you have facts to the contrary, provide them.

Evidently you do not have facts to refute my assessment, otherwise you would have provided them in your prior posts. Instead you simply throw mud and feign superiority.

As for not posting a complaint, yes, mine was not a complaint post. I don't complain. I surveyed the issues and offered my explanation of the source of friction in this forum, which is the conundrum of DMOZ.

You have facts that dmoz says what it is and does what is does... where are your facts to dispute that?

Dansk, thanks for your helpful input. Yes I get that it's volunteer and more work to do than can be done. That's why I think the model is broken. There are best practices from other open source endeavours that needed to be implemented long ago with DMOZ.

Fathom, I've made my case. Apparently, my friend, you've got nothing to offer. Good luck on getting into the Top 4.

Now there's a rumour that reads as conjecture... a real case of conundrums mascarading as an enigma... the only possible fact of this case is:

You have not come close to making your case. You completly misuderstand what DMOZ is about, especially your understanding of the Open Source movement (you have twisted that to suit your purposes). DMOZ and many editors have stated ad nauseum that the reference to "open source" has to do with it freely making its database available for other to use and nothing to do with "open" to all sites.

You claim DMOZ is irrelevant ....but you are making it relevant by starting this thread.
It may to you, but as fathom says that has nothing to do with your site getting a listing. If you have an e-commerce site and there are already other sites listed that are offering the same products, then why would DMOZ or any other directory want to add your site? What is the benefit to the DMOZ user of adding another site selling teh same thing? If your site has something that the already sites listed then expect to eventually get listed. DMOZ is the fastest growing directory on the www and no other directory comes remotly close. DMOZ is the largest directory on the www and no other directory comes remotly close. How is that a "broken model"? Thats an awesome achivement and the model must be right to achieve that size and its current growth rate.

The whole underlying theme of your responses is that you have some sort of expectation of a service from DMOZ (ie a listing). Where did you get that expectation from? (see my messages in the other thread about asking for a refund if you are unhappy with the service)
Why refute this? - its true....but just shows how much you do not understand DMOZ. You have chosen to make your arguments against your characterization of what ýou think DMOZ is. The role of a DMOZ editor is to build a category, NOT process submissions. To build a category they can use any source of sites they like. The submitted sites is just the worse source and editors are free to do what they like with that pool of sites.

If you want to criticise DMOZ, by all means do so, but you have no case when you choose to make DMOZ into something that its not, and go after that.

Cbp,

Sorry cbp but my comments are based on what DMOZ says about DMOZ.

The notion that search engines are "increasingly unable to turn up useful results to search queries" is ridiculous. You've got to bury your head very deep in the sand to buy into that one. That's given as the reason for DMOZ to exist, and if the reason to exist is flawed, you've got irrelevance.

"The Open Directory was founded in the spirit of the Open Source movement" . I understand that you're claiming that refers to making the information open, but that's not what it says. In fact, open source is about harnessing the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. I think the frustration expressed throughout the posts in this forum is the lack of transparency.

"You Can Make a Difference - Like any community, you get what you give. The Open Directory provides the opportunity for everyone to contribute." Sorry, not everyone, just the select few.

"You claim DMOZ is irrelevant ....but you are making it relevant by starting this thread." - yeah, I've personally made DMOZ irrelevant .... right.

"you have some sort of expectation of a service from DMOZ "
cbp, you've apparently become so used to responding to complaints about not getting into DMOZ that you don't recognize when the issue is something else.

"Transparency of Process" is like no matter what category a listing is generated in the process of listing it is the same... "transparent"; you can't tell the difference between one editor doing it; to another.

...it isn't the transparency of seeing privileges data or internal comments.

What amazes me though is that your beef seems to be with AOL. You don't like their chosen language (I guess) and in your eyes that means someone owes you something.

I'd say - you've chosen the wrong venue to gather support for your cause... again DigitalPoint is where you should go.

I think DMOZ is what WE (all) say it is, not necessarily what IT says it is.

Just like I say my car is great when I try to sell it, even tho my neighbour knows it's a PITA to start on a cold day, it rattles and the taillight is broken.

I don't believe ANY sales pitch, not even if it's marketing a free service

Sorry Fathom but you're defining "consistency", not "transparency." Transparency in an open source context means there is visibility into what happens and why. Given your interest in DMOZ I'm not surprised that you don't understand transparency.

Regarding AOL.... huh?

Oh... well you can download the complete "latest" version of DMOZ and include it is your domain... and totally transparent!



DMOZ is an AOL resource acquired with Netscape.

Sorry, no problem with AOL here. I doubt they rewrote the "About ODP" part of the website.

Any denied application (editor) gets an email with the reasons - usually very quickly. They're speeding things up.