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Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Allowing multiple DMOZ editors per category

Dmoz is facing two problems:

1) Accusations are flying fast and furious (do a search for "corrupt dmoz editors") about how corrupt SEO practitioners who are able to monopolize editorialship of commercial categories, are selling Dmoz listings and worse, deliberately failing to include or even removing(!) sites being SEO-ed by their rivals.

2) There is a general perception that it just takes too long to get sites listed. Whether this is due to lack of manpower or due to nastiness by corrupt editors is secondary to the fact that the worth of Dmoz itself is lessened if it is unable to include sites in a timely manner.


There is a simple solution here that should benefit everyone involved (with the exception of corrupt editors). The solution is to allow multiple editors per category. This way there would be more manpower to handle submissions for a particular category and the power of a single corrupt editor is greatly minimized.

A new site listing needs only one editor for it to be listed, but to _remove_ a site listing would need the approval of more than 50% of editors for a particular category. SEO practitioners would still be encouraged to gain dmoz editorialship (adding manpower to the dmoz effort - a positive thing), but would be greatly neutralized in using this position for nefarious purposes. With more manpower allocated per category, it should also become feasible again to revive the practice of giving explanations for why a site is not listed.

Other possible anti-Dmoz corruption tactics would be to reinstitute means to identify and contact the editors for a particular category. Perhaps some public statistics revealing how much work an editor is actually doing (e.g. sites reviewed:listed ratio) would encourage them to be more honest (or hardworking). If there is a cap on the number of editors for a possible category, then perhaps editors who do not perform up to par can be booted out in favor of newer ones.

4 Comments:

  • Dmoz has always allowed multiple editors per category, but it doesn't happen very often except for large categories (consider that there are about 8000 editors and almost 700'000 categories!). As for requiring multiple "votes" to remove sites, it would make the system too bureaucratic IMO. However, I'd agree that more transparency regarding editor activities could be helpful.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at February 04, 2006  

  • The Dmoz Editor's corruption is without limits. I sometimes think that the whole Dmoz directory is beyond repair. Its a great web directory and was built on a great concept of volunteerism. Yet right now more people hate it than those who love it. I hear of people's websites being removed for no reason, sites added that don't belong to the category, kick-backs, bribes, editors trying to sell their account on eBay... just to name a few. AOL/Netscape need to implement a drastic measure to take care of the corruption and the egotistical editors as a first step. Then they need to get with the times and put in place some better programs/scripts that will take care of the spam and make the wait time reasonable.
    I started a website (DmozSucks.org) to deal with Dmoz and its problems.

    By Blogger DmozSucks, at March 09, 2006  

  • There are always multiple editors per category. Listed editors in higher categories can edit below them, and there are over 100 editors with directory-wide permissions. Plus, Dmoz allows for more than one listed editor per category, too. Just keep in mind that reviewing suggestions is not editor's number one priority. Editors can find sites any where they want, and it doesn't have to be in the suggested pool.

    No one editor can keep your site from being listed simply because many different editors can come along list it. Also, don't believe every thing you read on SEO forums because it's not based on truth, but rather myth. I challenge anyone who suspects editor abuse to take the time to fill out an abuse report - http://www.report-abuse.dmoz.org . But, instead they'd rather complain about about their assumptions rather than take action. Plus, most claims of editor abuse are found to be false anyway.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at July 04, 2006  

  • Check out this post!.....
    http://www.biznezsearch.com/editorials/

    This web directory who themselves have been waiting "4 YEARS" to be listed on dmoz is sticking their neck right out! calling for Google and others to disregard the ODP. There's a few interesting comments on this blog. We need more of this cause' the ODP is CRAP!!!!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at November 05, 2006  

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