Asleep at the Wheel – The Demise of the Open Directory

Asleep at the Wheel – The demise of the Open Directory

DMOZ.org was created as a way of human editors to indexing the world wide web. Great idea, but a monumental task for computers… especially considering they employ a global community of volunteer editors!?!

So, where are all of these editors?

According to their ~~monthly report~~*, there was a growth of 0.36% in listings. Is the web only growing by this rate? I think not.

They also list some other great information regarding editors

- Currently active editor accounts:
7,407

- Number of editor accounts approved since the foundation of ODP:
73,737 *

- New editors:
528 #

- Reinstated editors:
118

- Accounts inactivated for a variety of reasons:
675

* only 10% of editors are around

# add this number to the number of reinstated editors and subtract the number of inactive editorial accounts (528 + 118 = 646 – 675 = -29 editors)

I will have to admit that I think that DMOZ is a worthwhile case, otherwise I would not have submitted to become an editor (so many times).

But, my concerns are simple:

1. There are many sites that have been added to the directory that might have been useful before, yet have become spammy websites and are not providing useful content or user experiences. They are no longer relevant and should be removed.

2. Useful, unique sites are being excluded.

3. Submissions are being ignored.

4. Editor applications to areas of the directory are being ignored.

5. Search engines over-value DMOZ listing (my opinion)

I present a question to anyone who disagrees:
“If the Open Directory added the “no follow“ attribute to every link inside, would it still be valuable?”

My answer is no.

If you answered yes, then I have a follow-up question:
“How many people actually use the open directory and are those users researchers or visitors that you want?”

Feel free to disagree!
I invite you to provide feedback!

* removed by DMOZ