Is the DMOZ Open Directory Project a joke?
Have you ever tried to register your website or blog with the DMOZ Open Directory Project? Registration is free and conventional wisdom suggests that you should register your site with them. All I can say about this is good luck!
If you go to the “About” page of the dmoz.org website, you will see the following:
“The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.”
My thoughts on the above statement… bull… is there really anyone working there?… what does it take to get one of your vast numbers of volunteer editors to take a look at my website?
Three years ago I submitted my website to DMOZ so that I could get listed in their free directory… and I still haven’t got a response from them… not even a courtesy email acknowledging receipt of my request to be added to their directory.
I don’t know about you, but the DMOZ Open Directory Project seems kind of elitist to me!
Kind of off topic, but I registered with the Technorati Blog Directory a couple of months ago. Within 24 hours of registering I got an email from them saying that they had received my registration request. To make sure that I was the actual blog owner, they gave me a “blog claim token number”… asking that I make a new blog post and include the claim token number in the post. I made the new blog post and told Technorati I had done so. Then Technorati crawled my new blog post, verified that it was authentic and told me that they would consider my site for inclusion in their directory. I recently got an email from Technorati advising that I had been added to their directory.
What a night and day experience in dealing with DMOZ and Technorati.
Technorati was responsive to my registration request… keeping me abreast of what was going on during the registration process. On the other hand, DMOZ has never responded to my request. Question… is there anybody out there in DMOZ land?
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You seem to have missed the big difference between DMOZ and other directories like Technorati. Those other directories provide a service to list websites. DMOZ does not offer such a service.
> Have you ever tried to register your website or blog with the DMOZ
This is impossible. You can not register a webiste with DMOZ. You can only suggest a website for the editors to look at. The editors can decide to list it. Or not ofcourse. Most suggested websites are not good enough to be listed. For that reason editors use other resources to find websites, we have noticed that those resources provide better quality than the pool of suggested websites.
> and I still haven’t got a response from them
You got a response at the same time you suggested the website. It was online on your screen. No other response will be given. Not when a site is listed and not when it is rejected.
> Question… is there anybody out there in DMOZ land?
If you would have bothered to do some research about DMOZ to find the facts you would know that the answer is yes.
see http://blog.dmoz.org/2010/01/27/dmoz-2009-year-in-review/ for last year activities
John… I don’t really see any philosophical difference between DMOZ and other directories like Technorati. Long story short… website owners are asking that their sites be listed in the DMOZ directory. That’s it… plain and simple.
We can quibble over the semantics of “registering a site” as opposed to “submitting a site”… however, the concept is the same… website owners are asking that their sites be listed in the DMOZ directory.
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In my blog post I stated that the DMOZ Open Directory Project seemed kind of elitist to me… and you offered the following response:
“The DMOZ editors can decide to list a site or not list it. Most suggested websites are not good enough to be listed. For that reason DMOZ editors use other resources to find websites, we have noticed that those resources provide better quality than the pool of suggested websites.”
Thanks for confirming my thoughts of the DMOZ Open Directory Project being elitist!!… and thanks for confirming that it is probably a waste of time to submit a website for inclusion in the DMOZ directory.
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In my blog post I stated that I had not received any kind of response from DMOZ regarding my site submission of three years ago… and you offered the following response:
“You got a response at the same time you suggested the website. It was online on your screen. No other response will be given. Not when a site is listed and not when it is rejected.”
Uh… thanks for nothing… kind of like having your arm x-rayed and being thanked for coming in to have the x-ray… and then never getting the x-ray results.
How tough would it be to notify a website owner that their site has been reviewed and is simply not good enough to be included in the DMOZ directory… or if by chance a miracle happened to occur, notify them that their site has been accepted and included in the directory.
Quite frankly, not receiving a response from DMOZ is very rude!
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In my blog post I questioned whether or not there was really anyone out there in DMOZ land… and you offered the following response:
“If you would have bothered to do some research about DMOZ to find the facts you would know that the answer is yes.
See http://blog.dmoz.org/2010/01/27/dmoz-2009-year-in-review/ for last year activities.”
Thanks for the link to the “DMOZ 2009 Year in Review”… I did visit the link… and read that DMOZ added 2500 new editors in 2009 and now have more than 7000 editors… who made nearly 2 million editing actions… adding or updating more than 700,000 URLs… and created more than 26,000 new categories.
I also noticed that several responses to the link were confused about the website submission process and why they had not received a response from DMOZ. Don’t you think that there is a lot of room for improvement with the submission process?… especially in keeping website owners aware of whether their site is being reviewed… and if it has been accepted or rejected… and I know this is kind of a stretch, but providing a brief explanation of why a site is being rejected would be both courteous and helpful.
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To summarize… I stand by my criticism of DMOZ for their elitist attitude and lack of interest in keeping website owners up-to-date on their site submissions.