DMOZ in 2005
(a.k.a. The Open Directory Project or ODP)
Phil Craven | 2005
The original concept of DMOZ was excellent for its time. The
DMOZ site's "About" page makes these statements about
the concept, and about the reasons for the directory's creation:-
"Automated search engines are increasingly unable to
turn up useful results to search queries. The small paid editorial
staffs at commercial directory sites can't keep up with submissions,
and the quality and comprehensiveness of their directories has
suffered. Link rot is setting in and they can't keep pace with
the growth of the Internet."
"The Open Directory follows in the footsteps of some
of the most important editor/contributor projects of the 20th
century. Just as the Oxford English Dictionary became the definitive
word on words through the efforts of volunteers, the Open Directory
follows in its footsteps to become the definitive catalog of
the Web."
But things have changed a lot since DMOZ began in the mid
1990s. Since then, Google came along with very relevant search
results, and they were kind enough to show the other engines
how to produce such relevant results. That caused dramatic improvements,
to the extent that top search engines have been able to provide
very relevant search results for some time, and they provide
a lot more of them than DMOZ is able to do.
The small paid editorial staffs at commercial directory sites
still can't keep up with submissions, but their backlogs are
small when compared with DMOZ's massive backlog. According to
reports, there are over a million site submissions that are waiting
to be reviewed, and delays of several years between submitting
a site and it being reviewed are not uncommon. The backlog problem
is so huge that many editors have redefined the problem so that
it no longer exists. To them there is no backlog, because the
submitted sites are not there to be reviewed. They are merely
a low priority pool of sites that they can dip into if they want
to, and some of them prefer to find sites on their own.
Link rot (dead links) has become widespread in DMOZ through
the years, and they certainly can't "keep pace with the
growth of the Web". There isn't a single reason for the
creation of DMOZ that DMOZ itself doesn't now suffer from.
So how come such an excellent original concept ended up with
a directory that has the same problems that it sought to solve,
and on a much larger scale?
One reason is that the Web has grown at a much faster pace
than was perhaps anticipated, and the DMOZ editors simply can't
keep up. Another reason is that there are simply not enough editors
who are adding sites to the directory. At the time of writing,
the DMOZ front page boasts 69,412 editors, but that is the number
of editors that they've had since the beginning, and most of
them are no longer there. A recent report stated that there are
currently about 10,000 editors who are able to edit, and that
only around 3,000 of those are active in building the directory.
The word "active" is used to describe editors who actually
edit quite often, but as little as one edit every few months
is acceptable. The word doesn't mean "busy", although
some of them are.
With so few people doing anything, it isn't even possible
for them to keep up with the link rot in such a huge directory,
and there's the ever increasing problem of listings that link
to topics other than what they were listed for. It simply isn't
possible for them to maintain the directory as they would like.
The idea of becoming "the definitive catalog of the Web"
was a fine one, but it turned out to be an impossible dream.
The purpose of DMOZ is dead. Today's search engines produce excellent
results in large quantities, and much more quickly than drilling
down into a directory to find something.
So is there any value at all in the DMOZ directory? As a useful
catalog of the Web, and when compared with the major search engines,
the answer is no, although a few people do find it to be a useful
research resource. For website owners, the links to their websites
that a listing in DMOZ creates are useful for search engine ranking
purposes, but even those are becoming less useful as search engines
improve, and seek to block out unwanted duplicate content from
their indexes.
It was a fine concept, and it looked promising for a while,
but the idea of DMOZ becoming the definitive catalog of the Web
is gone. Improvements in the search engines eclipsed its value,
and the growth rate of the Web meant that it could never achieve
its goal. It began with an excellent concept, and they gave it
a good shot, but it didn't work. The continuing growth rate of
the Web ensures that it can never work. It continues as a good
directory of a large number of web sites, but that is all. And
not many people use directories when the search engines produce
such good results, and so quickly.
url where this article came from - http://www.webworkshop.net/dmoz-2005.html
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