DMOZ Controversy and Criticism

Allegations of abusive editing practices

There have long been allegations that volunteer ODP editors give favorable treatment to their own websites while concomitantly thwarting the good faith efforts of their competition. Such allegations are fielded by ODP's staff and meta editors, who have the authority to take disciplinary action against volunteer editors who are suspected of engaging in abusive editing practices. In 2003, ODP introduced a new Public Abuse Report System that allows members of the general public to report and track allegations of abusive editor conduct using an online form. [12]

Early in the history of the ODP, its staff gave representatives of selected websites, such as Rolling Stone magazine, editing access at ODP in order to list many individual pages on those websites. The use of such professional content providers lapsed and the experiment has not been repeated.

Ownership and management of ODP

Underlying some controversy surrounding ODP is its ownership and management. Many of the original GnuHoo volunteers felt that they had been deceived into joining a commercial enterprise. Most of that controversy died down when the project was renamed NewHoo. Moreover, when Netscape acquired the project, renamed it ODP, and released ODP's content under an open content license, criticism of the ODP all but disappeared. However, as ODP's content became widely used by most major search engines and web directories, the issue of ODP's ownership and management resurfaced.

At ODP's inception, there was little thought given to the idea of how ODP should be managed, and there were no official forums, guidelines, or FAQs. In essence, ODP began as a free for all. Even after ODP set up its internal editor forums, many editors remained blissfully unaware that these forums existed until they were directed to the forums by one of their fellow editors. Moreover, given that ODP had no official guidelines at first, ODP editors simply hashed out some sort of consensus among themselves and published unofficial FAQs.

As time went on, the ODP Editor Forums became the de facto ODP parliament, and when one of ODP's staff members would post an opinion in the forums, it would be deferred to as an official ruling. (In other words, "Staff has spoken.") There was also a short-lived attempt at moderation of the ODP Editor Forums, but it was abandoned as being the antithesis of the egalitarian principles on which the ODP community was supposed to be based. Even so, ODP staff began to give trusted senior editors additional editing privileges, including the ability to approve new editor applications, which eventually led to a stratified hierarchy of duties and privileges among ODP editors, with ODP's paid staff having the final say regarding ODP's policies and procedures.

Allegations that ODP editors are removed for criticizing ODP's policies

ODP's paid staff has imposed controversial policies from time to time, and volunteer editors who dissent in ways staff considers uncivil may find their editing privileges removed. One alleged example of this was chronicled at the XODP Yahoo! eGroup in May of 2000. The earliest known exposé was Life After the Open Directory Project , a June 1, 2000 guest column written for Traffick.com by David F. Prenatt, Jr. (former ODP editor "netesq") after losing his ODP editing privileges.[13] Another noteworthy example was the volunteer editor known by the alias The Cunctator , who was banned from the ODP soon after submitting an article to Slashdot on October 24, 2000, which criticized changes in ODP's copyright policies.[14]

Uninhibited discussion of ODP's purported shortcomings has become more commonplace on mainstream Webmaster discussion forums.

Editor removal procedures

ODP's editor removal procedures are overseen by ODP's staff and meta editors. According to ODP's official editorial guidelines, editors are removed for abusive editing practices or uncivil behaviour. Discussions that may result in disciplinary action against volunteer editors take place in a private forum which can only be accessed by ODP's staff and meta editors, and volunteer editors who are being discussed are not given notice that such proceedings are taking place. Some people find this arrangement distasteful, wanting instead a discussion modeled more like a trial held in the U.S. judicial system.

In the article Editor Removal Explained , ODP meta editor Arlarson states that "a great deal of confusion about the removal of editors from ODP results from false or misleading statements by former editors". [15]

ODP has a standing policy that prohibits any current ODP editors in a position to know anything from discussing the reasons for specific editor removals. In the past, this has led to claims that many ODP editors are left to wonder why they cannot login at ODP to perform their editing work. However, ODP is now set up in such a way that when someone attempts to login at ODP using a deactivated editor login, a generic web page is displayed that informs a removed editor that a final decision has been made regarding the deactivation of his or her login and providing a list of possible reasons as to why such a decision might have been made.

Number of editors

As of December 23, 2005, the ODP front page stated 70,927 editors . However this is not the number of editors currently contributing to the ODP. It is the total number of editor logins ever created, which includes the many which are no longer active. ODP staff has occasionally promoted the ODP by mentioning the total number of editors, without revealing that it is not the number of currently active editors. This could be misleading. The number of active editors tends to range between 9,000 and 10,000.

Size of directory

The current front page totals exclude "Test" and "Bookmarks" categories (and sites in them). As of December 23, 2005, the RDF held 5,182,325 listings and over 590,000 categories.

Blacklisting allegations

Senior ODP editors have the ability to attach "warning" or "do not list" notes to individual domains, but no editor has the unilateral ability to block certain sites from being listed. Sites with these notes might still be listed, and at times notes are removed after some discussion.

Private Forums

ODP has its own internal forums, the contents of which are intended only for editors to communicate with each other primarily about editing topics.

References

1. CmdrTaco, The GnuHoo BooBoo, Slashdot (June 23, 1998).
2. Open Directory Project: Kids and Teens Directory.
3. Open Directory Project: Kids and Teens Directory Editing Guidelines.
4. Open Directory Project: RDF dump.
5. Open Directory Project: RDF Archive.
6. R. Steven Rainwater, ODP/dmoz Data Dump ToDo List.
7. Gigablast Launches 500,000 Vertical Search Engines (May 12, 2005).
8. Open Directory Project: Sites Using ODP Data.
9. Open Directory Project: ODP Senior Editors.
10. Open Directory Project: Editing Guidelines.
11. Dave Jansik, When Giant Directories Roamed the Earth, The Search Lounge (March 2, 2005).
12. Open Directory Project: Public Abuse Report System.
13. David F. Prenatt, Jr., Life After the Open Directory Project, Traffick.com (June 1, 2000).
14. CmdrTaco, Dmoz (aka AOL) Changing Guidelines In Sketchy Way, Slashdot (October 24, 2000).
15. Arlarson, Editor Removal Explained, Open Directory Project Newsletter (September 2000).

External links

• Open Directory Project Public Forum
• ODP Glossary
• Topix.net: ODP news
• The History of the Open Directory Project
• Dummies Guide to dmoz.org