There are plenty who are quick to insult DMOZ and the people who work to make it work. I won’t go into that here, it will acheive nothing.
However, over at DigitalPoint a member (wrmineo) started a DMOZ Scavenger Hunt to find categories that had not been edited in years.
He started with Top: Regional: North America: United States: Kentucky: Localities: V: Varney which hadn’t been edited since Thursday, June 22, 2000. I have no idea what type of a place Varney is – could it really be that no locals have started a decent website in the last 5 years?
Others have flowed through with a keen DMOZ editor coming in and checking the categories to see if they really deserve their unedited status or not.
It lead to some great updates with Dunedin Primary Schools getting reworked and some SEO gains as the directory now has some great inbound links – albeit to the quieter directories.
It’s fascinating as you cruise through the directory to see the huge variety of categories which have been created and the number of sites listed within them. In hunting down the old categories I was amazed how fresh the vast majority were – even when I considered the subject matter to be dull, very specific, or obsolete. Ofcourse, the edits may have been culling the “reds” but it does show that there is alot of activity, constantly, in the directory – despite the fact that sites may take time to be approved.
The comic tragedy has to be that the categories I’m stalking, as I wait for sites to be approved, have all been edited this year 🙁
It’s a bit unfortunate that DMOZ has grown to the point where some areas become untouched for some 5 years; having said that, we should always give honor to whom honor is due. For the work done so far, none of the volunteers haves been paid and neither has DMOZ tried to profiteer with its database like the Google stalwarts- not that there is anything wrong from making money, it’s just that I feel people are not grateful enough for the DMOZ project. Such work sped the Internet age to what it is today. Cheerios!
Forgot to mention, a “thank you” note to (wrmineo) who started a DMOZ Scavenger Hunt (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=42170). It was quite thoughtful. And thanks to Sarahk 🙂 for highlighting it; I guess it should get more people volunteering now. Of course, I have been turned down before and so have my colleagues at our firm, but it shows there is still a need for more hands.
And see how the points tally up!
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