Here you can find answers to questions about how the board works. Use the links or search box below to find your way around.
Because we decided to discontinue that service as of May 21, 2005.
There were a number of factors involved in making this decision, but probably the biggest was that these requests were always beyond the mission of this forum. The original mandate of this forum was to put a better light on the ODP by allowing the public to interact directly with the editors. At some point the submission status requests seem to have taken over and almost become the focus.
Our feedback indicates that the information we are giving out really is not a practical help in the vast majority of cases. People want information we either simply do not have or cannot for confidentiality reasons give out. Therefore, despite our communications, the existence of the status check forum raises unrealistic expectations, leading to more frustration but no satisfaction, for anyone.
We also found that a large number of people have regularly ignored the "rationing" policies set up, and this problem is getting worse. Much of the editors' time here is simply spent playing monitor, and that isn't productive for the editor whose basic mandate is really to be building a better ODP, not monitoring threads on Resource-Zone.
Participation on this forum is a volunteer activity beyond being an editor on the ODP, so the number of editors who participate here often fluctuates. Unfortunately, this means that when there are fewer editors who are active here they naturally feel obliged to do even more work than we should expect of volunteers who ought to be spending their time editing anyway.
We welcome questions about how the ODP works, suggestions for improvement or correction, quality control reports (dead links, hijacks, reports of bugs, etc.), queries and questions about becoming an editor, and questions about how to use the ODP data...pretty much anything ODP-related except asking about the status of your site suggestion, public posting of details of suspected abuse (please use the public reporting system for that), discussion of internal editing issues or confidential ODP information, discussions of how to SEO your site or circumvent/violate ODP policies, and complaints about being removed as an editor (please contact staff@dmoz.org if you wish to appeal the removal of your editing account) or rants/complaints about the ODP, its editors (either specific editors or in general) or how the whole system functions. See our posting guidelines for more information about what can and can't be posted here.
NOTE: While we do provide a Members Lounge for members to post about non-ODP topics, this forum exists primarily for the discussion of ODP-related topics and excessive off-topic threads/posts may be either closed or deleted at the discretion of the forum moderators and administrators. Members coming here strictly to chat about non-ODP topics should probably find another forum to join.
RE: Suggestions for improvement/change:
Please note that many of the more common suggestions for improvement that people make have already been discussed to death on this and other forums. Please do a search of this forum first to make sure that the suggestion you want to make hasn't already been made before. Some of the suggestions that have already been more than adequately discussed are having the ODP offer paid listings, paying editors or reducing the quality requirements for potential new editors in an effort to decrease review times, making the unreviewed pools or edit logs public, and providing an automated tool for site owners to check up on their site suggestions.
