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[jrivett]

First of all, thanks for all your responses, which have generally been measured and (very) patient. I think that my critical misunderstanding of DMOZ stems from my failure to fully realize that DMOZ is not - and probably never will be - run as a business. There is no apparent 'need' to compete with other similar services, including Google. Editors participate because they enjoy it, not because they want DMOZ to become the most important directory on the web.

 

I've seen a lot of useful services fade away on the web, and in my own selfish way I felt like I could help to keep that from happening to DMOZ, especially because its problems (as perceived by me, of course) seemed so easy to fix.

 

It seems to me that the additional attention DMOZ received from Google, when it was rating DMOZ links highly, as well as its adoption of DMOZ as the starting point for its own directory, led to most of the confusion about DMOZ. Certainly it directly led to my own misunderstanding of DMOZ' purpose. For instance, many web development and SEO sites still recommend submitting new sites to DMOZ as a way to improve SEO scores.

 

I will do what I can to help the rest of the web understand this.

 

Thanks again.