
RIP DMOZ: The Open Directory Project Is Closing - adamcarson
http://searchengineland.com/rip-dmoz-open-directory-project-closing-270291
======
LordWinstanley
Good riddance! It was crap anyway. I must have submitted sites of mine half a
dozen times or more. None of them ever showed up in DMOZ's directory—even
though they made you do most of the work for them, by filling out submission
forms.

Contrast that with Google, who often have content of my sites returned in
search results, within days of it being published—without me having had to
lift a finger.

The idea of "human curation" is fine in principle but, as sites like DMOZ,
Wikipedia, StackOverflow, etc show, it very often ends up being monopolised by
a few self-important nobodies seeing it as a way to wield some authority in
life.

~~~
zem
the latest iteration of this idea seems to be the "awesome" lists on github
[[https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome)],
which are a bit more decentralised and crowd-sourced while still being human-
curated.

~~~
vic20forever
Exactly - the first time I looked at [https://github.com/bayandin/awesome-
awesomeness](https://github.com/bayandin/awesome-awesomeness) my immediate
thought was that we're recreating Yahoo, or maybe publishing a webpage with
all of your bookmarks is making a comeback.

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blakesterz
It's funny, right now there are two comments:

>> What’s sad here is that we’re now in an era where AI and other computers
are now categorizing and approving websites.

and

>> Good riddance! It was crap anyway.

I kind of agree with both of them. It does make me sad to see DMOZ go, but at
the same time, maybe, just maybe it's ok to admit algorithms do a better job
of this stuff. As a librarian, I _want_ to think we humans are better at
categorizing and cataloging everything.

~~~
bhartzer
Apparently search engines, like Google, think that computers do a better job
than humans. I still like the human element, even though it may not be as
efficient.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Search engines are a specific type of tool where algorithms just make more
sense. Between the amount of data that needs to be processed, and the
relatively low impact of being incorrect. There are a lot of places Google
wants to apply algorithms (like customer service, censorship products, and
driving cars) where I do not believe it's warranted to replace humans with
software.

------
bhartzer
What’s sad here is that we’re now in an era where AI and other computers are
now categorizing and approving websites. It’s no longer a volunteer-editor
driven web world. Now, only a search engine algorithm decides whether or not a
site is trusted. It used to be that a human approved a site, and a search
engine trusted that human's opinion. No longer.

~~~
Viper007Bond
Personally I think it's a good thing. No opinions involved and everyone is
treated equally.

------
CM30
Honestly, I'm surprised it took so long to get to this point. The directory
has been declining in usefulness for the last decade or so to be honest.

And that's all because they can't seem to attract enough editors to keep it
relevant. I mean, look at the games listing there, then drill down to
consoles. Notice anything off?

Yeah, all the subcategories are from circa 2006. That area of the site is so
poorly maintained that they don't even list categories for the 3DS, Vita, Wii
U, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 or Nintendo Switch.

And that's the case with a lot of categories now. The TV section doesn't seem
to have an easy to find category for Game of Thrones or the Walking Dead. The
US presidents one doesn't have a category for Donald Trump (though it still
has one for him as a candidate elsewhere). Basically, most of the site's
categories are just woefully outdated, with the sites found in them not being
much better.

The DMOZ has just been too infrequently updated and poorly maintained to
really be useful for people nowadays.

So yeah, not surprising they had to call it quits. A site which doesn't have
relevant information for most people just isn't worth keeping around.

------
SwellJoe
I gave up on DMOZ when I repeatedly tried to volunteer to manage categories
(that I happened to be a reasonably recognizable expert on), because they
weren't being actively maintained, and it took months to get replies, if ever
a reply arrived, at all.

That was many years ago, when it still had some relevancy to search engines.
But, even then, it was a zombie. There were some outposts of activity, but it
just wasn't a priority after all those acquisitions, and nobody felt enough
ownership to maintain it. I don't know anything about the insider decisions or
how it was managed or whatever, I just know that when I was enthusiastic about
helping, I was ignored. I'd pretty much forgotten all about it and assumed it
died years ago.

I like the idea, and I wish there were a good public data set like it. But, I
guess since no one figured out how to make money with it, no one cared to make
it work.

------
sebst
For those who still see value in a curated directory, please help me combine
efforts of people willing to contribute to a DMOZ revival by filling out this
form:
[https://goo.gl/forms/0cFa3bXLGoo12M6l2](https://goo.gl/forms/0cFa3bXLGoo12M6l2)

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boyter
Such a pity. I have always used DMOZ as a source for seeding any search engine
I am playing around with as you get a good breadth of sites to start crawling.

Half tempted to create an open clone to keep it going. Any suggestions for a
name would be appreciated.

EDIT - Ordered freemoz.org and will attempt to get somthing going ASAP

~~~
greglindahl
The blekko slashtag dataset is a lot better, just sayin:
[https://github.com/blekko/slashtag-data](https://github.com/blekko/slashtag-
data)

(the founders of dmoz were the founders of blekko)

~~~
boyter
Looks like a good data source to seed with.

------
bhartzer
On March 13, 2017 DMOZ should just approve all submissions. Especially those
that have been waiting 7+ years to get their site approved.

~~~
duskwuff
No, that's a terrible idea. The vast majority of unapproved suggestions are
likely to be crap (or just outright spam).

(And that's assuming that the site will stay up, in any form, after the
published "closure" date. For all we know, it may simply go away.)

~~~
bhartzer
I was trying to be snarky with that comment. Ha

