Well, this is what happens when it's 2:43 AM. When you're me, at least. You're sitting at the computer almost a week after graduating high school and you've got nothing to do. Sure, it's late, but why go to sleep? Why not start using this very simple, hardly usable
vBulletin-integrated blog hack just for the heck of it.
So you start surfing the net, reading some search engine optimization articles for your website and eventually navigate your way to
resource-zone.com, a community of DMOZ.org editors and webmasters. For those who don't know of DMOZ.org, it's a nonprofit human-edited directory of websites. Sounds neat, eh? Not really. Not when the world's most influential search engine,
Google, uses this directory as a criterion when ranking search results.
DMOZ.org is widely viewed a "failed" attempt to bring a human touch to the online world. Webmasters submit their website for review and editors ostensibly sort through submissions and publish those with worthwhile content.
The problem?
There aren't enough people for the people-managed directory. There are literally millions of sites out there and DMOZ is swamped with submissions. Sites sit in line for
literally years. Some categories don't have editors. Some do. Of course, there's no notification system and webmasters never know if they've been published, rejected, are still sitting somewhere in line or [even worse] are sitting somewhere in line of a category without an editor.
No, you can't contact staff. They don't respond. You can't resubmit your site. You'll get kicked from your spot and moved to the end, once again. So, the last resort is (or shall I say
was?) to slide on over to resource-zone.com and kindly ask the community of editors where you stand.
Back to my original frustration. I submitted GreenHybrid.com for publication in August 2004 and finally in the beginning of 2005 inquired about my status. "Still in line," they told me. "Come back in 6 months." Well, tonight I skip on over to Resource Zone (a virtual skip, of course) and find out that they've frozen all site status requests. No more. That's the end.
Wonderful, right? I'm doomed. You're doomed. We're all doomed. Just what I needed as I'm moving up the ranks in Google searches and am looking to dominate the "
hybrid cars" keyphrase search. Just what I needed.
So, that's the topic of today's little rant, my friends. Of course, you can't reply because this makeshift blog system doesn't have a comment system! But I'll always let you
send me an email because I'm just a nice guy like that. Thanks for letting me vent my frustration with you. It's been fun.
The First Post: My Problem with DMOZ.org
Gee, no fun...
