Hurry Hurry Hurry!
Special Offer!!
Step right this way!!!
Actually, it's not really a "special" offer, and you don't have to hurry at all, because the Open Directory Project has always been completely free, since its inception more than 10 years ago.
Yeah, I was just tricking. My bad.
I attribute such silliness to idiot-fatigue, brought on by listening to endlessly repetitive and strident rants from webmasters who complain that ODP/DMOZ doesn't offer the personalised listing service for which other directories charge hundreds and thousands of dollars. Why on earth would those other directories even exist if the Open Directory offered the same listing services for nothing?
It doesn't make any sense at all.
But wait, there's more!
Many of these people are so incensed about DMOZ being free that they try to pay!!
Yes, incredible but true!!!
This has always struck me as quite breathtakingly dumb, for the irrefutable reason that over 4.5 million sites have already been listed in the Open Directory at absolutely no cost to their owners.
But this blindingly obvious fact doesn't stop idiots offering to pay someone to list their site(s), and various webmaster forums and freelance tendering sites have several entries every week from people who seem completely oblivious to the consequences. It is all rather depressingly foolish, because there are warnings all over the internet (even a recent post in this blog) about what happens when someone tries to buy a DMOZ listing.
Some people obviously prefer not to listen.
Astonishingly, it seems that even the risk of a permanent ban is no deterrent, when you'd think any reasonable person would try their hardest to avoid that. Fortunately, the volunteer editors at DMOZ are absolutely brilliant at finding and organising worthwhile sites, as I highlighted in my Blog Action Day post, so the banned sites of foolish people who break the rules are very unlikely to be missed by anyone.
2 comments:
Hi there,
Thanks for your volunteerism in helping with DMOZ. From what I can tell it performs a crucial function in cleaning up the internet and separating the wheat from the chaff... not that I really know what that means.
I submitted my site to Health>Medicine>Personal pages a while back and have not heard anything. They list you as the editor of that page. I was wondering if you received my submission, or should I redo it? I am old school like Grunt Doc, but rebuilding after a 2 year hiatus.
Thanks!
drcharles.examining gmail com
Thank you for your comment, and for suggesting a site that might be helpful when a volunteer feels like building the category. It's not just me, by the way - there are over 200 volunteers who can edit in that category, but there is no time frame involved, because reviewing sites suggested by other people is just one of many ways we can spend our editing time. Nevertheless, we appreciate your interest. :-)
You might also like to read a previous post which addresses your concern: http://makrhod.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-suggested-my-site-to-dmozodp-ages-ago.html
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