Warmest Greetings,

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About DMOZ  

:: Friday, January 28, 2005 ::

and wished someone else would ask the questions for you.

You have to check out the intricate debate going on between DMOZ editors, its defenders, supporters, detractors and all curious web people.

In No sleep 'till DMOZ (- a sorry tale of abuse), a thread that started out with coverage of the backlash Peter DaVanzo received upon launching his own Directory, RubberStamped.org, an even more educational and enlightening debate has begun about the rise and falling apart of DMOZ.

DMOZ refused to list RubberStamped.org, which only added fuel to the "why do people start their own Directories" question. For Peter, the question is how might he build a directory that responds to submissions fairly and quickly? "Quickly" being the keyword here. And, he's not charging as much as some other popular Directories that are built and used for the purpose of increasing site links and, as some hope, their page rank.

Jean Manco, a long time DMOZ editor and calm supporter, wrote, "I'm sure that Rubberstamped has a value for webmasters right away. If it gets large enough to be useful to searchers , then there is no reason why it wouldn't be listed in the Open Directory."

Another editor wrote, "DMOZ adds ~2000 new sites a day. What other Directory comes remotely close to that?"

To which came the question from someone, "What is the point of adding 2,000 new sites a day when you need to be adding 5,000 just to have the absolute cream of the crop of what is created each day."

The thread takes a hearty look at DMOZ's history, and its original goal, which was to make a better directory than what Yahoo! was offering.

Are SEO's the only ones who even care about using DMOZ? Who really uses it to search anyway? These questions were asked in the thread.

Someone wondered, "My issue with this whole situation is adherance to a dogmatic approach. That Rubberstamped doesn't qualify under that specific category is not something I have any issue with. It is perfectly acceptable that Rubberstamped does not qualify under a bazillion categories. For a diretory with over 600,000 categories, it is unfathomable to me that it doesn't fit somewhere.

My solution is quite simple: rather than dogmatically defending a dumb position, why doesn't someone have the balls to just make a new category for all this SEo doirectory stuff?"

By page 8 of the thread, folks are glued to their monitors. One writes, "For a dead directory that no one cares about it certainly creates a lot of comments."

Everything from the ethics of DMOZ editors, to what they can and can't do, to who the target market is and isn't, is discussed in this thread. And the kicker is that, though it's about to go into page 11, making it one qualify as one of Cre8asiteForums historic discussions, everyone remains standing and still talking to each other.

User Personas

Another interesting discussion is Do You Use Personas When You Work on a Site?

Some snips:

"Usability principles are tools we have at our disposal and should be utilised accordingly to enable us to do our job. They should not, however, be brought up as evidence that others are not doing things correctly."

"Saying there is a "large and respected body" of knowledge and experience backing personas will come back to haunt you if anyone you say it to bothers to investigate the claims. There's no agreement on what personas are, how to make them, or what they're used for. More importantly, they appear to be just a gross simplifications of older techniques created out of ignorance of those older techniques."

"The problem is that usability (hci, ia, ux, etc) is at best a very immature discipline. Worse, it's being applied in settings dominated by vastly more mature disciplines (software engineering for instance). Some consultants like to pretend it's the opposite. A few of these consultants have been successful with their little charade. If they've fooled you as well, I'm sorry."

Why Didn't I Think of That?

Where the heck did I put my Buns of Steel video?

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 1/28/2005 02:19:53 PM

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