RIP DMOZ: The Open Directory Project Is Closing

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.

>> 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.

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 Basically, most of the site's categories are just woefully outdated, with the sites found in them not being much better.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.

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.

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