DMOZ Web Directory Past Present and Future

The DMOZ web directory was launched in 1998 by Rich Skrenta and Bob Dvorak. It was initially called the "Newly Discovered" directory.

DMOZ was acquired by Netscape in 1998 and later by O'Reilly in 2000. The directory was one of the first web directories to use a collaborative editing model.

The DMOZ directory was organized by volunteers, who would review and categorize websites. This process was called "editorial review".

DMOZ was one of the most popular web directories, with over 4 million websites listed at its peak.

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DMOZ was founded in the United States as GnuHoo by Rich Skrenta and Bob Truel in 1998 while they were both working as engineers for Sun Microsystems.

GnuHoo was initially based on the structure of Usenet newsgroups and went live on June 5, 1998.

The name was later changed to NewHoo due to objections from Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation.

NewHoo was then acquired by Netscape Communications Corporation in October 1998 and became the Open Directory Project.

The Open Directory Project had about 100,000 URLs indexed with contributions from about 4500 editors by the time Netscape assumed stewardship.

Netscape released Open Directory data under the Open Directory License.

By the time Netscape acquired AOL, the Open Directory Project had grown significantly, and DMOZ was one of the assets included in the acquisition.

On October 5, 1999, the number of URLs indexed by DMOZ reached one million.

The number of URLs in DMOZ continued to grow, reaching 1.6 million in April 2000, surpassing those in the Yahoo! Directory.

DMOZ achieved the milestones of indexing two million URLs on August 14, 2000, three million listings on November 18, 2001, and four million on December 3, 2003.

As of April 2013, there were 5,169,995 sites listed in over 1,017,500 categories.

The number of contributing editors had increased to 97,584 as of April 2013.

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The DMOZ system suffered a catastrophic failure on October 20, 2006, causing editors to be unable to work on the directory for over two months.

This failure led to an older build of the directory being visible to the public from October 20, 2006, until December 18, 2006.

The system's downtime had a significant impact on the site, with the Site Suggestion and Update Listings forms not being available until January 13, 2007.

Weekly publication of RDF dumps resumed on January 26, 2007, marking a return to normal operations after the system failure.

To prevent similar outages in the future, the system was reconfigured to reside on two redundant Intel-based servers.

DMOZ borrowed its basic outline for its initial ontology from Usenet in 1998, with Rich Skrenta hand-editing a long list of groups into a hierarchy.

The original top-level categories have remained intact, with 16 categories including Adult, Arts, Business, Computers, Games, Health, Home, News, Recreation, Reference, Regional, Science, Shopping, Society, Sports, and World.

By July 1998, the directory became multilingual with the addition of the World top-level category, and by May 2005, 75 languages were represented, with the non-English components growing at a faster rate than the English component since 2002.

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The ontology in non-English categories generally mirrors that of the English directory, although exceptions reflecting language differences are common.

The Regional category is categorized primarily by region, leading many to view DMOZ as two parallel directories: Regional and Topical.

Here's a breakdown of the top-level categories with unique characteristics:

DMOZ data has been used by many large search engines and portals, including Netscape Search, AOL Search, and Alexa, to power their core directory services.

Google Directory used DMOZ information until it was shuttered in July 2011.

Overture announced a search service in 2004 that combined Yahoo! Directory search results with DMOZ titles, descriptions, and category metadata.

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The DMOZ RDF dump is a bit of a misnomer, as it's not actually valid RDF. The file format is valid XML, but it's a custom format that needs to be processed by software specifically designed for DMOZ data.

The RDF dump is published on a download server, where you can find older versions archived as well. New versions are usually generated weekly, which is great for keeping your data up to date.

A DMOZ editor has identified a number of bugs in the RDF dump, so it's essential to use software that's been written specifically for DMOZ data to avoid any issues.

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To get your website noticed online, you need to get listed in reputable directories. DMOZ is a well-established directory that can help increase your website's visibility.

To submit your website to DMOZ, visit the official website and navigate to the category that best represents your content. You'll need to click on the "Submit a Site" or "Suggest a URL" option to start the submission process.

The submission form requires accurate and relevant information about your website. Make sure to fill it out completely and honestly to avoid any issues during the review process.

DMOZ's review process can be time-consuming, as each submission is carefully evaluated by experts. This is because the directory aims to maintain high quality standards.

Here are the steps to submit your website to DMOZ:

Remember to ensure your website meets DMOZ's guidelines and quality standards to increase the chances of acceptance.

Maintenance was a crucial aspect of DMOZ, as it required a lot of effort to keep the directory listings accurate and up-to-date.

DMOZ editors focused on maintaining existing listings, which included tasks such as editing individual listings to correct spelling and grammatical errors.

Monitoring the status of linked sites was also a key responsibility of editors, who would check if the linked sites were still active or had changed.

Robozilla, a Web crawler, played a vital role in checking the status of all sites listed in DMOZ, flagging sites that appeared to have moved or disappeared.

Editors would then follow up to check the sites and take action, which was critical for reducing link rot in web directories.

The popularity of DMOZ led to an issue of domain hijacking, where domains with lapsed registration were targeted by hijackers.

To address this issue, DMOZ regularly removed expired domains from the directory.

Volunteers created editing tools such as linkcheckers, category crawlers, and spellcheckers to supplement Robozilla and make editing functions more efficient.

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To get listed in DMOZ, you had to follow some specific requirements.

The Open Directory License required a DMOZ attribution table on every Web page that uses the data, which included a specific link back to the DMOZ site.

You also had to continually check the DMOZ site for updates, and discontinue use and distribution of the data or works derived from the data once an update occurred.

This restriction was later changed in 2011, when DMOZ silently switched to a Creative Commons Attribution license, which is a free license.

To propose a URL for inclusion in DMOZ, you had to find a suitable category on dmoz.org and click on the link “Propose URL.”

An input field would then open up where you could enter all relevant data for the domain, including a short description of 25-30 words.

To ensure that your chosen category would be edited regularly, you had to check the date of the last update at the bottom of the page, and if it was several years in the past, assume that there was no longer an editor assigned to that category.

DMOZ was maintained manually, which made it a trusted source by Google, and until 2011, Google had its own web directory that built on the data of the ODP.

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To become a DMOZ editor, you need to go through an application process that involves demonstrating your editing abilities and disclosing any potential conflicts of interest.

A majority of applications are rejected, but you're allowed to reapply and sometimes encouraged to do so.

The editing model at DMOZ is hierarchical, meaning you'll start with limited editing permissions in a small category.

Once you've demonstrated basic editing skills, you can apply for additional editing privileges in a broader category or another category in the directory.

Mentorship relationships between editors are encouraged, and internal forums provide a space for new editors to ask questions and learn from more experienced editors.

Access to the internal forums is restricted to editors with an account, and they're expected to keep the contents private.

Senior editors can earn additional privileges over time, such as edit all privileges, which allow them to access all categories in the directory.

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Admins and staff grant these privileges, often after discussing with meta editors.

Editors are expected to follow DMOZ's Editing Guidelines, which cover topics like site listing eligibility, category naming conventions, and conflict of interest limitations.

Editors who violate these guidelines may face consequences, such as reduced editing permissions or even losing their privileges entirely.

Controversy and criticism have long been associated with DMOZ, with allegations of volunteer editors giving favorable treatment to their own websites. This has led to concerns about the fairness and integrity of the directory.

Allegations of abusive editing practices have been a persistent issue, prompting DMOZ to introduce a Public Abuse Report System in 2003. This system allows the public to report and track allegations of abusive editor conduct.

Despite site policies suggesting that a site should only be submitted to one category, Topix.com, a news aggregation site operated by DMOZ founder Rich Skrenta, had more than 17,000 listings as of October 2007. This is a significant deviation from the intended policy.

Senior DMOZ editors have the ability to attach "warning" or "do not list" notes to individual domains, but no editor has the unilateral ability to block certain sites from being listed.

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The Open Directory Project, also known as DMOZ, was started in 1998 by Rich Skrenta and Bob Truel.

DMOZ was initially called Gnuhoo and later Newhoo, before being bought by Netscape and renamed to Open Directory Project. The project was supported by large enterprises like AOL and Time Warner until its completion.

The name DMOZ is composed of the first address of the directory: directory.mozilla.org, which was later used as the domain dmoz.org for the entire directory.

DMOZ was a non-commercial model of a web directory that didn't rely on automatic entries like many other directories, and its content was subject to "Open Content" guidelines, allowing it to be shared and used without infringing on copyright laws.

The project was edited and published by volunteer editors, who usually handled a specific set of topics, and DMOZ was available in over 60 different languages until its demise.

In February 2017, AOL announced its intention to end the web directory, and in March 2017, DMOZ was shut down indefinitely.

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DMOZ's status as the largest human-edited directory on the internet was a significant milestone, with over 4 million listings at its peak.

The directory's future was uncertain, as Google announced in 2006 that it would no longer be using DMOZ as a source for its search results.

DMOZ's directory structure, with categories and subcategories, made it a valuable resource for webmasters and users alike.

However, the directory's growth was hindered by the lack of a clear update policy, leading to a significant decline in the number of editors and listings.

By 2017, DMOZ had been archived and was no longer accepting new submissions.

Despite its demise, DMOZ's legacy lives on as a pioneering effort in the field of web directories.

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