Editors who post unsubstantiated facts is one of the things that annoy me.
Take for instance a common "fact" I see posted by editors, senior and lowly alike. It's the "fact" that 50% of listed sites are not suggest. Now, where did this factoid come from? Someone's mind? Out of thin air? I've been an editor for over three years and I have never seen any evidence that this is true, and I've searched for it on the Internal forum. This seems to be made up or conjecture at best. I'm wondering how someone can even compile this information. How can you, as an editor, possibly know whether or not other editors are searching for sites on their own or have relegated their editor activities to the submitted sites? I mean, just because you, as an editor, love finding sites on your own doesn't mean most or even all editors do the same. It seems a bit deceitful to put this unsubstantiated information as fact based only on what you, and possibly a few editors you've talked to, do.
There are many editors, mostly new, or those who don't have a lot of edits to their credit, who don't even know that you can go out and add sites you find via search engines. Plus, being that most editors are not senior editors and do not have a lot of privileges and are stuck with smaller categories, leads me to believe that the opposite is true. I can't count the number of times a new editor mentions the fact that they check their category once a month looking for new submissions.
Editor Stats:
6327 / 2022 unique adds / 1669 deletes / 1176 unreviewed
Monday, June 22, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
Part 1: Dmoz and its editors
Hello, again! I didn't even realize it has been so long since my last post. I've been very busy lately with several things, including graduate school.
In this post I'm going to write about one thing I just absolutely can't stand. Okay, not just one; this will be a multi-post series.
What irks me most about some Dmoz editors are those newbie's who've been on the job for only a few months and think they know everything there is to know about the ODP. Their "knowledge" that they feel the need to pass on to the rest of us lowly editors, you know, those of us who have been there MUCH longer than they, comes from what they've heard/learned from other senior editors and spread it around as gospel. In fact, they say it almost verbatim from the senior editor who told them that it's almost easy to figure out who gave them that advice. Getting advice and knowledge from senior editors is great, but also realize that the guidelines are just guidelines and not policy. There's a difference. The guidelines give leeway to common sense and editor discretion. Policies are hard and fast rules that everyone must follow. Dmoz doesn't have policies.
As you get more experience as an editor then you'll become more knowledgeable about the guidelines and you'll be able to use your discretion wisely instead of being afraid that you're "breaking the guidelines." In one of the categories in which I'm a listed editor I used to get several requests from people asking for their site to be removed from the directory. As a new editor I was told that sites shouldn't be removed as long as they're working and meets the guidelines, thus making it into an absolute rule. During that time I rarely obliged the request. As I came into my own as an experienced editor, and become more knowledgeable about the guidelines, I realized that they are just guidelines and that I do have some discretion. I was then able to make a decision on my own based on the information in front of me about whether or not to oblige the "remove my site" requests. Some of those sites I did remove from the directory, but that was not without first going to the website and sending an e-mail and advising them that, generally, sites aren't removed if they still meet the guidelines.
My reason for sending this e-mail wasn't to inform them that their site wasn't going to be removed or just to happily communicate with website owners, but it was to make sure the person sending the request was the person actually connected with that site. Sometimes I would get an e-mail back and sometimes I wouldn't, so that meant that sometimes I would oblige the delete request and sometimes I wouldn't. If I did oblige a request then I would leave a note with the URL giving the reason I was deleting it and that I was using my editor discretion. Simple.
Well, it's not really that simple when you're a new editor because you take other editors' opinions as truth and the guidelines as hard and fast rules that must always be followed. The actual truth is that editors have different opinions and interpret things differently. You ask an opinion of 5 editors and you'll get 6 different opinions. So, you have to take it for what it's worth, and that's someone's opinion. Don't get me wrong. I was once a very confused newbie. I only became confused because of the many different opinions on everything imaginable. I would see a senior editor write one thing as a fact in one place, and then I'd go to the internal forum and see six different editors with opposite opinions. Who's right? Eventually, I got to a point in my editorship that I didn't need anyone's opinions in order to interpret the guidelines. I used my own knowledge from lots of editing and reading of the guidelines to make a good decision about a site.
Those newbies with only a few months experience will eventually come to realize what I realized: that there are no hard and fast rules in editing, and you are free to use your editor discretion when it makes sense. This isn't getting into the issue of major changes, which need to have editor "consensus."
Editor Stats:
6324 [total edits] / 2019 unique adds / 1669 deletes / 1176 unreviewed
In this post I'm going to write about one thing I just absolutely can't stand. Okay, not just one; this will be a multi-post series.
What irks me most about some Dmoz editors are those newbie's who've been on the job for only a few months and think they know everything there is to know about the ODP. Their "knowledge" that they feel the need to pass on to the rest of us lowly editors, you know, those of us who have been there MUCH longer than they, comes from what they've heard/learned from other senior editors and spread it around as gospel. In fact, they say it almost verbatim from the senior editor who told them that it's almost easy to figure out who gave them that advice. Getting advice and knowledge from senior editors is great, but also realize that the guidelines are just guidelines and not policy. There's a difference. The guidelines give leeway to common sense and editor discretion. Policies are hard and fast rules that everyone must follow. Dmoz doesn't have policies.
As you get more experience as an editor then you'll become more knowledgeable about the guidelines and you'll be able to use your discretion wisely instead of being afraid that you're "breaking the guidelines." In one of the categories in which I'm a listed editor I used to get several requests from people asking for their site to be removed from the directory. As a new editor I was told that sites shouldn't be removed as long as they're working and meets the guidelines, thus making it into an absolute rule. During that time I rarely obliged the request. As I came into my own as an experienced editor, and become more knowledgeable about the guidelines, I realized that they are just guidelines and that I do have some discretion. I was then able to make a decision on my own based on the information in front of me about whether or not to oblige the "remove my site" requests. Some of those sites I did remove from the directory, but that was not without first going to the website and sending an e-mail and advising them that, generally, sites aren't removed if they still meet the guidelines.
My reason for sending this e-mail wasn't to inform them that their site wasn't going to be removed or just to happily communicate with website owners, but it was to make sure the person sending the request was the person actually connected with that site. Sometimes I would get an e-mail back and sometimes I wouldn't, so that meant that sometimes I would oblige the delete request and sometimes I wouldn't. If I did oblige a request then I would leave a note with the URL giving the reason I was deleting it and that I was using my editor discretion. Simple.
Well, it's not really that simple when you're a new editor because you take other editors' opinions as truth and the guidelines as hard and fast rules that must always be followed. The actual truth is that editors have different opinions and interpret things differently. You ask an opinion of 5 editors and you'll get 6 different opinions. So, you have to take it for what it's worth, and that's someone's opinion. Don't get me wrong. I was once a very confused newbie. I only became confused because of the many different opinions on everything imaginable. I would see a senior editor write one thing as a fact in one place, and then I'd go to the internal forum and see six different editors with opposite opinions. Who's right? Eventually, I got to a point in my editorship that I didn't need anyone's opinions in order to interpret the guidelines. I used my own knowledge from lots of editing and reading of the guidelines to make a good decision about a site.
Those newbies with only a few months experience will eventually come to realize what I realized: that there are no hard and fast rules in editing, and you are free to use your editor discretion when it makes sense. This isn't getting into the issue of major changes, which need to have editor "consensus."
Editor Stats:
6324 [total edits] / 2019 unique adds / 1669 deletes / 1176 unreviewed
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