In which a simple taoist and linux user explains the ODP....
There is talk, updated at least daily, about the many problems with the Open Directory Project. They seem almost to spawn from the mysterious depths of internet space and plant themselves onto the emails and forum posts of editors, and then like virii, they spread. There is, I feel, a solution to many of them, and it is mostly in our point of view, and modus operandi. Join me please in a short excursion in thought, subject, the future of ODP.
Looking at todays Open Directory, it seems impossible to believe anyone there at the projects birth would have foreseen today. To think that from the simple frustration of failing to find information on another directory, the self styled "largest human edited directory" would come to either power, or compete toe to toe with, every major directory or search engine on the web must have seemed a lofty goal at the time. Yet here we are. The key, both to the success of the past, and the future, is to some degree within the current name, that describes it, Open.
ODP is not an Open Source project, but shares some philosophy with the Open Source movement. I think it is fitting then that we take a cue from that movement in our view of the future. In The Cathedral and the Bazaar we have an explanation of Open Source from Eric Raymond. I will borrow (steal liberally) from his ideas below.
Eric posts several rules or axioms in The Cathedral (most of the bullet points here are slightly modified points from his work) and some of them apply to us at ODP. The first is
While we are not writing software, the comparison is obvious. The best work by any given editor is almost without fail the work they do in the category they are most interested in. The Directory was born from this. The overriding interest of its creators was not organization, or site placement, or beating Yahoo, but simply a working Directory. We need, as editors, to not only work in those areas that we love, but cultivate editors in areas they love. That is one of our greatest strengths. It is also the simplest, easiest to take step in retaining good editors, and maintaining the best directory we can.
In Taoism, it is often said, "The Way is not an unchanging Way." The Taoist view is that nothing is forever. Nowhere is this better shown than in the nature of the internet. It changes by the millisecond, and we must adapt with it, or be washed away, just like the competitors we have watched fade and disappear. It is in going with the change that we survive.
If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you.
Too often, as editors, we take our work to be complete, and certainly personal. This is to be expected, after, it is editing what we love that ensures our best work. It is also the nature of the ODP to grow beyond our reach. In a way we create something larger than ourselves and turn it loose into the world. Then scream, shout (resign, attack others) and carry on, when it grows up without us. All too often we forget that, with very few exceptions, the fellow editors we are fighting also have the best interests of the project at heart. By far and away the easiest solution is communication without predjudice. It is not enough simply to communicate. We must do so assuming (hoping and believing) that the people receiving that communication are open to your ideas and willing to share their own. The best way to make that assumption is to be open as well.
Communication brings us to another point.
Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid improvement.
It is not enough to maintain that we are an "Open" directory in name and in content. We must provide our users a chance to participate as well. Certainly we have all received email that we wished to forget with the subject line "editor feedback," and yet there we are over looking our greatest asset. I would like to propose that feedback is not enough. No editor (at least among those who recall ODP B.F. or "before forum") today would want to to return to that time when email was the only way to communicate with fellow editors. Why is this the only way we communicate with our users? Isn't it time we added a moderated forum any user could post in? Or perhaps a PHP Nuke style site where any user could post as a guest in the forum relating to the top level cat they have comments/suggestions/complaints about? Surely we can choose editors among us to moderate such a forum thus gathering our feedback in one place. Surely the benefits would outweigh the costs to us in time and effort. At worst we may find a few more editors from such a place, and so see to it the effort was well invested.
Which segues nicely to:
Given a large enough co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone.
The current threads about "how many editors are we really" all have one simple answer in my opinion. "Not enough." It is a simple enough matter to see. The greens are too many, the mistakes too numerous. The argument that too many editors who are accepted make more problems than they fix fails at the point we realize that unless we gamble from time to time we will lose by default. The number of sites is growing faster than the "Army of Volunteer Editors."
I choose the adjective rather than noun for the definition of directory for various reasons. We are not just a quiet little directory any more (if we ever were) and we must see both the benefits and down sides of that fact. Browsing through Sites Using ODP Data we quickly find that DMOZ is a powerful force on the internet. From helping to power the majority of the search engines to providing raw data for many of the major ISP's for user portals, we have become one of the greatest sources for locating information on the net. This is not a power, rather it is a responciblility.
The editors at ODP have, by whatever twist of fate, reached a position envied by directories and search engines round the world. And we have done so as volunteers. We did not take that position, rather we have been placed there, as the about page says, by the "republic of the web." It is an odd republic, self electing to a degree, user appointed in ways, and self governing in the end, but it has worked, and I believe it will continue to do so, provided we keep that in mind. We can not afford to forget at any point that it is our use by other directories, search engines, and individual users, that put us where we are. We have a responsibility to them, and our matching that task is what ensures they continue to return.
I said before that no one could have seen where the ODP would have gone in those first days. Perhaps we can not see where it will go now. Perhaps we can guess though. In order to serve directly our users, perhaps the increased communication will lead in time to other services.
Many editors at ODP also participate in similar projects. Go Guides and Experts abound at DMOZ. The difficulty I see for many of those outside projects is (in some cases was) the lack of user base and support. Yet we have already gained that support, and it has not yet grown into something else. Certainly we face the prospect of adding too many features too fast, and loosing site of what we do best. Yet we also risk fading away when/if something that provides more comes along. I am not arguing that ODP should become a Yahoo or Netscape like portal, rather that many editors are well versed enough their chosen subject, that we might in some way take a more guiding role, perhaps in a somewhat removed (yet related) manor. This is only speculation, however, even more so than the rest of what I have written here.
We have in many ways reached the end of the initial project of ODP. We have a working directory, it is well used by the masses, and it is "the largest human edited directory on the web." I would argue that with those goals achieved or in site we need not only maintain what has been created, but continue to evolve, else we will begin to fade away. We can not simply dive head first into change and hope for the best, nor can we simply add services and editors and a never ending pace, but neither can we afford to sit still and wait. We have to proceed, but slowly and in a planned undertaking. I do not envy those who would plan this, nor any more those who would lead. I am forced to imagine that leading editors as independent as we are is much like herding cats (to borrow a saying) but without the simplicity. There remains however one final asset to aid us. The asset which allows me to even write this.
In the end that is the most important axiom, and the one we have to believe even when it appears not to be so. We must believe it because it is the single greatest check and balance in the system. We must believe it because that is what allows us to function together rather than against each other.
In the end it is our openness that is our greatest and hope, and yet the most difficult of all to allow to work, because it demands we let go of our (perceived) control. Control of categories, control of direction, control of our final destination. Many threads in the forums begin with an editors complaint that things have been done without their consent, but as I write this, the front page claims we have "2,873,808 sites - 40,748 editors - 406,326 categories" the vast majority of which are success stories. Not because many of us edit quietly in corner categories, but despite it.
In Taoism water is considered great, in part, because it nurtures life without attempting to rule it. We have to take this lesson to heart, we have to learn to nurture the ODP without seeking to control it. We can not control it. It is now, and perhaps always was, beyond us. We can only nurture it in small ways, and allow it to grow, or attempt to control it and do both it and ourselves harm.
I am not staff, I am not a meta, I am not an editall, I am not one of those editors that racks up edits by the minute. It is possible I have one of the worst edit per day ratios in the directory! But I care deeply about my cats, and about my responsibility to our users. In short I am an editor, and that is all that matters, and all that is needed.
Are you an editor?