Editor Resource Zone - Glossary

Definitions of terms which you may encounter while editing and participating in the discussion forums.

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404: An HTTP Response code that a web server sends to indicate that the requested page cannot be found.
Related terms: Reds, Robozilla
See also: Common Error Codes.

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@link: A method of linking one category to another. Used when the category being linked to could logically be a subcategory of the first.
See also: @link guidelines.
Related terms: Relcat

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Admin: Short form of Administrator. Refers to a volunteer responsible for project management of the Open Directory Project.
See also: Admin Guidelines
Administrative Area: Geopolitical subdivision of a country that has some degree of jurisdiction over sub-areas. The official terms for these areas vary among countries, but include such things as states, provinces, departments, and counties. In the Regional branch, many countries have subcategories based on administrative areas.
Related terms: Model 1, Model 2, Region
Adult: The Adult/ category holds sites and categories intended for a mature audience. It is not linked from the Open Directory Project's homepage, but is available by direct links, or when a search query includes "adult" terms. It offers protection from children by using PICS tags.
See also: Adult Guidelines
AFAICT: Abbreviation: As Far As I Can Tell
Affiliate Link: Hypertext links which represent a relationship between a primary seller and an affiliate. There is usually, but not always, an affiliate or referral ID embedded in the URL of such a link.
e.g. http://widgets.com/?productID=234&affiliate=widgetgirl is a fictitious affiliate link that might be placed on the affiliate's site (widgetgirl's site) directing traffic to the widgets.com site. Widgets.com would then pay a commission to widgetgirl based on sales resulting from that traffic.
Related terms: Affiliate Site
Affiliate Programs: Profit sharing strategy which an e-commerce company utilizes where commissions are paid to webmasters of other sites for referring customers to them. Customers are led from one site to another by following affiliate links.
See also: DMOZ Category
Affiliate Reseller Site: Site set up to offer products or services provided by another company and make a small margin on the sale. These are sometimes called reseller sites, franchise sites, or simply affiliates. They may seem to have unique content, but the product descriptions and/or other information come from elsewhere. The ODP does not list affiliate sites unless the site has strong, high quality content of its own that end-users will find really useful.
Affiliate Site: A site constructed primarily to drive traffic through affiliate links. Affiliate sites (sometimes referred to as simply affiliates are not listed in ODP unless they have significant non-affiliate content. ODP Guidelines describe four types of affiliate sites: affiliate links, sites consisting primarily of affiliate links, affiliate reseller sites, and multi-level marketing (MLM) and pyramid schemes.
Related terms: Affiliate Link, Affiliate Reseller Site, MLM
See also: ODP Guidelines: Affiliate Marketing Schemes.
Alphabar: Short for Alphabet Bar. A method of subdividing a category by letter. Letters of the alphabet are listed across the top of a page, and each letter category contains sites whose title begins with that letter.
See also: Category Features: Alphabet Bars
Altlang: Abbreviation: ALTernative LANGuage. Internal link pointing to the same category in a different language. The display name of the link is the name of the language to which it is pointing.
Related terms: Worldlinkerate
API: An abbreviation for Application Programming Interface, a protocol which allows one computer system to communicate or interact with another. For information about the ODP's Application Programming Interface, see DMOZ API.

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Blog: A shortened term derived from the combination of the words web and log. Refers to an individual's online personal journal or diary entries that are arranged chronologically and frequently updated.
See also: Computers: Internet: On_the_Web: Weblogs.
Bookmarklet: A short Javascript program that is intended to be contained with a bookmark in the user's browser. Bookmarklets can be useful in various ways, but are most often used to either (a) modify the contents of the current page (or a form field on that page, (b) extract information about the current page, or (c) redirect to a page related to the current page.
Note: bookmark is the term used by Mozilla-based browsers; Internet Explorer uses the term favorites. Thus, a synonym for bookmarklet is favlet.
See also: Editor Tools: Bookmarklets
Bookmarks: Each editor is alloted a Bookmarks category (in the form Bookmarks/E/Editor) which they can use to gather links of personal interest or to build categories for possible inclusion in the Directory. Bookmarks categories may be viewed by the public, but are not included in the RDF dump.
Related terms: RDF, Test/Editors
Branch Category: A subcategory in the directory, adopting the tree analogy.
Related terms: Tree
Broken Link: A URL which results in an error of some kind.
Related terms: Reds, 404
BTW: Acronym: By The Way.
e.g. "BTW, that URL is also listed in World/ ."
Bump (a forum thread): Bumping a discussion thread in an online forum refers to the act of adding a comment to the thread with the primary intent of increasing visibility by bringing the thread to the top of the forum page (which are typically sorted by the date of the most recent post).

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Cat: Colloquial form of 'category'.
Cateditall: A permission granted to editors which allows them access to catmv and other power tools within a specific category.
See also: Editall Guidelines.
Related terms: Editall, catmv
Category: A collection of sites and other categories sharing a common attribute. The DMOZ Directory is organized in a hierarchy of categories.
Category Charter: Refers to the combination of the submission guidelines, category description, and category guidelines for an individual category.
See also: DMOZ Guidelines: Category Charters and Guidelines.
Related terms: Submission Guidelines, Category description, Category guidelines
Category description: Textual explanation of the topic covered by a category.
Related terms: Category Charter
Category FAQ: A FAQ for a specific category.
See also: DMOZ Guidelines: Category FAQs
Related terms: FAQ
Category guidelines: Editor-only information specific to the category. This might include links to relevant forum threads, for example.
Related terms: Category Charter
CatMod: Abbreviation: CATegory MODerator An editor who is designated the "leader" of a specific top-level node, e.g. Regional.
See also: Catmod Guidelines
Catmv (1): The process by which a category can be moved to a new location and/or renamed.
See also: DMOZ Guidelines: Changing the Name and Location of a Subcategory.
Catmv (2): A permission that can be granted to an editor, allowing them to move/rename categories.
See also: Editall Guidelines.
Chainsaw: Colloquial. To delete multiple spam or erroneous submissions en masse using the Power Unreviewed Edit or Super Unreviewed Edit tools.
e.g. I chainsawed 300 duplicates from Society: Relationships: Dating.
Child cat: Colloquial: child category. Used comparatively to refer to a category contained directly within another category. For example, Arts/Music/Styles is a child category of Arts/Music.
Related terms: Parent cat, Subcategory
Classic DMOZ: Colloquial. Encompasses all categories outside of Kids and Teens.
Related terms: Kids and Teens
Clickable Link: In forum discussions, references to categories such as Home: Home_Improvement are preferred in the form Home/Home_Improvement. The forum software will automatically recognize references in this form, and convert them into a link such as Home/Home_Improvement which is easy to click on to see the category.
Cloaked URL: See URL Cloaking.
Consensus: Strictly speaking, a state when all interested parties agree to support an action or decision, even though all of them may not fully agree that it is the best action or decision (i.e. consensus is not equivalent to unanimity). Many Open Directory Project issues (e.g. reorganizations) strive for consensus among interested editors.
Console: A means of popup advertising used to convey targeted messages on a web page. One example, a blur console, first loads discreetly behind the window of the page being viewed and appears as a popup when the main page is closed. In contrast, an exit console is displayed when the reader leaves the main page. It will not lock and load until the main page is done loading. The most powerful form of console is a full screen trap, which pops up as a full screen from a blur. The viewer cannot exit by clicking the *x* on a browser to close the window but must press ctrl+w to exit.

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Dashboard: The main editing interface, containing links to your categories, so you can edit them, links to the editor forums, access to logs, etc.
See also: http://editors.dmoz.org/editors/
Deeplink: A page found somewhere "deep" within a site, as distinguished from the site's homepage.
e.g. http://dmoz.org/license.html is a deeplink from the site http://dmoz.org/
See also: Guidelines
Deeplinking: The process of listing links to sub-pages and sub-domains within a site.
See also: DMOZ Guidelines: Deeplinks.
Related terms: Deeplink
DevID: In order to access the DMOZ API (e.g. for building tools), a key is needed to identify the editor and their tools. This key is known as a devID. Currently devIDs are only being issued to CatMods and Metas. Please contact an Admin for more information.
Directory: A site that contains alphabetical or classified lists of resources covering a particular subject area. These sites are often listed in subcategories named Directories, in both regional and topical branches.
DMOZ: Acronym: Stands for Directory MOZilla, which used to be the name of the directory when it was accessed via the URL directory.mozilla.org It is now used to refer to the directory as a whole, e.g. "DMOZ is an Internet directory".
Related terms: Mozilla, ODP
DMOZ API: The Open Directory Project has an API that allows editor tools to directly interact with the underlying databases and editing functions. Access is currently restricted to CatMods and Metas. Please contact an Admin for more information.
DNS: Acronym: Domain Name Service. A service which provides a translation between human readable domains (e.g. dmoz.org) and computer-friendly IP Addresses (e.g. 64.12.239.187).
Related terms: Domain, IP Address
Domain: The portion of a URL which maps to a specific organization, company, or other entity.
e.g. dmoz.org is the domain for the URL http://dmoz.org/Business/faq.html
Related terms: Top-level Domain, Subdomain, URL, DNS
Domain Hijacking: A strategy employed to take over control of expired domains to capitalize on incoming web traffic to URLs on that domain. For example, a domain for a popular church site might be hijacked, and used by the new owner to redirect residual traffic to a porn or gambling site. Since URLs listed in the Directory are linked to from numerous sources, expired domains with a DMOZ listing are especially attractive to domain hijackers.
Related terms: Domain
Doorway Page: A page created to achieve a high ranking in search engines for desirable search queries. This page drives the resulting traffic to the "real" content, which may or may not be located on the same domain.
Related terms: Vanity URL
Dup: Short form of Duplicate. Refers to duplicate submissions.

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Edit: (n) Any of several editing actions performed by an editor to update the directory. For the purpose of editing statistics and account time-outs, any changes to published listings (add, move, modify, cool, unreview, delete) and moves of unreviewed submissions to a different category count as edits; deletions and other modifications of unreviewed submissions do not.
Editall: An editor allowed to edit in any category in the directory, apart from Kids and Teens and Bookmarks/
Related terms: catmv
See also: Editall Guidelines
Editor: A volunteer for the Open Directory Project.
Related terms: Admin, Cateditall, CatMod, Editall, Meta, Greenbuster
Editor-side: Refers to the editor-only view of category pages, accessible from URLs like http://www.dmoz.org/editors/editcat/index?cat=Home
Related terms: Public-side
Editor Feedback: See: Feedback.
Editor Note: A comment placed by an editor in the "DMOZ Note" field on a URL's edit page. It becomes a part of the permanent record for that url.
Related terms: URL Note
Editor profile: See: Profile.
Editor Resource Zone: Online documentation that supplements the DMOZ Guidelines by providing additional guidance, examples, and other tips, advice, and how-tos.
Related terms: Resource Zone
Emoticons: See: Smilies.
Entry Page: See: Doorway Page
Error: A former listing marked as erroneous by Robozilla or a different system process. The number of such listings appears in red color next to the category name, hence they are colloquially referred to as reds.
ERZ: Acronym: Editor Resource Zone

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FAQ: Acronym: Frequently Asked Questions. A list of frequently asked questions and their answers about a given subject.
Related terms: Category FAQ
Feedback: Editor feedback is a method of contacting fellow editors, or groups thereof. Feedback sent to you will arrive as an email message sent to the address in your profile. To send feedback to other editors, visit an editor's profile page and use the "Send to ..." link.
FFC: Abbreviation for Free-Floating Category.
Fora: Plural of "forum". The threaded discussion forum used for editor-editor communication.
Framed Redirect: Another term for URL Cloaking.
Fraternal Mirror: Two (or more) sites that are not identical in design and or literal content, but that offer the same core unique content. Often, such sites are intentionally designed to "look" different.
Related terms: Mirror, Identical Mirror
See also: Guidelines: Affiliate Marketing Schemes
Free-Floating Category: A category that can be deployed at any level in a particular branch of the ODP, defining a type of site rather than a topical subdivision. Different branches sometimes use somewhat different sets of free-floating categories, to meet the specific needs of the branch. Examples include "Wholesale and Distribution" in Business, and "Instruments and Supplies" in Science. Often abbreviated FFC.
FTR: Acronym: For The Record.
e.g. "FTR, I'm from New Zealand; not Australia."
FWIW: Acronym: For What It's Worth.
FYI: Acronym: For Your Information.
e.g. "FYI, I've e-mailed the first draft to your Hotmail address."

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Ghost: Colloquial term used when the number of unreviewed or errors reported for a category is higher than the actual number. A category which is reported as having two unreviewed, but which actually has zero unreviewed is said to have two ghosts.
GMTA: Acronym: Great Minds Think Alike.
GnuHoo: See: NewHoo.
Greenbuster: An editing permission granted to an editor to access unreviewed sites in a category, review the listings and publish them in a special greenbust queue. Sites in the queue are not visible to the public. These entries await review by any editor with editing privileges in the category to update and move them into reviewed sites for public view.
See also: Greenbuster Guidelines.
Greens: Colloquial term for the Unreviewed sites in a category.

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Hijack: See Domain Hijacking.
Holding Page: A temporary page made available when a domain is acquired with a message like "Coming Soon"; used until real content is hosted.
Homepage: The introductory page of a website, intended to greet visitors and to provide information about the contents of the site.
Related terms: webpage, Website

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Identical Mirror: Two web pages or sites that are exactly identical to each other are said to be identical mirrors. This is usually the case when the same site is available under two (or more) URLs. For example, dmoz.org, newhoo.com, and gnuhoo.com are identical mirrors.
Related terms: Fraternal Mirror
See also: Guidelines: Identical Mirrors
IMHO: Abbreviation: In My Honest/Humble Opinion
IMO: Abbreviation: In My Opinion.
Invite: Editors with a known interest or expertise in an area are often explicitly invited to a forum discussion by sending them an email via editor feedback. Doing so is common courtesy.
Related terms: Resident Editor
IP Address: A number which uniquely identifies a computer connected to the Internet. This number is generally represented as a series of four numbers (each between 0 and 255) connected with periods, e.g. 207.200.81.154.
Related terms: DNS
Italic Links: Site titles are shown in italics (on the editor side only) if the URL has listings in two or more categories, excluding Bookmarks and Test. This feature can be disabled from an editor's profile.

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K&T: Colloquial term for Kids and Teens.
Keyword: A word used in search queries to find a desired type of information on the web: a search term.
Keyword Stuffing: Including an unreasonably large number of keywords in the description of a site, for the purpose of giving that site an advantage over others.
Kids and Teens: Side project of the DMOZ, with separate guidelines and editors. It is an Internet directory aimed specifically at audiences aged 18 and under. Also known as 'K&T'.

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Lead Generator: A site focussed mainly on gathering personal information (name, contact information, etc.) about the visitors (for the purposes of entering into some sort of future business relationship). These sites are not listed in DMOZ unless they contain other significant and unique content.
Leaf Category/Node: A category which has no subcategories are termed 'leaves', or 'leaf categories'.
Related terms: Tree
Link Farm: A category which contains only @links and other crosslinks, and is otherwise stipulated to be empty, created for navigational purposes.
e.g. Business: Regional or Regional: Countries
Link Mine: A source (generally a web page or site) which contains an abundance of links, the majority of which are good candidates for listing in the Open Directory Project.
e.g. Lions Links: United Kingdom is a link farm with many links that may qualify for listing in Society: Organizations: Service Clubs: Lions Clubs International: Europe: United Kingdom or other categories.
List: v. The act of adding a URL to a category in the directory in order to create a listing
Listing: The combination of a URL, title, and description (and possibly other metadata) which is added to a category. Note that while a listing consists of exactly one URL, a URL may have multiple listings in different categories of the Directory.
LMK: Acronym: Let Me Know.
Logs: The vast majority of editing tasks are recorded on logs. These typically contain details such as the type of edit made, when and where the edit was made, and the name of the editor who made the edit.

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Manual Catmv: Refers to the improper process where the entire contents of one category are moved one by one to a new category in an attempt to move the category.
Related terms: Catmv (1), Catmv (2)
See also: DMOZ Guidelines: Changing the Name and Location of a Subcategory, DMOZ Newsletter: The Perils of the Manual Category Move
Meta: An editor able to edit anywhere, move/rename categories, and approve/reject category applications.
See also: Meta Guidelines
Mirror: A site that has the same content as another site. Identical mirrors have exactly the same content and appearance. Fraternal mirrors (aka fraternal websites) have slightly different content or a different appearance, but their overall content is the same.
Mirror: Two web pages/sites which are identical to each other are said to be mirrors. This is usually the case when one site is available under two (or more) URLs.
e.g. dmoz.org, newhoo.com, and gnuhoo.com are mirrors.
See also: Guidelines
Misplaced Submission: A site in the unreviewed queue for a category which is not appropriate for that category (either submitted incorrectly by a submitter, or sorted incorrectly by an editor). Editors are encouraged to locate the correct category and move the submission there; if they are unable to do so, the Test/Misplaced category can be used.
See also: Description of Test/Misplaced
MLM: Acronym: Multi Level Marketing. A pyramid based marketing scheme like Amway or Quixtar where individual agents recruit other agents and receive commission from both their own sales and the sales of the agents they recruited. DMOZ does not list the sites of individual agents in MLM schemes, because their sites do not meet the unique content criteria for an DMOZ listing (i.e. every agent's site sells the same thing).
See also: Business, Guidelines.
Model 1: A taxonomy in the Regional branch in which a country's administrative areas are not used as the basis for geographic subcategories.
Model 2: A taxonomy in the Regional branch in which a country's administrative areas are used as the basis for geographic subcategories.
Mozilla: >A green lizard image which DMOZ uses as a mascot. Derivative versions of the image are used on various items of official documentation.
Related terms: Mozzie, Mozzie Awards
Mozzie: An image derived from DMOZ's Mozilla mascot. Used for customizing category pages.
See also: Mozzie Submission Instructions.
Related terms: Mozilla, Mozzie Awards
Mozzie Awards: A set of awards voted on by the editing community to recognize contributions by fellow editors, such as "Best Overall Editor" or "Best Forum Thread". The awards are generally held twice a year.
Related terms: Mozilla, Mozzie

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Newapp: Colloquial: NEW APPlication. An editor's application to join the directory.
Newbie: Colloquial. A new editor.
NewHoo: The former name of the Open Directory Project (now DMOZ) before it was acquired by Netscape in 1998.
Newperm: Colloquial: NEW PERMission. An editor's application to add an additional category to their login.
Node: From information architecture, a branching point in a taxonomic tree, technically referring to a DMOZ category exclusive of its parent categories or subcategories. However, used less technically as a synonym for a branch category.

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ODP: Acronym: Open Directory Project. Used to refer to the directory as a whole.
Related terms: DMOZ
DMOZ Search: The search facility used to search for directory listings and categories.
ODPSS: Acronym, colloquial: Open Directory Project Suicide Syndrome. Term applied to, usually abusive, editors who are rude/insulting in a forum thread that eventually leads to their resignation/removal.
Ontology: The hierarchical structuring of knowledge about things by subcategorizing them according to their essential (or at least relevant and/or cognitive) qualities. This is an extension of the previous senses of "ontology" which has become common in discussions about the difficulty of maintaining subject indices.

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Parent cat: Colloquial: parent category. Used comparatively to refer to the category in which a given category is located. For example, the parent category of Arts/Music/Styles is Arts/Music .
Related terms: Child cat, Subcategory
Parse: To analyze a document or collection of data by dividing it into its component parts to determine the collective meaning. This is often performed by software algorithms.
Passport: ODP::Passport is a single sign-on system used to provide editor-only access to a number of editor-produced tools. For more information see http://passport.rpfuller.com/.
PC: Acronym: Penguin Cafe.
PDF: Acronym: Portable Document Format. A cross-platform file format created by Adobe for distribution of format-rich documents.
Penguin Cafe: Discussion forum intended for social, non-ODP discussions.
Pet Category: A category of special or personal interest in which an editor is listed as named editor, even though he is able to edit there because of his broader permissions.
PHP (1): A recursive acronym for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor", a programming language used to generate dynamic web pages.
PHP (2): Acronym: Personal Home Page.
See also: Society: People: Personal Homepages.
Profile: A page containing information on a given editor. Includes a list of the categories that they edit, access to editor-specific logs, the ability to send the editor feedback, and an optional area for the editor to display personal information.
Public-side: Refers to the normal view of category pages, accessible from URLs like http://editors.dmoz.org/Home/ or http://www.dmoz.org/Home/ . Note: Only the latter URLs (on www.dmoz.org) are actually viewable by the general public. There is a small delay for a page on editors.dmoz.org to migrate to www.dmoz.org.
Related terms: Editor-side

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RDF

Acronym: Resource Description Format. This is the format in which the ODP data is made available for download. Approximately weekly the "RDF dump" is made. This is when new files are generated. During this time editors with catmv abilities are unable to move/rename any categories.

Redirect

A redirecting url is a page whose content consists of a link to another url. An automatic redirect url is a page that automatically transfers you to another url.
Related terms: url_cloaking

Reds

Colloquial: Erroneous URLs that have been flagged "red" by Robozilla.

Referral Site

See Lead Generator.

Region

Used in DMOZ's Regional branch. Two usages can be distinguished:

(non-administrative) - Regions categories usually refer to areas that are not official administrative areas of the country, and do not have jurisdiction over the area.
(administrative) - For some countries, Regions is the best word to use for a type of administrative area within that country. (e.g., Italy). These are exceptions to the standard DMOZ usage of the term.

Regional

Refers to the Regional category (or the equivalent for other languages), and is generally distinguished from Topical categories because it organizes sites primarily by geographical relevance.
Related terms: Topical
See also: Regional Guidelines

Regional

A category that lists sites primarily by their geographical location, versus a specific topic (Topical categories).
See also: Regional Guidelines

Reinstatement

Process where a former editor has his editor account restored.
See also: Reinstatement Form, Reinstatement Guidelines.

Relcat

Colloquial: Shortened form of "related category". This a method of linking from one category to another, and is used when the category being linked to couldn't logically be a subcategory of the first.
Related terms: @link

Resident Editor

The editor of the category being discussed.
e.g. "Before you proceed with the reorganization of Blue/Widgets, you should invite the resident editor to comment."
Related terms: Invite

Resources

A preferred term for a DMOZ category collecting sites that provide a comprehensive overview of a particular subject area. Resource sites typically include general information about a topic, and provide directories, FAQs, chats and forums, publications, etc.

Resource Zone

Unofficial public forum intended for discussion of DMOZ issues. Sponsored by members of the DMOZ editing community as a public service.
Related terms: Editor Resource Zone
See also: www.resource-zone.com

RL

Abbreviation for Real Life, meaning one's life apart from DMOZ.
e.g. I have some RL commitments this weekend, so can't comment on the category proposal until next week.

Robozilla

Automated link checker that marks erroneous URLs red.

Root

A permission level assigned to AOL staff and admins. Those with root permissions have extra abilities and their accounts are not subject to the normal time-out rules. Some former Netscape/AOL employees who have contributed to the DMOZ's backend development and directory content also have root permissions.

Root Category

One of the seventeen base categories forming the DMOZ Directory, such as Arts, Home, or Science. Also known as top-level category.
Related terms: Tree, Second Level Category, Third Level Category

RSS

Acronym: Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary. A machine-readable file format designed for syndicating content of websites. In DMOZ, RSS URL's (or RSS feeds) are flagged as such, separating them from "normal" sites.

RZ

Acronym: Resource Zone

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Search Engine: A web service (e.g. Google Search) which accepts a list of search terms (words) from a user and returns a list of relevant web pages (a SERP) from an internal database which is constructed by specially designed web spiders which fetch information from internet pages.
Related terms: SEO, SERP, Spider
Search String: 1. The keywords or codes input as terms into a search engine.
Second Level Category: A subcategory of a root category.
e.g. Business: Small_Business and Sports: Baseball are second level categories.
Related terms: Third Level Category
See also: See: Relcat.
SEO: Acronym: Search Engine Optimization. The techniques used by webmasters to optimize the placement of their site in search engines for given search terms.
Related terms: Search Engine
SERP: Acronym: Search Engine Results Page.
Related terms: Search Engine
Shameless Plug for Africa: Any of the bountiful mentions of Regional/Africa and its myriad subcategories strewn about in unrelated forum discussions. For some reason, references to goatherds abound.
See also: primary perpetrator, instigation
Smilies: Graphics that can be used in forum posts to indicate an emotion/expression.
Sort Date Field: Area on a URL's edit page used for the media publication date of items such as articles and reviews, or for time limited events such as conferences. Listings with a sort date appear at the bottom of a category page, sorted by date.
Sort Order: Another term for Sort Priority.
Sort Priority: Refers to the way that subcategories (and/or @links) are grouped in the standard category display. Three groupings are possible: top, middle, and bottom (default). For example, sort order is utilized in Reference: Education: Colleges and Universities. Academic departments are placed in the top group, geographic divisions are placed in the middle group, and other topics are placed in the bottom group.
Spam (1): Unsolicited commercial email. Also known as "junk email".
Spam (2): In DMOZ, spam also refers to duplicate, grossly misplaced and otherwise inappropriate site suggestions from the public. For example, the suggestion of adult sites to non-Adult categories, or the suggestion of numerous deeplinks all to the same category.
Spamming therefore refers to the act of make such site suggestions, and a spammer is one who engages in spamming.
Spider: A computer program which "crawls" the web, searching for and indexing content from web pages.
Related terms: Search Engine
Staff: AOL employees responsible for hosting and administering DMOZ.
Related terms: Root
Stats: Colloquial: statistics. Refers to the total edits made by a given editor.
Subcat: Colloquial term for Subcategory.
Subcategory: Category contained within another.
Related terms: Category
Subdomain: Subdomains are derived from domains by prefixing a name and a period (.) to an existing domain or subdomain.
e.g. www.example.com, ftp.example.com, and books.example.com are all subdomains of the domain example.com.
Related terms: Domain
Submission Guidelines: A description intended for both submitters as well as editors which describes the types of sites found within the category as well as the types of sites not found in the category. May also include details concerning titles and/or descriptions specific to the category.
Related terms: Category Charter
Symlink: See: @link.
System: A robot account used by Staff for running directory-wide maintenance tasks. For example, bulk edits fixing listing errors.

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Taxonomy (1): The science, laws, or principles of classification; systematics.
Taxonomy (2): Division into ordered groups or categories: "Scholars have been laboring to develop a taxonomy of young killers" (Aric Press).
Test: A "workspace" category tree used for building models and templates for proposed category reorganizations. Test/ categories are not accessible by the general public, and are not included in the RDF dump.
Related terms: RDF, Test/Editors
See also: Test/ category description
Test/Editors: Test/Editors categories are available for each editor as a "private workspace" alternative to Bookmarks.
Related terms: Test, Bookmarks
Test/World: 1. Workspace area for World/ categories
Third Level Category: A subcategory of a second level category.
e.g. Business: Small_Business: Telecommuting and Sports: Baseball: Youth are third level categories.
Related terms: Root Category
Thread Stretch: An extremely long URL forces the width of a forum thread to stretch beyond the width of the monitor. This creates frustration for editors who then need to scroll sideways to read other posts sharing the thread. Placing a space at an approximate mid-point of the URL solves this problem.
Time Out: An editor account times out out if an editor does not make a qualifying edit in a period of 120 days, or if a new editor does not make a qualifying edit within 30 days from their acceptance email. Editors whose accounts have timed out may apply for reinstatement.
Top-level Category: Synonym for Root Category
Top-level Domain: Refers to the rightmost portion of a domain, which is the broadest division in the heirarchical naming scheme on the Internet. Top-level domains are either generic top-level domains (such .com, .org, or .edu) or country code top-level domains (such as .uk, .ca, or .se).
Related terms: Domain
Topical: Organizes sites primarily by their subject matter (e.g. Arts, Business, Sports), versus Regional, which organizes sites by their geographical location.
Topical: Refers to all categories of a certain language (e.g. Arts, Business, Sports) which organize sites primarily by their topic, as distinguished from the Regional category.
Related terms: Regional
Tree: Heirarchical structures such as ODP's category structure can be visualized as a tree structure. In this analogy, base categories (such as Arts or Shopping) are considered roots of the tree, or root categories. Each level of subcategorization in the directory represents a branching of the tree from a thicker branch into several thinner branches. Subcategories at the edges of the structure where no further subcategorization is present are leaves or leaf categories.
Related terms: Root Category, Branch Category, Leaf Category/Node, Second Level Category, Third Level Category

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Umbrella Category: Put simply, this is a category that contains other categories. Generally the term is applied to an overarching category which contains more specific subcategories.
Unreviewed: Sites that are awaiting review in a category's 'Unreviewed queue'. They have either been submitted by a member of the public, or moved there by another editor. They are not visible to the public. Listed sites can be placed in unreviewed when an editor or system process notices a problem with the site. This process is called "unreviewing". Unreviewed sites are sometimes referred to as greens, since their number appears in green after the category name on category edit screens.
URL: Acronym: Uniform Resource Locator. A standard way of specifying the location of an object, typically a web page, on the Internet. URLs are the form of address used on the World-Wide Web. They are used in HTML documents to specify the target of a hyperlink which is often another HTML document (possibly stored on another computer). e.g. http://dmoz.org/ and http://dmoz.org/cgi-bin/add.cgi?where=Home/Cooking are URLs.
Related terms: Listing
URL Cloaking: A technique using frames in a web browser where one URL "cloaks" or hides the existence of the second URL.
e.g. http://go.to/etna/ is a vanity URL which cloaks the "real" page at http://personal.inet.fi/musiikki/jusaname/etna/index2.html . The former page contains the latter in a frame which spans the entire browser window.
Related terms: Vanity URL
URL Note: A coloured note that can be attached to a particular URL by an editor with cateditall+ permissions, to provide information or warnings to editors.
See also: Editall Guidelines: Adding Notes to URLs.
Related terms: Editor Note
Usenet: A global, decentralized system of newsgroups. The original ODP taxonomy (actually, the Gnuhoo taxonomy) was based loosely on taxonomy borrowed from Usenet. Usenet groups can be associated with categories.
e.g. rec.woodworking in Arts: Crafts: Woodcraft: Woodworking.

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Vanity URL: A secondary URL (generally much shorter) that either (a) redirects to the real URL (b) acts as an doorway page to the real URL, or (c) uses URL cloaking to conceal the existence of the real URL. Some domains which host vanity URLs are: come.to, welcome.to, go.to, move.to, and jump.to.
e.g. http://welcome.to/showballet/ is a vanity URL for http://www.showballet.com/index.htm
Related terms: URL Cloaking, Doorway Page
Virtual Mirror: See Fraternal Mirror.

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Web Page: A document available on the World Wide Web. A web page consists of a file in a format, such as HTML, that web browsers can handle, along with any related files such as scripts and graphics. Individual web pages are often hyperlinked to other web pages.
Website: A group of interconnected webpages owned and managed by an individual, company or organization. A website typically includes an introductory page that describes the type of information available on the site, and provides hyperlinks to direct users to the various pages on the site. The contents of a website are typically located on the same domain, although in some cases they may be spread over several domains.
Related terms: Homepage, webpage
Whois: A searchable database maintained by a domain registrar that includes details such as the name, address, or technical contacts for a given domain.
Wiki: A website which allows the content to be edited by anyone.
World: A top-level category that contains sites written in languages other than English. For instance, World: Deutsch contains sites written in German.
Worldlinkerate: The procedure of linking a category from one language to another by adding an altlang. The Worldlinkerator tool designed by rpfuller facilitates this process.

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YGM: Acronym: You've Got Mail. A reference to the AOL-popularized message to alert the arrival of e-mail.

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Additional acronyms can be deciphered with help from Reference: Dictionaries: Acronyms...