| The ODP's first venture outside DMOZ was announced by Chris Tolles,
Marketing Director for the Open Directory Project, on December 1, 1999
(see
thread below). It was dubbed "ChefMoz" and is to be the largest and
most comprehensive restaurant directory on the Net one day.
The last three and a half months have been frenetic and exciting. In typical ODP fashion, staff provided the basic structure and tools and left the rest up to the editors. The first two months, we were in alpha testing mode, which involved about a hundred active editors spotting bugs, working out design issues, creating guidelines and adding the first few restaurants to the new beast. On February 2, 2000, it was finally time to move into beta testing and open the project up to volunteers who weren't already DMOZ editors. ChefMoz editors are finding quite a few differences between "here" and "there." It's a much smaller working group and everything's new and shiny, with little history or tradition attached to it. The atmosphere is very friendly with everyone willing to help each other since almost every question is a "newbie" question. And, so far, no editor has yet been spotted giving the full five stars to his/her own restaurant -- the equivalent of cooling your own site. In addition, we haven't had any reports of editors demanding free meals because they were ChefMoz reviewers. There are about 200 editors signed up at ChefMoz right now, including
the 40 or so that have applied from the public side. The stats as of this
writing are:
Forum Activity The General and ChefMoz Culture fora are filled mainly with discussions about the structure and specific guidelines. After a bit of excitement over the actual process of steering the discussions, the guidelines are now mostly settled on and in final draft form. The Culture forum had a very lively "Social Club" thread which turned into a separate Social Club forum, providing a welcome home for jokes, banter, nonsense, witticisms and general dross. Whenever the discussion there gets too serious, it's kicked out and moved into a more appropriate forum. Bugs and Features has also been, um, active. Not surprising, when, as a ChefMoz editor, one of our main tasks is to find bugs and suggest features. The staff involvement has been very rewarding. Designated ChefMoz programmer Autumn Looijen has been working on this project around the clock -- you'll find her posting at any hour of the day. When she posts, more often than not, it's to say: "Fixed." or "Done." She's so responsive, some editors have suggested she take on a side job, like fixing MS Windows so it won't crash. Autumn's been clocked at 9 minutes between the posting of a bug and her posting of "Fixed." Of course, we wouldn't want that sort of talk to get around to the rest of the ODP..... Meta Editors and New Editors fora have been quieter for obvious reasons. Most "big picture" issues are being discussed elsewhere and there's little to pass on to new editors that doesn't concern everyone. One exception is the setting up of an unofficial Mentor program for less experienced editors. ChefMoz still has a very big appetite for new recruits
from the DMOZ side. If you're curious, have a look at this thread
DMOZ editors should log in rather than apply as new editors. If you can't log in, see the instructions in the second thread above. Once at the dashboard, apply to edit your hometown and you're on your way. See you there!  |
