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ArtsJune has been another active and interesting month in Arts. Theme categories were in the spotlight this month. Tolkien, Star Trek and Star Wars editors all discussed the best way to organize groups of categories that span all types of media - books, film, television, comics, and even role-playing games. Music/Instruments/Synthesizer went through a reorganization that was impressive in its depth and complexity, especially to editors such as myself that don't know the difference between a Buchla and a Korg.Two large and important categories that stayed in focus throughout the month were Music/Bands and Artists and Celebrities. With almost 30,000 and 13,000 sites, these two categories are extremely popular with editors, ODP users, and of course, submitters. Editors in these categories consistently work as a team to recognize mass submitters and create consistent category guidelines. One interesting challenge that illustrates the great variety and complexity of the categories was the instance of two Carter Families - the Country Music Carters vs. the Pop Music Carters, best known for producing Backstreet Boy Nick. Editors eventually decided to name the two categories Music/Styles/Country/Bands and Artists/C/Carter Family and Celebrities/C/Carter Family - Pop Vocals, eliminating any future confusion between too very different groups. In the next month, watch for Music to become even more prominent as editors Minty and Cdenton work to recruit new editors and aggressively drive down the unreviewed count. Arts/Asian will be moving to Regional, and Visual Arts/Native and Tribal may be integrated with Art History or Regional. Comics is undergoing a general reorganization and editors of Music/Styles/World/Latin are considering possible changes. Jschwart BusinessBusiness editors continue to grapple with some big issues. Most notably spam and clever marketing tactics. The XTREME SPAM! thread continues to be an active thread where editors have been exchanging information about dealing with spammers. Editors have also been dealing with the issue of listing multiple URLs owned by the same company. One marketing ploy that is being used at an increasing rate is to repackage data and content multiple times and in various ways, tweak it enough in each case to make it look like each site is unique, and publish these sites under different URLs. This marketing tactic can trick editors into adding sites, each with the same basic content, multiple times. Please take care when adding sites submitted and owned by the same company to ensure this marketing tactic is not being used.Biz editors are continuing to work hard at cleaning up the category,
and deleting those pesky Reds. The
Business/Employment category is slowly winding down. Employment
sites for specific industries continue to be moved under their industry
category. Business/Entreprenuers
will soon be merged
Kudos to everyone who helped clean up the Reds! Excellent job all! Rdkeating ComputersThe Computers forum has seen a great many threads and small-to-major reorganization discussions over the past month.Computers/Systems/ has seen several consolidations, moves and new category descriptions over the past month. The category for Palmtops and Handheld computers has moved from Computers/Hardware/Systems/Palmtops to Computers/Systems/Handhelds. While Palmtops moved up a level, Desktop Customization was moved down one level to Computers/Software. Screen savers, wallpaper, skins and themes can now be found under Computers/Software/Desktop_Customization Ffabris is leading an effort to clean up Computers/Graphics/3D and Computers/Graphics/Software. Expect many changes in the Computers/Graphics category in the near future. If you haven't heard of Big Brother by now, stop by the following category
to see what all the hullabaloo is all about - Computers/Internet/WWW/Webcams/Indoors/Home/BigBrother
GamesGames has been busy this month with a lot of small projects. Editors are discussing the Quake series category and how clans should be placed in the taxonomy. In Games/Gambling, editors have been working on cleaning up titles and descriptions to conform to the guidelines. GracelHealthHealth editors are busy battling unreviewed this month. The unreviewed percentage neared 17% around the middle of July. Editor brownsmurf has been rallying the troops to lower this number.Editors in Health/Beauty have reorganized education sites. A new category for beauty schools also know as cosmetology schools has been created. Check it out - Health/Beauty/Beauty_Schools. Editor Trident6, formerly famous for collecting lunch boxes and editing Arkansas and California, has ventured in Health and been instrumental in creating a category for Hydranencephaly and improving the Hydrocephalus category. If there is a condition, disorder or disease missing from Health, drop by the Health forum and let us know. Of course the danger is that you might end up with a new category to edit, like Trident6. ;-) Mental health editors have been discussing the proper placement of psychologists and other counseling service providers. Some psychologists might be moving to Regional categories of the local communities they serve. Expect to see changes and improvements in this category in the near future. New editor Lynner has jumped right in and started editing like mad. She asked a question about a site in Eating disorders which spurred Health editors to consider creating a new category for Nutritional and Metabolic Disorders. This category is under construction in Test. Expect to see it soon in Health. Shara HomeHome/Recipes/World Cuisines editors have been examining ways of making the taxonomy more intuitive, which led to considering a major overhaul of the entire Home/Recipes category. Editors are considering changing the name and focus to Home/Cooking. One proposed new taxonomy would reorganize categories according to regional or culinary traditions and allow for more development of recipe-related activities, such as cooking techniques.Home/Gardens editors continue to move merchant sales and services sites out and to redo the taxonomy of the informational subcategories left. Dmozmarch The taxonomy in Home/Consumer_Information/Reviews/Products/Autos/Manufacturers for both new and used car reviews, organized by make, has been put in place, encompassing most of the major manufacturers. @links have been placed to these categories from the respective subcategories of Recreation/Autos/Manufacturers, providing surfers with quick access to this new content. There is work left to be done in terms of building content, so any auto enthusiasts looking for a new cat to edit are welcomed to apply. Agskeefe NewsWhat's that saying? No news in News is good news?Yes, it has indeed been a quiet month, though there are a few minor changes to report nonetheless. To deal with the one hundred-plus sites previously at the top level, News/Colleges_and_Universities/Newspapers has been broken down by region, the idea being that these publications could be listed once as part of a state-wide list in News, and again under the respective university in Reference. Speaking of student publications, there is also a new category under News/Newspapers/Student for underground publications. Though there are currently only two sites listed, this has the potential for housing an interesting and unique collection. Editors have also been hard at work processing new submissions. At one time surpassing 700, the number of unreviewed has been reduced to almost half the size. Great work! Finally, congratulations to johnt and sajones on their well-deserved nominations for best News editor in the Unofficial Editor Awards contest. Good luck to you both! Agskeefe RecreationRegional moves continue in Recreation/Travel/Reservations/Lodging. Help is needed to clean up Recreation/Outdoors/Camping/Campgrounds and move the campground sites into the Regional structure. Food guides are ready to move as well after lots of good discussion among the editors in the forums. It should be noted that Bcwine and Coloma were very instrumental in hashing out the details. The guides moves are waiting on pesky editor Krauss to find the time to get the moves made.A successful reorg happened in Recreation/Aviation thanks in great part to Editor Pamelajoy who set up the test area and sent out lots of detailed email to get feedback and assistance. Currently, discussion in the forums is going about the category of Drunken Bastards. Is this name offensive and does it need changing? If you have some constructive advice join the forum at http://dmoz.org/forum/threaddisplay.cgi?t=Forum11/HTML/000439.htmlKrauss ReferenceIn Reference, we are working on a plan to revamp the structure of Reference/Education. A test area has been set up to reflect the changes to the structure that the editors are discussing in the forum. The idea is to clean up the category which has a number of overlapping subcategories and to create a streamlined structure.A basic clean up was completed on Reference/Education/Learning_Theories
which included implementation of a Montessori subcategory. Editors are
also discussing how the Reference/Education/College_Life category should
be set up and if it should be placed elsewhere
RegionalRegional editors are continuing to cleanup the category to comply with the Regional Guidelines. Numerous discussions in the Regional forum are focused on cleaning up specific categories and notifying editors of taxonomy changes.Speaking of guidelines, we are gearing up for an update release of the Regional Guidelines. No surprises are expected, as all changes have been discussed in the forum. The key changes are: - Adoption of the template created as part of the numerous Beyond the
Template threads. This template is an expanded version of the topical
template in the current guidelines. Quinn2004 has been maintaining
this template at his personal web site. It was recently converted
from an HTML
- Guides and Directories has been reinstated as a standard top-level category in the topical template. - Geographic Taxonomy - this section has been reworked to more clearly define the standards for building out the geographic subcategories under a country. Please watch the forums for further information regarding the Regional Guidelines update. Rdkeating ScienceEditors in Science/Math have been working to improve taxonomy. Several top level categories have been moved down a level to improve navigation.Science/Social Sciences/Economics/Economists was overflowing with economist sites, so new subcategories have been created. A discussion of overlaps between Science and Business in the General forum has resulted in many sites being relocated to Business. It seems that more are soon to follow. Recycling products and services are now being discussed. New editor Barissumengen jumped right in and has proposed a move of Image_Processing from Computers to Science/Technology. Discussions are still underway. Shara ShoppingThe Shopping editors have begun to tackle the rapidly rising unreviewed by having an "unreviewed bee" on a specific area of the category. As of now, they are tackling the Health and Beauty category. When the bee began there were 6560 sites with 3251 new. After a week, we are at 6703 sites with 1852 new. When Health and Beauty is done, the editors plan to move on to other categories using the same method.We are currently looking at how to fit publications such as comic books and magazines into Shopping. This is being discussed with the Shopping/Books editors. If you like to shop, consider applying for a category and join the Shopping/ team. A number of categories in need of help are listed in Help Wanted. Gracel SocietySociety categories are continuing to be reviewed and updated so that they comply with the Regional guidelines. Many categories needed little or no tweaking, as editors applied the guidelines and helped Regional editors to mine categories for useful local resources. The flexibility of the guidelines has allowed other editors to consider several choices in organizing access to categories that have topical and regional aspects. Christianity editors are deciding how best to regionalize lists of U.S. Christian churches, by church or by denomination. Lawyers worked on where to list region-specific legal information and local law firms. Political parties are also under discussion as editors discuss where and what to decentralize.Several Society threads are talking about reorganizations. Editors in Society/Transgendered/ are defining the differences between Intersexed and Transgendered and trying to decide if Intersexed really belongs under Transgendered. Society/Organizations/Social/Freemasonry is being reorganized so that titles for lodge sites are standardized and subcategories are better defined. Smaller cleanups can be as important to maintaining ODP quality as the bigger reorganizations. Several were addressed in Society threads over the last few weeks. The Divination/Tarot editors are tidying up category names to make subcat usage more intuitive. Organizations/Hobby Interests/Caravans sites are to be moved to Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/Recreation_and_Sports/Caravans/ to collocate resources. Shopping sites are being moved out of Weddings/Photography/Albums and Frames. Thanks to industrious editors, one and all, for all these efforts to keep Society categories updated and useful! Dmozmarch SportsCategory consolidation is still the most popular topic in the Sports forum. Auto Racing, Wrestling, Water Sports, and Motorsports were all consolidated into umbrella categories, and the categories beneath can be accessed either through the umbrella category or through the Sports alpha bar. Miniature Golf was moved under Golf to further streamline the top level of Sports.Of course, consolidation is not the only news in Sports. The new Wheelchair Sports category has spurred development of Wheelchair and Disabled Sports categories throughout Sports. College and University Sports are being updated to reflect league changes. In the next month, more improvements and reorganizations have been proposed. Volleyball and Fencing are currently being reviewed, and an impressively large Wrestling/Professional reorganization is underway. Check back next month, when excitement about the Olympic games will hopefully attract even more editors and users to the Sports category. Jschwart WorldThe editors in World/Français/Régional/France have been busy deciding how to apply the Regional guidelines to this section of the ODP. Discussion began in May regarding the choice of major topical subcategories has been resolved and these cats have since been installed on the top level. In addition, a conclusion has been reached as to the geographic hierarchy to be used as the backbone for this increasingly developing category. Bon Travail! AgskeefeAdultAdult editors should be on the lookout for sites with a index-dmoz.php3 extension in the URL. These sites should not be listed in this format, as they throw off the search results on the term "dmoz." In most cases the -dmoz can be removed from the url, and the sites will still work. If this is not the case, please remove these URLs. Bruns |
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