You know, I was a whiz at algebra. It was such a logical thing. I was great at it... unless it was too late at night and I was bogged down by the events of my day, or all the kids were outside and my thoughts drifted to what I WANTED to be doing instead of the rhythm of the problems I was trying to solve, or I had spent so many hours thinking about what I was doing that I ended up circling my brain to the point of forgetting what the objective was.

Over the two-plus years we have been in existence, I think we too have, from time to time, ended up circling our own collective brain to the point where we sometimes forget what the objective is.

When Gnuhoo (later "Newhoo" and still later "ODP") was first launched, the stated mission was -- well, here's what Wired said: "NewHoo's goal is to become the largest and most comprehensive directory on the Net, and it hopes to meet it with people power."

Lately, we have been seeing many threads which advocate banning submissions from sites based solely on the number of deeplinks or domains that they have. Does it not make more sense to judge every submission -- every page -- on its own merits? To add to the directory when a submission offers original content which may be useful to a searcher? Of course it does. Unless you've ended up circling your own brain...

Recently, we have seen a scary trend in ODP. We seem to remove listings almost as often as we add them. We look askance at every submission. Submitters and webmasters are not our natural enemy. Without them, we would have to hunt for sites ourselves. We delete listings based on concepts having nothing to do with the usefulness of the content.

Yes, there are unethical submitters. A lot of them. Even so, does the fact that someone submits repeatedly make their pages less content-filled, less valuable? Generally not, I would say.

The guidelines state: "The site should have useful content; while it is important to increase the number of listings in the directory, it is also necessary to ensure that they are quality listings." That is the yardstick we should be using. Our more experienced editors need to be clear on this point so that they can mentor new editors correctly.

The number of unreviewed sites has become so overwhelming that some editors are simply chossing to power delete entire categories of submissions. I've been an editor for over two years, and I know the feeling that I get when I enter a category with 300 unreviewed. Frankly, my inclination is often to simply close my browser. I know I'm not alone.

Many submitters submit to the wrong category. Okay, so they aren't as experienced as we are. Wait! Come to think of it, there have been many times when I have moved a site to Computers: Internet: Commercial_Services when it should have gone to Computers: Internet: WWW. Or to Business: Small_Business when it should have gone to Business:Opportunities. Thank goodness I wasn't banned for it!

And how about the fact that the experts suggest that you resubmit after 2 weeks, 3 weeks, and even 5 weeks if you haven't been listed? How does THAT impact the unreviewed for a category which has been piling up since November 9, 1999? Yes. There really ARE unreviewed from that date. How many times do you think this poor guy has resubmitted? What are the odds he'll be labelled a spammer or oversubmitter, or that his site will be power deleted strictly because he submitted so many times?

Our descriptions are being whittled down to such a small stream of unhelpful words that in many cases, some searches no longer pull up relevant results. And we're not the only ones who are discussing that fact in our forums. It's mentioned all over the Internet.

It is true that we do not put keyword lists in our descriptions, but isn't it also true that if we delete all keywords from descriptions, we are preventing users from finding what we've indexed once it leaves the ODP? Balance. We need to find a balance.

The guidelines state: "The site should have useful content; while it is important to increase the number of listings in the directory, it is also necessary to ensure that they are quality listings."

We need to remember that our initial objective was to drain the swamp.