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Arts has been growing in numbers recently, both in sites and in editors. The Welcome Wagon effort has been rejuvenated, with editors stepping up to the plate to offer words of wisdom to our newest editors. "Issues" threads continue to thrive, discussing topics in areas including Celebrities, Music, Movies, and Anime.
Discussions about sites of a slightly Adult nature continue as well. Editors can ask questions about specific sites in "Is This Site Adult?", while the issue of literature sites (such as fan fiction, poetry, and original prose) is raised in this new thread, created by ffabris and spacer.
Arts has also seen the promotion of many prominent editors to positions such as CatEditall, Editall/Catmv, and Meta. Congratulations to all of them, and thank you to all of the editors who have been contributing their time,effort, and knowledge to the growth of the Arts tree.
Since the last ontology beat in September we have seen a number of interesting and worthwhile contributions from editors both old and new.
Editor asa's determination pays dividends with his reorganisation of Electrics and Electronics.
Our new catmod, henksies, still found enough time to reorganize Papermaking, and to create a new topic for Hygiene Disposables.
Our latest editall, bettysue, continues her quest for a better structure in Energy.
The resident experts in Machinery and Tools, editors dpollock and zaytran, combine to create a new category for Cutting and Machining.
New editor, timski, gets to grips with Conveyors and Elevators.
Other areas of interest include a new category for Fashion, and a reorganisation of the Wireless category.
- ddrj
The Biz Team (as usual) is running a brisk business with all the greens, reds and blanks that are everywhere. The Electronics and Electrical Team challenged the Aviation Team to see who could get the greens and reds to zero. They both started off at about 1200 greens (and very few reds) and as of last count Aviation had about 1100 greens and Electronics and Electrical had 200 (who do you think is going to win?). Congratulations to both teams for doing a terrific job!
From the challenge has come discussion on issues within Aviation. Other re-orgs include Poultry, Extended Warranty Dealer Services, Graphic Design, Transportation/Rail and Transportation/Forwarding, NVO and Customs.
Some category renames that have taken place include the change of International_Business and Trade/Consulting/Government to 'Political and Economic Risk', Translation Services to just 'Translation' and many changes and merges of subcats in Financial Services.
Other discussions include What is Manufacturing for and rewriting the Top Level Description for Business (a draft has been written by rdkeating25 (staff)). Also, rdkeating25 has announced, with the consensus of the Meta community, concerning Networking-MLM (Multi Level Marketing), that:
"We will list only the parent sites for MLM's in the MLM category. A MLM category will be created in Test for the Independent Representative sites. The Test/MLM category will serve as reference for the editors to help them identify and manage these sites. This Test category will serve as an organization knowledge bank for what we have learned about MLM affiliate sites over the years. The goal of this is to comply with the guidelines and policies concerning affiliate sites."
As always, Biz could use your help! We have the highest percentage of unreviewed for a top-level category. So come on over and apply for something that will suit your fancy. If you can't find something that interests you, post in our Help Wanted thread and we'll give you plenty of ideas.
Computers has been fairly quiet in recent months, some recent projects include finding homes for categories such as Z88DK and WWW4Mail. Another successful project was the re-org of Programming/Methodologies. WDaD/Authoring also went through a major overhaul.
However, the largest project by far in recent weeks however has been the Web_Design_and_Development/Designers reorganisation. With over 600 forum posts in under a week, the WDaD/Designers reorg has finally been agreed upon by local editors and is in full swing. Re-reviewing and moving 23,000 sites is a big job though so if you have a penchant for web design they need your help! Drop by the latest WDaD reorg thread and see what you can do.
- enarra
It's been a quiet period for games editors recently. However, some issues continue to lurk in the background and are likely to return shortly. In the mean time Games editors have continued to deal smoothly with several small issues of game placement, and deeplinks. We've also welcomed a couple of large batches of new editors to our dynamic team and look forward to the arrival of more! Lets get those greens down!
- enarra
A recent insurgence of new, enthusiastic editors has brought with it a renewed interest in the current taxonomy of Health and its relationship with the Regional tree, at http://dmoz.org/forum/threaddisplay.cgi?t=Forum2/HTML/001399.html.
As a result of these discussions, a much improved ontology is in the offing, making life easier for submitters and users; in the hopes of making a more complete and useful directory.
We're happy to announce that the Health tree has surpassed the 60,000 site mark with both new and long time editors doing large amounts of work in the continued hope of surpassing other trees in size.
Congratulations goes out to cpwoz, who was named Health's first cateditall, and who has excelled in her new role.
Finally, I'd like to put out a plea to all editors in other trees to assist us in our struggle against the green-tide. Since the last newsletter unrevieweds have doubled, and there is not let up in sight as to when this number may become manageable again. So please donate some time and help us.
Home has a new CatMod, me! Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or suggestions.
The Home/Cooking team remains busy. Stop by our discussion thread, in its third iteration: http://dmoz.org/forum/threaddisplay.cgi?t=Forum9/HTML/000286.html or better yet, find a neglected Cooking category and sign up! kmsiever has joined Home/Cooking/World_Cuisines/North_American and recipegal has been filling out the Sandwich categories, but there are still plenty more available.
strategy is busy reorganizing Home/Gardens/Plants and would love your opinions. Check out the thread at http://dmoz.org/forum/threaddisplay.cgi?t=Forum9/HTML/000309.html
Home/Family/Parenting/ is also under review. See http://dmoz.org/forum/threaddisplay.cgi?t=Forum9/HTML/000310.html for the lowdown.
Reds are nearly under control since the last Robo run, but greens are back above 7000. Come and join us. And don't forget to introduce yourself at http://dmoz.org/forum/threaddisplay.cgi?t=Forum9/HTML/000237.html.
Keep an eye on http://dmoz.org/forum/threaddisplay.cgi?t=Forum9/HTML/000302.html. That's where you'll find announcements and such, including the new Home/ Contest! (coming soon)
- suzy1212
Kids and Teens is almost on its way to 20,000 sites. At the moment it is at 19,187 sites and will hopefully continue to grow.
Since December, Kids and Teens has finished its reorganization of Summer camps and had a very successful move. The move would've never been successful without the great efforts that the Kids and Teens editing team performed.
Also recently K&T held the Kids and Teen Mozzies. This was a way to recognize the individual and group achievements that happen every day in Kids and Teens. Congratulations to all the winners and nominees!
Our newest kmeta, mgbgt, has recently started up a mozzie mentors programfor K&T and has gotten a lot of attention out of it. The program will be a great addition to Kids and Teens and will hopefully make new editors into professional editors in no time.
- zeph15
News has had some editor turnover in recent months and, after a long period of inactivity in the forums, is getting some long over due attention. Lead by patu, several ontological problems are being discussed and solved. Editors with an interest in news, or looking for an editing challenge, are encouraged to give this tree a second look.
- enarra
Summer has arrived in the northern hemisphere, and Recreation editors have been gearing up for the many activities that take place during the season. Transportation is always important these months, and Autos, Boating, and Trains and Railroads editors have steadily been preparing. Travel is working to pull together a comprehensive set of guidelines and once again everything is under intense scrutiny in an effort to locate and appropriately handle misplaced or inappropriate sites. Outdoors underwent a reorganization to clear up and resolve taxonomy issues; the Geocaching subcategory arose in the midst of the discussion. In conjunction with editors from Kids and Teens, two new subcategories were created for Yo-yos and Summer Camps. Various branches of Pets have been active lately, and the full category is rapidly approaching 25,000 sites. Knives has been doing some spring-cleaning as well, and several subcategories are moving to Shopping. Overall, Recreation is on the move as its recent leadership assists in the team effort to resolve long-overdue problem areas.
- mngolden
The area of Reference/Education/K_through_12/Home_Schooling/ has probably never had the attention it's been receiving in the last few months, primarily from editors homeed and suzy1212. Unrevieweds are being dealt with and various misplaced categories are being combined and/or moved to better homes. homeed has also been singlehandedly working on Reference/Education/Products_and_Services/Home_Education/ to get it in better shape.
thebrian asked for Ohio State University to be renamed The Ohio State University, and was persuasive (or was it insistent?) enough to be granted the request. This is not a trend in college category names, though.
Many of the original encyclopedia deeplinnks are starting to come up with 404 errors due to page re-addressing. There is no sensible way to deal with these (we're talking about thousands of reds) other than to move them to Test/Reference where they await further discussion. It is probable that the main URLs will get a listing and the deeplinks will not.
Law schools are getting a new home. Previously kept in Reference/Education they will move to a subcategory in Society/Law.
anthronet has worked hard (and quietly) to make Reference/Knowledge_Management more current and useful. He's also added some very needed category descriptions to the area.
The Shopping/ people think they might want to handle part of Reference/Education/Products_and_Services/.
Reference/Biography and Reference/Dictionaries/Biographical have received some attention with regards to what belongs in each and how to link them.
Editor dlugan has spent some time straightening up the Reference/Dictionaries area and making it easier to navigate.
dlugan has also spent some time thinking about the Reference/Education/Colleges_and_Universities/ template and has listed some possible changes/updates in the forum.
Finally, do you know the difference between Unschooling and Homeschooling? I didn't either until I started a thread about it. Read and see the answer for yourself :)
To see "all" that has been happening in the Reference area over the past year take a look at the last 90 or so threads in the forum.
- kctipton
The splitting of the Regional forum has increased the number and visibility of threads and issues under discussion. After much hue-and-cry from the tree's editors, Regional Metas and Catmods brought the Regional Template up to date after a year and a half. In an effort to make this task easier in the future, several of the key topical areas split off into separate threads to discuss solutions to under-developed, misunderstood, or problem areas as evidenced by discussions for Science and Environment and the Real Estate FAQ. The escalation of the Regional Gauntlets' popularity resulted in dlugan creating a tool for tracking the multiple Gauntlets. Parts of the world where English is not the native language are much more prominent, and an increase in editors, number of sites, and the caretaking of these categories is much improved.
- mngolden
A busy six months has seen many promotions within Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom, giving a solid, experienced editing team. Lots of new editors have been welcomed too, many of whom have already made significant contributions to the category.
The first three months of the year were largely dominated by a lively debate about the UK level topical categories, and whether or not Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom should be following the US model and pushing sites down to localities as much as possible. After staff and meta discussion, new guidelines for UK level topical categories were finally issued in mid March, and seem to have worked well so far.
Some excellent work in Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/Health cleared a backlog of greens and sorted out some confusing and complicated ontology. Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/Northern_Ireland also saw much improvement thanks to the combined efforts of new and existing editors. As I write, editors are putting the finishing touches to the updated version of the British-English regional template, following the hard work done by those who updated the main template.
The intricacies of England county divisions, the finer points of which are hard to pin down given England's mixture of ceremonial vs. administrative boundaries, are still giving some cause for concern. Bristol, Manchester, Kent/London and Lancashire have all come under the spotlight, and editors continue to work towards solutions which cater for all eventualities whilst still sticking to the regional guidelines.
- merlin1
The Natural Languages editors became an active editing TEAM and made many improvements to the organization and content of Science/Social_Sciences/Language_and_Linguistics/Natural_Languages/ -- dmoz's increasingly comprehensive guide to the languages of the world. Outbreaks of enthusiastic editing activity have been observed throughout Science/, notably in Astronomy, Chemistry, Physics, and Psychology. In the forums, Science/ editors breathed a sigh of relief when the "Potato Cannons" category was not moved to Science.
- orlady
Shopping continues to grow as a category with many new additions and reorganizations. The areas of Shopping/Health and Shopping/Children have successfully completed recent reorganizational work. Ongoing reorganizations are occurring in Shopping/Antiques_and_Collectibles, Shopping/Home_and_Garden/Emergency_Supplies, and Shopping/Publications/Books. Newly added from the Recreation/ branch are categories Shopping/Recreation/Guns and Shopping/Recreation/Knives, and from Society/ came Shopping/Recreation/Genealogy. A big thank you to all of the editors past and current who have worked hard on these projects.
- timspfd
Society/Law/Legal_Information/ is being examined in detail with discussions about content, listing standards and possible regionalization.
It's planes, ships and wars in Society/Military and Society/History. There's been lots of discussion about new subcats, clarifying grey areas and adding new sites.
Always a busy area, Religion and Spirituality discussions have run the gamut recently. Topics have included Scientology, Christianity/Denominations, regionalizing Buddhist centers, and Native American sweat lodges.
- brigid23
Over the last several months, Sports has gained three top level editors, a cateditall, and several involved editalls. A big thanks go to all those working in Blankbusters who did a complete number on sites without descriptions. And our Greenbuster in Basketball has managed to basically wipe out the greens in that Sport!
Several categories have completed or are in the process of reorgs or general cleanups including Wrestling, Skiing, Cycling, Martial Arts and NASCAR. Equestrian continues to battle the greens. Due to a major effort by all, Sports was the first branch to "get the red out" after the last Robo run.
- gti96
World continued to expand, faster than any other tree in the directory. The size of World is closing on the size of Regional, and it seems like these two top level categories are competing with each other for the 1,000,000 mark.
Italiano (51%), Dansk (47%) and Català (46%) are some of the trees with the largest growth percentage. As taxonomy expands, editors learn to use altlangs in order to give more coherency between languages.
- vladd
After a period of relative inactivity due to lack of editors, we have had a big influx of new editors over the past few months, and finally we have a "can do" team that has led the team to have a growth rate in excess of 70% since February. Greens are now also down to about 6%.
Attendant to this is a massive development in ontology. The Business tree ontology is taking shape rapidly, spearheaded by iamfisher and huanghe - thinking back, if I had compared its state half a year ago and its state now, I'd find it unrecognisable. Other categories are developing at a speedy pace as well. The Regional template is slowly being revised under the leadership of zqboy, the intention being that it would suit the needs of China more closely. There are other ontological improvements and build ups that are also significant, but due to the lack of space I've been unable to mention all of them.
Overall, a period of sterling growth and I am honoured to serve in this team. Well done, everybody, for your hard work!
- yklaw
The Spring offered a new spirit to the Romanian team. Computere/Internet and Recreatie are the most important areas where reorganizations based on forum discussions took place.
In Regional, Romania and Moldova were moved under Europa, and now all countries are under the suitable continents. Catfiller and greenbuster projects are used in order to contribute with new additions to the category, and categories get more and more developed each day.
Romanian Translation:
Primavara a adus un nou spirit echipei din World/Romana. Computere/Internet si Recreatie sunt cele mai importante zone in care au avut loc reorganizari pe baza discutiilor din forum.
In Regional, Romania si Moldova au fost mutate sub Europa, iar acum toate tarile sunt plasate sub un continent. Proiectele Catfiller and Greenbuster sunt utilizate pentru a contribui cu noi site-uri, iar categoriile continua sa se extinda in fiecare zi.
- vladd
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