DMOZ Editor Accounts: Churn and Burn
The ODP puts out an annual report on growth and other statistics. Some of the stats:
- Robozilla was ran deeply through DMOZ twice last year.
- The number of listings in the directory grew 5% last year.
- Active editor accounts on 1 January 2005: ~8,000
- New editors accepted in 2005: 4,776
- Active editor accounts on 31 December 2005: ~ 7,744
That is some SERIOUS editor churn going on there!
via SEW forums
- Y! MyWeb
too short a time out
One cause would be because the time out is too short - if you dont log in for.. I think its only 2 weeks? Then the system kills your account.
You can apply for readmission (I've done it) but it was only because someone mentioned it on another forum that I knew it was possible; nothing obvious on the public site, and you don't get an email telling you what happened, so you don't know why your login doesn't work anymore. :(
So, go off on holidays, come back and you don't have a dmoz account anymore :(
I guess its good from the point of view of 'we only want dedicated editors' - but I think its impractical. Very few people *should* make DMOZ their life, really.
<logs in to account again to make sure it doesnt time out>
4 months
the article said the editor inactivity timeout is 4 months
4 months?
It does? Wow - I would not have thought it was that long that I was off.
Seriously.
*shrug*
"So, go off on holidays,
"So, go off on holidays, come back and you don't have a dmoz account anymore :("
There's a special thread in the editors forum where you can notify the metas you'll be away for a while.
*laughs* I've never managed
*laughs* I've never managed to find *anything* in those forums :)
Thinking about it more, it seems silly to kill the accounts like that - why not just remove the directory privs and leave the account?
Ah, well, its their party :)
inactivity timeout
the article said the editor inactivity timeout is 4 months
It also said that a suspended acct. can be reactivated, and that is not true, unfortunately, despite the fact that there is a special form for this purpose. Happened to me last year after a longer outage caused by health issues. In fact that means, that a suspended editor must apply again, that's against the rules, so the application gets declined. Over and out. Sigh.
Why Won't it DIE?
Enough is enough already.
Corrupt?
I suppose once all those new editors have got their own sites in there's not much point anymore.