Does the Open Directory Project in its current form still deserve a link on the Search Engine and Directory Snapshot?
Long ago, there was the Open Directory Project or DMOZ. DMOZ was special and vital. It was a large, curated collection of web links sorted more or less by subject. Curation, by human editors who revealed their names, was DMOZ’ shining feature because it cut out such sites as content farms, term paper mills, redirects, and other unsavory offerings. It also enabled students or any one learning about a subject to partially outsource the difficult task of evaluation. Better yet, DMOZ led to government websites, academic essays, official web pages, interviews etc…
DMOZ’ idea is of course an old one. Specialized indexes; a typical library catalog; and most databases with consistent, carefully applied subject headings use indexing/curation that direct the curious to the articles and other information they need. DMOZ (now known as Curlie) has been around since June 5, 1998. (Sherman 43)
Then on March 17, 2017, DMOZ shut down. Actually, AOL stopped hosting them. Fortunately, DMOZ’ data was open source and its creators moved as much of it as they could to CURLIE. Unlike DMOZ, CURLIE, which stands for curated URLs, was a static collection, but since most of it seemed rather recent, I changed link names, updated my Research Guides, and still offered it as a resource.
Then over winter break, CURLIE became searchable. Then despite the good news, I realized that this resources is still, alas, more than rough around the edges. There were dead links under Search Engines and URL Shorteners. There are also signs of neglect in some of the author categories under Art — Literature. The page for Stephen King is reasonably current and has plenty of links. The page for Toni Morrison is another story. Editors’ names are also missing.
Worse yet, the weak areas in CURLIE are neither the result of a technical issue nor AOL, but a human one problem. A look at the bottom of for CURLIE’s Toni Morrison page, shows that it last received an update December 19, 2015. This is a problem CURLIE inherited from . Moreover, a ten month hiatus from editing, only worsened the neglect.
And Curlie/DMOZ’ patchy, uneven coverage and update frequency started long before 2015. A critical article in Online (Jasco 60), describes out of date and missing entries among DMOZ’ listing of encyclopedias. To be sure, other writers viewed DMOZ as a glass half full. Hutchinson (1564) recommends the database with almost the same ardor that Jasco (60) warns against it. Did Hutchinson like the Open Directory Project’s idea well enough to give it an occasional benefit of the doubt?
In 2018, CURLIE’s excellent concept persists as does the need for it, yet how many editors vanished during the ten months the Open Directory Project lay static after DMOZ went silent? Will these editors or their replacements return? As of February 2018, CURLIE is only partially operational. The site suggestion feature is still not active, and the function for reporting dead links is missing.
This leaves questions about CURLIE’s future, although it is more pressing to wonder whether CURLIE has a present and deserves a link on the Search Engine and Directory Snapshot. Since I listed the site when it was static, with some out of date parts, and a few dead links and hoped it would return to searchability, the answer is probably yes for keeping the link. The return of searchability over winter break means at least some of CURLIE’s volunteer staff are helping the site make a comeback. In addition, many sections show 2018 revision dates, a sign that editing is possible. Of course CURLIE’s uneven quality is likely to remain. Will CURLIE completely solve its human issues? That is an open question. Does CURLIE fill a pressing need, and is it a good enough resource to list? The answer is still yes
Works Cited
Hutchinson, A.R. “Open Directory Project.” Choice, vol. 43, no. 9, 2006, p. 1564. Library Science Database, http://ezproxy.gsu.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/225736350?accountid=11226
Jasco, Peter. “Vivisimo, Central Search, Time Magazine, and the Open Directory Project.” Online, vol. 31, no. 1, 2007, pp. 57-60. Library Science Database, http://ezproxy.gsu.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/199963768?accountid=11226
Sherman, Chris. “Humans do it Better Inside the Open Directory Project.” Online, vol.24, no.4, pp.43-50. Library Science Database, http://ezproxy.gsu.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/199953665?accountid=11226