Hello Shlomi, Like most perennial ideas, there is certainly value in this one. There are two big wikis that do this that you might take a look at to hone your ideas (you might even suggest changes to them directly):
http://www.wikiindex.org/WebsiteWiki (german, 1M sites) http://www.wikiindex.org/AboutUs (english, 10M sites) SJ On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Shlomi Fish <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all! > > This is a request-for-comments (RFC) about an idea that had surfaced on > #wikipedia at the time about creating an open web directory similar to > http://www.dmoz.org/ only world-editable and with a more convenient > interface. > This was motivated after I was referred to the "Wikipedia is not a web > directory" section of: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not > > History of Web Directories: > --------------------------- > > I'm not sure how many of the younger folks here are very familiar with the > history and motivation behind web directories, so I'll explain a little to > the > best of my knowledge. > > Back when the Internet and the World Wide Web started to become popular, > search engines were much less accurate than Google, or the search engines > that > now compete with it, using similar algorithms. As a result, it was often > hard > to find stuff on the Internet using Lycos or different search engines. As a > result, people have actively used web-directories and especially yahoo.com > (which started as a hand-maintained directory by two Stanford students, and > grew into a successful Internet company), as a way to find resources that > were > considered high-quality by human editors. > > Yahoo and similar directories organised the content in a tree of > categories, > with some stuff like "symbolic links", etc. Part of the problem with Yahoo > was > that it was closed for edits only by human editors, which caused it to > quickly > grow out-of-date. As a result, it was eventually surpassed in > comprehensiveness and accuracy by dmoz.org: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Directory_Project > > dmoz.org gained some notoriety after Google periodically mirrored it as > the > Google directory (with some enhancements like sort-by-page-rank and a > faster > load time, and a better search). Eventually, Google removed it from their > front page and search results in favour of Froogle and other stuff which > were > in my (possibly non-representative) opinion much less useful than their > Directory, and dmoz.org went into much greater obscurity. Soon afterwards, > the > English wikipedia and other wikimedia projects started gaining a lot of > momentum, popularity and page rank, which caused it to rank high among many > search engine searches (although to the defence of Google and other search > engines, one should note that they do seem to have a diversification > algorithm, which makes the search results not be dominated by a single > source > - whether wikipedia.org or whatever). > > Why a Web Directory: > -------------------- > > While I enjoy the English wikipedia a lot (and have contributed to it - > see: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shlomif ), I still think that web > directories have been having (or possibly and unfortunately "had been > having") > their advantages and appeal. The primary reason is because they list any > site > of interest, including many that would be considered as not "notable" > enough > for inclusion under the relevant "External Links" in the Wikipedia, but > still > may prove of interest. They also serve a similar purpose to the wikipedias' > category pseudo-trees of allowing to find similar articles of interest. > > A lot of techno-geeks are now saying "Category trees are dead! Tags are the > future". It is true that traditionally the filesystems of popular operating > systems such as UNIX (e.g: Linux, Mac OS X, etc.), DOS/Windows, etc. are > organised in a directory tree and not a tag, which inspired a lot of > Internet- > stuff to be similar (as the protocols mirrored the semantics of the UNIX > file > system). However, there are many good reasons (besides > ease-of-implementation) > why they are organised in a hierarchy, instead of in free-form tags. (You > can > see the Google Reader feeds-organised-in-tags or the Flock browser huge > tag- > based bookmarks menu for why they sometimes fail). Not to mention that like > in > wikipedia, a certain resource can be tagged with more than one category > like > Isaac Newton ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton ) belongs to > "17th- > century English people" , "Fellows of the Royal Society" , "English > alchemists", etc. > > So I still think the idea of a web directory appeals to me. > > The problems with ODP/dmoz.org: > ------------------------------- > > As someone who used to be a dmoz.org editor, I found two main problems > with > it: > > 1. Too much red-tape: an editor could only edit the categories he was given > permissions for, and not anything above. There were some meta-editors who > can > edit anything and can also give permissions for more categories which take > time, but I still have been thinking that the best thing would be a > wikipedia- > like "everyone can edit everything unless explicitly forbidden" thing. > > Another thing I didn't like about this red-tape and authority was an > incident > where as I edited the Perl "FAQs, Tutorials and Helps" category and added a > sub-category of "Tutorials" where I placed some stuff. Then when an editor > reviewed my work when I asked for another category, they didn't like the > fact > that one of the texts for the mission statement only reflected my thoughts, > and so deleted the category and moved everything I wrote their to the > parent > category. This naturally was a destructive change that made me frustrated, > as > I would have been happy to change the mission statement or guidelines of > the > category after the fact. > > 2. The UI was lacking: there were many forms required to review, submit > and/or > edit a single link, the editing server was kinda slow, there was very > little > AJAX, and editing in general was much less convenient than the wikipedia > edit > link which gives a gigantic textarea with a convenient and concise syntax. > > ------------- > > For a long time I felt guilty about not dedicating enough time to edit > dmoz.org, and had reminders to edit it occasionally (which I tended to > ignore) > but eventually passively stopped editing. I now realise I could not be > blamed > for my lack of enthusiasm. > > Note that I still feel that dmoz.org is a useful resource which is often > fun > and useful. As great as the Wikipedia is, I still think there's a place for > a > high-profile web-directory. Maybe this is one of the trends that will > become > retro, like push technology which was considered a fad was re-incarnated as > RSS/Atom feeds which seem to have gained a lot of popularity, and even > proved > to have some business potential. > > The Challenges of a more open / more free web directory: > -------------------------------------------------------- > > I'm not sure that a wikimedia-sponsored web directory is a good idea yet. > But > here are some thoughts about the challenges: > > 1. The three S's: Spam, spam, spam. A web directory is likely to be a huge > spam target and will need good anti-spam controls. However, I personally > think > that while spam should be a factor we take into consideration, it should > not > prevent us from creating new and exciting user-contributed web sites. > > One of the reasons I hate spam is not so much that I am bothered by it > arriving in my inbox, but rather because it makes some people paranoid. My > personal web-site contains an <a href="mailto:[email protected]"; > rel="webmaster">[email protected]</a> E-mail at the bottom of each page, > but > lately most sites I visited either had it obscured under many ways, or even > just had a contact form. Some people have even told me that I should hide > my > web address to reduce the amount of spam I receive because "prevention is > better than the cure". > > I'm sorry, but I'd rather not destroy paradise just so I can save it. I'd > rather see some spam on blogs and in E-mail than destroy their > usability/accessibility, and by corrollary think that a more open web- > directory should not have fear of spam as the main obstacle in its way. > > 2. We may wish to build upon the existing data of the ODP which is > syndicated > as machine-readable data under this licence: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Directory_License > > Which: > > <<<<<<<< > The Free Software Foundation describes the ODL as a non-free license, > citing > the right to redistribute a given version not being permanent, and the > requirement to check for changes to the license. > >>>>>>>> > > Whether something is indeed free/open or not is a term of much debate as I > mention here in a somewhat different context: > > > http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/open-source/foss-licences-wars/ > > Whether the interpretation of the FSF to the freeness of the licence is > correct here, and whether it matters much in this case (as RMS himself was > quoted as saying that commercial games can have "non-free" art and plots as > long as their engines are free and it was OK ethically and morally). Still > it > may prove to be a problem if we want to gain some public acceptance for the > directory. > > 3. Shouldn't we try to convince dmoz.org to remedy the two problems I've > mentioned, rather than starting our own competing and diverging effort? > > ----------------------- > > Like I said earlier, I'm still very sceptical about whether this idea will > work and be a good one. At the moment, I'm unemployed by choice, but still > have many other endeavours and different priorities and so cannot commit to > dedicating a lot of time to this wiki-directory. I'm already active in the > English wikipedia, the English wiktionary, used to edit the English > wikiquote > and would like to work again, and naturally have my own web-sites and blogs > (not really wikis, though I have comments there), which often take greater > precedence and interest. So my expectation is that if such an effort is > started, it will need to grow organically in a similar way that wikinews or > wikibooks or some of the popular topical Wikia wikis have gained public > acceptance. > > Regards, > > Shlomi Fish > > -- > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ > "Star Trek: We, the Living Dead" - http://shlom.in/st-wtld > > Chuck Norris read the entire English Wikipedia in 24 hours. Twice. > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
