Arts
With over 270,000 listings, Arts remains the largest topical area of the directory. Go Arts!
Our last Arts recap was way back in the Spring of 2006. Much has happened since then, including the addition of many new Arts editors.
Quanchi has continued to be very active in adding new categories for Actors and Actresses, and Movies. We have also seen many new Movie and People additions from lufiaguy. shadowlight continues to expand her very specialized areas through the building of all sorts of Creatures categories. The latest efforts include Bestiaries and Winged Equines also known as Pegasi.
tedk1 and gavink remain our Music gurus and we very much appreciate their continuing efforts to keep us all on track with all things noisy.
johndouglas joined the ranks of Editall/Catmv back in July. Congrats John. Hey, if you haven’t visited John's profile page yet, have a look. It is quite an adventure. Oh, and be sure to have your sound tuned on for the full effect.
Congratulations to our End of the Year 2007 Mozzie Winners:
Best Arts Editor – gieselle
Runner up – tedk1
Best New Arts Editor – ejmeier
Runner up – ciawil
Also, congratulations to lufiaguy who recently expanded his editing permission to include all of Arts/Movies, Arts/People, and Arts/Performing_Arts/Acting/Actors_and_Actresses. Thank goodness, now he can do his own @links and relcats for all of these new categories! ciawil recently made a big jump to Arts/Literature/Children's and we are looking forward to her ideas for expanding and reworking that area. vintagecorset joined the Arts team in Design/Fashion/Corsetry/ Makers to coordinate the editing of her Girdles and Corsets Shopping category. Have fun with that!
Thanks to all of the editors who worked so hard this past year in Arts.
Business
Business is in a state of hibernation
for the Northern Hemisphere Winter. Except for the very brave and cold loving
types, most editors have headed to
To find out what we have been doing or not doing recently, try this thread:
http://forums.dmoz.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=926987
Or try this one for an example of dedication and team category building:
http://forums.dmoz.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=50909
- The Business team (Coordination: henksies and jordancpeterson)
Computers
Over the course of 2007, we had 90 new editors joining in categories within Computers, and also welcomed few older faces from other parts of the ODP who took on additional categories in the branch.
Probably the biggest change during the year was the conclusion of a long-running discussion on the handling of weblogs. This resulted in the move of personal weblogs from a subcat of Computers: Internet: On the Web: Weblogs to a new home at Society: People: Personal_Homepages: Weblogs.
We've also re-organised how many Google-related sites are listed, (acknowledging that there is more to the company than the Google Search) with a new umbrella category for Google Inc., and categories for Google Maps and Google Talk joining the pre-existing Gmail and Google Groups categories.
There have been other mini-reorgs in Java, Fonts, and File Sharing. Other significant new categories include iPhone, Second Life, MySpace, and the company categories under Computers: Companies.
Many thanks to everyone who has worked in Computers over the past year.
Games
Games, when you hear this word you think of zit-faced teenagers playing World of Warcraft all day.
It's not all about Video Games though, there are other categories in Games. One of the categories that has seen the most attention recently is Games/Online. The ongoing re-organization of the MUDs category has been at the top of the forums for the last year. A few key points of the reorganization are to sort the sites according to their programming instead of by genre. The consensus in the forum is that most people looking for a MUD are looking for certain commands offered by the various different ways these games are made.
Another interesting category that has become popular recently is Browser-Based. The Online and Browser-Based categories have become a point of contention due to the fact that they are redundant. One of the goals of the Games team this year will be to resolve this ontology issue and make it easier to find any sort of games you play in your browser or online.
Kids and Teens
Kids and Teens is a whole directory in itself. Its aim is to provide a safe place for both kids and teens in addition to catering to their specific needs. In the last few months Kind and Teens grew slowly but steadily. lufiaguy created a lot of new cats within Video Games, surely an area of interest to most of the Kids and Teens out there. cherel has done quite some work in the scouting area. Makrhod has added cats about Dieting and Vegetarianism and has done quite a lot of unseen meta work. A lot of editors contributed in their areas of interest by adding kid-friendly sites. Thanks go out to all classic editors, who send copies of kid-friendly sites over to K & T. As you know sites can be listed both in the classic directory and in K & T. There's still a lot to do and we're always looking for new editors in this exciting, somewhat different little directory.
News
News is a category that is the epitome of the highs and lows of editing at ODP.
One low point was a high point. Backlogged submissions in queues were at their lowest in December 2006. The News Team worked frantically to cleanup almost all waiting items. The result was four single digit tallies - and most of them zero.
The status across the entire News category at 28 December was just 8, 0, 0, 0 - that's 8 Greens, 0 Greenbusters, 0 Reds, and 0 Purples. Great work team!
Could this be a record? Presumably yes. Combing through the fora, we have yet to find any similar example where any category's queues have been so thoroughly drained simultaneously. But the scene 12 months later at News isn't as rosy. Numbers are up, giving eager editors the opportunity to partake in a fresh Gauntlet challenge. Can the crew match or beat its previous clean sweep? Maybe with your help, we can.
Marking another low point, the News clan has dwindled in size. News could really use some more editors. There is quite a variety of categories to choose from in this content-rich category, like News/Weblogs and News/Breaking_News. And anyone eager to earn Mozzie nomination should give serious thought to enlist for News category - as the next "Best New News Editor" needs fresh candidates. To help pique interest, 17 suggestions can be found at Test/Help Wanted/News.
Just four people have joined the News crew since the last newsletter that carried an Ontology Beat way back in Spring 2006.So a big welcome to ddrinan, aniket, docblop, mjlavin80.
The News forum has been typically quiet, with the key exception being renewed debate on a long-standing issue about the Online Archives category. First raised in November 2003, various editors have discussed the comprehensively listing each article at CNN, Wired and similar sites. It culminated January 2008 with the listings in question being moved to Test as an interim step while staff review the history, issues and community input on this matter. One upshot is that News is now the skinniest "Cat" in the pack; having shed more than 254,000 listings from its public view.
Looking ahead, the News crew can now muster towards fresh challenges. Pitch in and help News break the 10K barrier (we are currently sitting about 8830 listings). A push on the Greens and Red would help – as there are ample offerings in both. Or simply have a say over at the News forum as to when these milestones will occur.
Recreation
Are you an antique collector? Have you ever participated in scuba diving? Do you own an exotic pet?
These subjects are just a small sampling of the many topics covered in the thirty one categories of Recreation. Editors at all levels of experience are needed in many subcategories. Test/Help/Wanted/Recreation is updated every few months, and lists areas that need editors. Please check out the list to see if there are any categories that interest you. Pets, the largest category with over 28,000 entries, represents almost one fourth of the approximate 112,000 sites in Recreation.Other large categories include the Outdoors, with about 16,500 sites, and Autos, with over 8,000 sites. With Spring just around the corner, some areas could benefit from clean ups. There are now over 34,000 unreviewed sites, and more than 5,000 reds.
Regional
Since the last newsletter in December 2006, the number of listings in the Regional branch has grown by 1% from 1,115,654 to 1,127,670. Given the considerable number of listings removed after websites become unavailable, it is a positive sign that growth has been maintained.
New countries added in the last year include Regional/Caribbean/Saint Barthelemy and Regional/Caribbean/ Saint Martin, with Regional/Europe/Kosovo a likely addition in the coming months (i.e. if it gets an entry in ISO 3166).
There have been 423 new editors who signed up for a Regional category since the start of 2007, with some very active editors amongst the newcomers.
One of the most significant changes to the Regional templates has been the dismantling of the Business and Economy/Services category. The Business and Economy/Business to Business has been renamed to Business and Economy/Business Services and a Business and Economy/Personal Services category created (for personal chefs, personal valets, errand runners, and baby sitters).
Regional UK
Regional
In January this year, vintage editors were delighted to welcome back meta editor merlin1, a champion of UK Topical, who guided many of our more established editors through their early days. A number of enthusiastic editors have joined since the last newsletter but we could do with more new editors, and existing editors from other branches of the directory are always welcome. In the recent Mozzies, laigh won the best new regional editor and winchelsea was runner up, and Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/Scotland/Highland was runner up in the most improved category or reorganization.
Of the 49 counties/county boroughs in England, two thirds have more sites listed now than in May 2007 and several have increased in size by over 20%. These include Devon , East and West Sussex , East, West and South Yorkshire , Cleveland , Oxfordshire, Rutland , Somerset and Surrey . Indeed, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire have done exceptionally well, increasing by 50% over this period to over 6,600 and 4000 sites respectively.
Scotland has grown by 20% over the same period. The 20% growth mark has been achieved by Clackmannanshire, East Dunbarton , Falkirk , Highland , North Ayrshire, Perth and Kinross, South Ayrshire and West Lothian . South Ayrshire increased by over 50% to 270 sites but the gold award goes to Highland, up 150% to over 3,300 sites, a great effort by all concerned.
Wales has also done well, growing by 12% over the same timescale. Here the counties/county boroughs which exceed the 20% threshold are Blaenau Gwent, Cardiff , Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion, Flintshire, Merthyr, Neath Port Talbot and Swansea . Carmarthenshire has actually doubled in size to over 730 sites.
Northern Ireland had a small decrease in sites listed over this timescale. It may have been specially badly hit by the recent quality control blitz. As in the other countries, this overall figure masks good work by individual editors in categories at various levels.
Regional UK has been going through many changes in the last 6 months, with HUGE amounts of work getting done under the guidance of some of the senior editors. A lot of hard work has been put into bringing the topical categories at Scotland and Northern Ireland level into line with the Regional guidelines. There have been a number of other collaborative efforts of one sort and another. Some of the counties do not currently have a top level editor which gives lesser mortals a chance to increase their permissions and move up the hierarchy.
The statistics in this beat are mine, and if there are inaccuracies or ommissions, I appologize. They refer to the archive records of May 1st 2007 and the date in February on which I made the comparison. Using 20% as a cut-off point is not entirely satisfactory as it is much more difficult to reach this target with a well developed category than with a poorly developed one. It has not been possible to mention all the editors who have been doing a great job in Regional UK, but you are all noticed and appreciated. Well done everybody!
Science
The Science branch has been fairly quiet in the past year. The ontology remains largely unchanged although in the Environment sub-branch there are new subcategories for the Carbon Cycle, Climate Change and the Ozone Layer. There has also been a revision of the subcategories in Physics/Relativity and the creation of a new category Science/Events.
Every sub-branch, with the exception of Biology and Agriculture, has fewer sites listed now than it had a year ago. This is not so surprising considering there has been a large number of quality control fixes through 2006, automated removal of junk that couldn´t be identified automatically previously and can be now. Also, after the crash, tremendous amounts of junk that piled up during the outage had to be removed. Since
Biology on the other hand has seen an increase of 25% in listed sites, mostly in Flora and Fauna, which has recently surged through the 20,000 site barrier. Much work has been done in the invertebrate area of Animalia, there has been a reorganization and enlargement of the Fungi category, and Plantae has recently passed through the 10,000 site mark. Animal Behavior has also seen a considerable expansion.
Agriculture is up 20%. A new category has been created for Aquaculture, and Fisheries moved in as a subcategory. A new category Crop Plants has been created to incorporate plants other than the main Field Crops, and there is ongoing discussion as to how certain subcategories should be reorganized. Horticulture, especially Fruits, has been expanded, as has Pests and Diseases.
What the Science branch needs is extra editors. Although some categories require specialised knowledge, many others do not, and any editors who would like to dip their toes into the scientific waters would be welcome.
Shopping
Shopping has grown to nearly 103,000 sites, with a number of greens to entice editors to pick up a shopping cat and join in on the fun!
The area has proudly gone green, with lisagirl working to save the environment by promoting reusable shopping bags, with more work done in the general area of Green Living.
Budalata has been working hard to overhaul Shopping/Publications/Magazines. Colinking has worked hard to create informative charters throughout various jigsaw categories. Bullseye has been addressing the issue of car loans, to ensure that sites are correctly listed between Business and Shopping.
As usual the Shopping area is a hotbed for affiliate and mirror based spam, and to combat it many of the editors work hard weekly just to stay on top of the latest trends, which include affiliate template and MLM schemes. Some notable examples of those working hard to keep the area spam free are bullseye, theoldsarge, jjwill, and silvergren. These editors have worked hard to identify mirrors and affiliates, and request for them to be marked as such. Raggedyrugs and I have been trying to tag mirrors and affiliates, in order to identify sites that are not listable and categorize them within Test/Shopping/Affiliate_Examples. While it's impossible to stay on top of all the newest affiliate trends, we all try in order to make identification a little bit easier for others.
It's also worth mentioning that lisagirl has been working tirelessly to keep up with necessary food subcats all throughout Shopping/Food. This has shattered many of our suspicions that Shopping's famous resident chocolate lover was only there for the sweets!