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Happy Birthday and Welcome in World!
World/Ossetian, published in February 2007. Congrats to toplevel editor ossetia!
- World/Furlan, published in March 2008. Congrats to bigmarlin and lea42!
Bulgarian
During the last year, we have doubled the amount of the listed sites, improved the quality of the listings and created a small Kids and Teens category. By doing this we were noticed by the web community in Bulgaria, new editors joined the project and a lot of submissions were done. Although there isn't a native Bulgarian speaking meta editor, we receive a lot of help from senior editors. And we are very proud of our brand new Bulgarian-language Regional category: after a big reorg, it covers all Bulgarian Regions, Districts and localities now.
- budalata
Chinese Simplified
2007 has been quite a busy year for
World/Chinese Simplified editors. We have six top level editors now - a new record.
In the forum editors shared their understanding on general category building, editing guidelines and reorganization proposals. A few discussions worth highlighting are: more regional categories were reorganized following the regional template established in 2006; storytelling might be the longest discussion we have seen recently; smaller and more specific discussions never stopped with new questions raised and answered, new categories proposed and created. There was collective quality control effort against reds, spam and sites that collect/copy contents from other websites.
The Mozzie Awards was really a new years gift for all the awarded editors. Just like the Chang'e 1 marked a milestone for China's Lunar Exploration Program, we celebrated 30,000 sites before the new year began. We will continue to grow in 2008, the Olympic year.
To improve editing skills and remove the language barriers, more editors are welcome to join the DMOZ Documentation Project and DMOZWIKI Chinese. [Chinese Simplified Version]
Dansk
Since the last issue of the newsletter, 41 new editors have joined the World/Dansk branch. A warm welcome to all of you!
emil2004 has been promoted to Editall/Catmv, sollok to Cateditall in mads2000 to Meta in the period. Congratulations to all of them.
World/Dansk efforts have been focused on QC this period. We have been clearing out "strange" sub categories, ratifying ontology to the English language categories and cleaning up over all. poetryboy made a huge contribution in the tedious job of red busting (checking and correcting) thousands of sites marked red by Robozilla (our link checking spider). This work actually reduced the total number of listings in World/Dansk by 5% (approx. 3000 sites) in the period. Confident, that our part now has unique content, the hunt for new listings begins again. There is still a lot of potential on the Danish Internet. ( pbj )
As announced in the October 2005 Ontology Beats, a new Danish law has resulted in major changes in the public structure. These changes have called for extensive changes in World/Dansk/Regional/Europa/Danmark.
On the 3rd of February a group of 6 World/Dansk editors meet at the sports pub o'Learys at Copenhagen Central Station for a get-together. The last one was back in October 2003. We had a great time and the hours just flew by. It is definitely something worth doing again. For editors interested to see some pictures from our get-together, please see: http://odp.dmozblog.dk/sammenkomst08/
The domain http://www.dmoz.dk (owned by the Danish company TDC) is now redirecting to dmoz.org, thanks to editor pbj, who sent them a mail and asked them to do it.
- The World/Dansk team (Coordination: emil2004)
Deutsch
World/Deutsch forums were almost silent after the crash in 2007. Due to several limitations in functionality and uncertainty about the future of the ODP several editors lost their interest in editing. Many editors timed out and timed out editors had and still have problems with the re-activiation of their accounts. How many of them we lost we don't know. But we received plenty emails from editors with problems in response to the email that was sent out after sensible editing became possible again.
Threads and surveys about the future of the ODP were filled: things we need and things we would like to have. But although so much more visible effort is put into this project than ever before, we still don't know where we are heading. This is annoying for editors who spent so much time in developing what we have now.
Many new editors were joined in the meantime. They cannot bring back the knowledge we lost when long standing editors left, however they bring new spirit and new energy. Granting extended permissions lead to more efficient work in World/Deutsch branches and in the cooperation between them. We are gathering speed again!
If we manage to forget about quesions like "Does it make sense at all to do something now or will it be made redundant in near future by whatever change AOL might bring about?" and if we find a way to integrate new editors better and faster, then we will have a lot more to report in the next newsletter. (rentier)
The Gesundheit (Health) team was certainly one of the more active last year and we are proud bearers of the Mozzie Award for best category 5000+ sites. So what happened since the last newsletter?
World/Deutsch/Gesundheit (World/German/Health) now has 17600 sites but only 120 Greens. We can keep the number of Greens between 0,6 - 0,8 % most of the time and quality work is fantastic because everyone helps, not just cateditall+.
The restructuring of Ernährung (Nutrition) and in connection with it reorganisation of Hormone, Ernährung, Stoffwechsel (Endocrine Disorders) and Verdauungsapparat (Digestive Disorders) is finished. The inconsistency of having some allergies listed in Verdauungsapparat, some in Ernährung and some in Hormone is now resolved. All so called "diets" are now listed in Gewichtsreduktion.
And last but not least the changes to the therapists category in Psyche finished as well. After long discussion whether and how to realize a structure according to the curriculum of a therapist a way was found which also allows to list Heilpraktiker mit psychotherapeutischer Ausbildung.
So what are the next steps? First of all we want to simplify the category structure where therapists are listed. The way it was done so far - list all doctors, Masseure, Logopäden topically - was very brave but results in too much work for regional and health editors. A topical directory of all doctors and therapists is not only very time consuming but also against the way people use the directory. Together with regional editors we will decide which parts are best be moved to Regional and which categories will just cease to exist.
The next project will be new categories laid out after the structure in Health - Angeborene Fehlbildungen (Congenital_Anomalies) and Seltene Erkrankungen (Rare_Disorders). The new structure is already created in Test and will be moved once we are ready. Rare disorders will be a subcat of Krankheiten und Beschwerden (Conditions and Diseases) and will be @linked from appropriate categories.
All of the above happens on top of regular quality works - thanks to robozilla and those editors who provide lists or use the quality tools to keep the good quality.
We want to improve and maybe one day the wish from our "I have a dream" Thread will come true - no more Greens in Health. (hinni)
Until recently Musik (Music) was divided in two areas: Musiker (Musicians) and Genres. Theoretically musicians should be found in both areas depending on their name and the genre they belong to. This was mainly achieved by duplicating sites. However it proved too difficult to keep it up and by the end of 2007 we decided not to continue with it. The main reasons were that too little editors couldn't do twice the work and there were no tools to help with the work. Musiker (Musicians) was built back and all sites were moved to the appropricate Genre category leaving Musiker empty except for relcat links. The links for "suggest site" and "become an editor" were disabled so that we now have an easier and clearly arranged structure and a lot less (unneccesary) work. The only disadvantage - not finding musicians in case the genre is unknown - is resolved by appropriate @links. (grhackner)
Once again Gesellschaft (Society) draws near the 32.000 sites mark. Major works were done by editor cls in Familie (Family) and shenhemu in Hilfe und Entwicklung (Aid_and_Development/). We could also welcome freewolli as Greenbuster for Gesellschaft. (tschecht)
Freizeit (Recreation) currently has 98 active editors of which 38 were joined since February 2007. Unfortunately many activities lost momentum due to the Crash and some did not return to the same energy and quality since. However there are still editors about who care about the project and don't mind long editing sessions to accomplish some of the tasks. So we are proud to say we managed to break the 30.000 only recently.
Terraristik was restructured to improve the linkage between the categories and make it clearer. The same will be done for Aquaristik shortly.
Another target is to reduce the number of unreviewed to under 3.000. We also need to rework category descriptions to improve their quality and meaning. (osiria)
With 214.000 listed sites, 350 active editors (150 joined after February 2007) Regional is the strongest branch in World/Deutsch at the moment. In the last months the focus lay on the reform of the counties in Sachsen-Anhalt and update of the administrative structures in Schleswig-Holstein.
Big thanks go to uzs980, boni und cls for their tireless efforts to keep up with the work. I also want to thank those numerous editors fighting the thousands of unreviewed.
We improved the health part of the regional template, added a few categories and found a common understanding for some difficult category names.
Last but not least I want to mention the reorganization of Polen. The main problem was with the category structure which had state/locality/county. In a few weeks we will have finished changing it to state/county/locality. Special thanks go to sicherlich for his work in Lodz and useful input the the discussions about the reorg, to che2105 for writing the required Move-requests and to liszt for doing them. (che2105) [Deutsche Version]
Français
In the first months of 2007, World/Français has crossed the threshold of 200,000 listed sites, 222,222 is the next target! Many editors have publicized this event in French-speaking fora - Geol
was one of them -, both within and outside of Dmoz, as well as in social media on the 'net. Shortly before, we've survived the Great Crash of 2006. A big thank you
to all the Editors and Metas who kept our community well enough to bear this event. I would like to mention our Meta "librarian" Tuisp, who never lost faith in our project and partner.
Last year, we have celebrated two brand new Metas eating chocolate or drinking champagne, cheers Alfy and Chokk! A big thank you too to all of these Editors who took part in the survey in order to push Dmoz forward. It is worth noting that Editors from this side of World did this work for themselves too, because they improved their knowledge in fields like folksonomy, Web 3.0 and semantics. Areas of the directory are presented monthly by our cat hunter, Alfy, in the blog of the French-speaking Organization of Editors in Dmoz, the famous AEF-Dmoz . Editors who share portals like kids.aef-dmoz.org, www.scoutmoz.org – by Francolin, musique.aef-dmoz.org - by Misterti (classical music) and ultraviolet.aef-dmoz.org - by Astrozygote (sustainable development).
Our tools for public relationship have been greatly enhanced, thanks to Kazhar, with a new look and feel in our official unofficial blog. We have now, thanks to "The A Team", brand new banners, improved statistical analysis "webwares" and our charismatic Meta, Cmic, is working on cool.aef-dmoz.org, to share beautiful new listed websites. We have lovely editors too and Clo, Florencart, Ficanas, Stegozor and his beloved Kazhar have been awarded with enhanced editing capacities. Not to mention all the editors who get more and more involved by small steps, with stamina, thank you all.
The next challenge will probably be to get accustomed to all the changes AOL staff are going to bring to us and the translating team, headed by our French polyglot Meta Tuisp, will help to promote changes.
-The World/Français Team
Italiano
Condensing in a few lines the activity of the World/Italiano editors in the last 2 years, is not easy. Two intense years, which have shown moments of enthusiasm at seeing the directory grow in terms of both quality and quantity and moments of bewilderment for the big crash at the end of 2006.
From 2006 to 2007, the branch has grown by 7,34 %, 863 new categories were crated. During the last year, it has grown by 2,10 %, and 776 new categories were created.
In the year 2007 101 new editors have been accepted, and many accounts were reactivated.
Important achievements in the last 2 years: * all the 8100 municipalities of Italy have their own category in the branch /Regionale * from some minor languages in World/Italiano three new branches have been born: World/Sardu, World/Sicilianu and World/Furlan. * Editando.org, the Italian team?s inofficial homepage, features a sequel of interviews with members of the team.
If you?re fluent in Italian, you can find plenty more news from World/Italiano here.
- The World/Italiano team, coordination: offdesign
In the last year polish editors carried out the considerable reorganization of the regional branch: moving voivodships categories to World/Polska/Regionalne/Europa/Polska and reorganizing localities and counties categories.
Congratulations for kacka, new cateditall World/Polska! Editor kacka is currently working on translating the official documents into Polish.
Faster seeing through submitted URLs in the World/Polska/Biznes branch is a purpose of the project Mniej zielonych!
- jaskch
Română
New Year's Eve and Romanian ODP Editors
First of all, I would like to start a presentation of World/Română based on a single piece of statistics, but which says a lot. Starting with the night of December 31st, 2007, the total number of sites included in World/Română has reached the number of 16,000. Whether this number is large or small is less important, but the idea that it has been reached exactly during the New Year's Eve says a lot about the Romanian editor and her or his dedication for DMOZ.
The Romanian ODP editors are a community - this may sound like plain, meaningless words, but they're not. As proof for this concept are the meetings held by the Romanian ODP editors, as well as the dmoz.ro project, through which the Romanian editors focus on their external communication using group blogging.
Exactly because we are a group, we are trying to coordinate ourselves, to congregate a lot of time in our community, and to reach consensus on all of our decisions. All these happen under the friendly guidance of inistea, our new World/Română moderator (starting December 2007).
World/Română has overcome a great number of adjustments and modifications during the last year, ranging from category reorganizations to the creation of many other new areas. We could display all of these modifications and updates here. But they should be considered as being normal in a living organism such as DMOZ. And exactly because they are normal, I apologize but I won't go into detailing them.
Instead, what I would like to outline is the attitude of the ODP editor, which I don't consider as being highly different from one country or culture to another. I believe that what is specific to the ODP editor is the fact that (s)he loves to contribute to this wide Internet map named DMOZ, and (s)he does it with, and from the heart. And that is being articulated perfectly by the inclusion of the site number 16,000 during December 31st 2007 - January 1st 2008... As well as by the glass of wine the World/Română editors have toasted together when they have met..
- eveghes
Türkçe
World/Türkçe editors, who have celebrated their 20,000th listing on the last newsletter, are now approaching 30,000 listings. World/Türkçe will surely continue growing and exceed 30,000 listing in the following months.
62 new editors have joined us since August 2006, making us a total of 96 volunteers currently editing in World/Türkçe.
Four of our editors have begun editing in top World/Türkçe categories in the past months. Thanks to askeles, editing in Ekonomi ve İş Dünyası (business), demotx in Sağlık (Health), hkn63 in Alışveriş (Shopping), and stegozor in Oyunlar (Games), we now have nearly all of our top level branches filled with dedicated editors. Three enthusiastic World/Türkçe editors have also gained noteworthy privileges since the last newsletter. sodabasi, who has first received editing privileges in top level World/Türkçe, has been granted CatEditall privileges in a short time, and was assigned as the World/Türkçe CatMod at last. maxcoder, who has been a World/Türkçe/Bilgisayar and World/Türkçe/Kültür_ve_Sanat CatEditall, has also received editing privileges in top level World/Türkçe and his privileges were upgraded to become a World/Türkçe CatEditall in short time. He has also received permissions to edit in Kids_and_Teens/International/Türkçe. And erkin, who has been serving World/Türkçe as a CatMod, is now serving the whole directory as a meta editor. Congratulations to all of their accomplishments!
World/Türkçe editors and categories made a great success in 2007 Year End Mozzies, receiving 6 winner and 6 runner-up awards. maxcoder and sodabasi have been elected as Best World/Türkçe editors, and best new World/Türkçe editor awards were given to stegozor and laviorthcl. Our senior editors, erkin and sodabasi, have both received runner-up awards in "best catmod" and "best meta" categories. And senior editor maxcoder, who has been editing in a wide range of categories, was given the "best cross-branch editor" award. 2007 Mozzie award images were also designed by maxcoder.
A new top level category has arrived in World/Türkçe last year – World/Türkçe/Oyunlar (Games). Efforts to create the new branch were started with a proposal by laviorthcl, and many editors joined us, making it such a successful category to receive the runner-up award for "best new category" in 2007 Mozzies.
Major projects that have been completed since the last newsletter are:
- Türkiye/Bölgeler (Regional) categories organizations: Thanks to the leadership of sodabasi and great contributions by hanzala, World/Türkçe/Bölgesel/Orta_Doğu/Türkiye/Bölgeler was not only completely reorganized, but also won the "most improved category or reorganization" award.
- Creation of regional education categories: Within the context of the project above, a template for regional education categories has been prepared, categories were created and all of the accessible websites of Turkish schools were added to the directory. Nearly all of the websites were reviewed and added by sodabasi and hanzala, which have been mined by erkin in advance. drgrzm, bbraun, drumut, and bugfixed have also contributed to the project, editing their chosen regional categories.
- Weblogs reorganization: Weblogs, which have been listed in a single World/Türkçe/Bilgisayar/İnternet/ Web_Günlükleri category before, were classified in accordance with their topics and subcategories were created for them. The project was successfully completed thanks to the contributions of cyilmaz, maxcoder, erkin, and hakabon.
- Courageous volunteers wanted: One of the oldest ongoing projects of World/Türkçe, named "yürekli gönüllüler aranıyor" (courageous volunteers wanted), was lead by erkin last year. During this project, which repeats itself from time to time, categories in need of help are determined and enthusiastic editors are either given greenbuster or full editing permissions to help improve those categories.
Translation of the official documentation were taken in hand by maxcoder. A few documents and interface translations were updated, and some news documents were also translated to Turkish.
World/Türkçe editors have recently announced their unofficial blog. DMOZ Blog Türkiye, accessible at www.dmozblog.gen.tr, is growing with efforts of our editors. DMOZ Blog Türkiye was also acclaimed by Turkish internet users and the webmaster community, who have been thirsty for accurate information and news about ODP. [Türkçe Version]
- The World/Türkçe team (erkin, maxcoder, laviorthcl, menpower, suleymans, and hawktr)