We’ve removed it for now – playing about with a new design/layout so needed to remove plugins from the sidebar. I will put them back soon…

http://scurvytoon.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-os-does-it-use-windows-vista-were.html

The article in question .

Time there was a way to unsure mor of us writers were paid ofr our work. As long as people think they can get anything at all for free cos it’s on the net, we will be abused in this fashion.

Everything in life needs some iterating and this system should go a) more open or more crowdsource, b) go paid like the rest w/ guarantees, or c) go away/go private/just become a human delicious..oh wait.

Great idea though and as I said, something I’ll be setting up as soon as I can find a cheap suitable domain (obviously a brand new domain wont work!).

Avoid

I’m not sure why you think I’ve been “duped”. I verified the fact he was an editor, and from looking at other things he showed me I am 100% certain that he has been selling links. I was never under any illusion that he could edit any category he chose.

You are completely failing to understand the seo benefits of backlinks if you are saying nobody would pay $400 per link just because no humans are going to visit them. Why are people buying links in old newspaper articles? Nobody is going to see them either, apart from search spiders – http://www.further.co.uk/blog/Express-Group-contacts-SEOs-to-sell-links-269

Anonymously – Like I said above, you are right that the damage this individual can do outside of his own small area of the directory is limited at best.

But when you have a lot of corrupt editors in the system, all these little areas of damage are adding up to something significant in total.

Personally I don’t think DMOZ should pay all editors, why throw away money when people are willing to do it for free? Charging for listings would allow a select group of editors to be paid, to deal with categories that nobody else wants. The amount I paid for the article was insignificant (far far less than he sold a single link for) but I just wanted to disclose that it was paid for.

I would agree that very little deletion of listings goes on, as it is going to be extremely hard to defend if someone calls you out on it and asks “why did you go in and delete something.com, its a high quality site and has been there for years” – you don’t really have a good answer to that.

But it has to be very easy to add paid listings and do so completely without detection, would you agree? I think its naive if anyone thinks most of the corrupted editors are being caught.

DMOZ editors to be paid, can I just reiterate why? There are plenty like BOTW that operate that model. Strange we are still the largest human edited and still used by Google and if anything you say is true still commanding a high price to delete competitors and people pay for links. Not bad for a failing product.

Truth is people would like to delete competitors, but it happens rarely and when it does it is very soon discovered and editor and all sites booted. Yes there are offers for editors to be bribed, but to be any real use one has to be an editall and that takes hours of work, showing real commitment, to throw it awa for a fistful of dollars, some are stupid enough and usuall caught fats with the same result for editor and sites. Toi get editall plus means real dedication and without any payment, (what good is someone who can only add your site to a bottom category?) then suddenly after years of voluntary work money becomes important? Gets more unlikely.

If you paid for that article you were robbed. Except as noted above you got a few more views because you posted a load of twaddle.

So he can edit some small category and maybe duped you into paying him for a story. Did you check that his permissions add up to the claim he is making? Did you check out his profile?

Honestly that someone would pay $2000 for a listing in a directory that doesn’t generate any traffic just doesn’t seem likely. Or is it “throw away your money” week?