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After 19 Years, DMOZ Will Close, Announces AOL
Its volunteer-edited web directory formed the basis for early search offerings from Netscape, AOL, and Google. But 19 years later, there's some bad news. koavf
writes:
As posted on the DMOZ homepage, the Open Directory Project's web listing will go offline on March 14, 2017. Founded in 1998 as "Gnuhoo", the human-curated directory once powered Google and served as a model for Wikipedia.
A 1998 Slashdot editorial prompted Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation to complain about how "Gnu" was used in the site's name. "We renamed GnuHoo to NewHoo," a blog post later explained, "but then Yahoo objected to the 'Hoo' (and our red letters, exclamation point, and 'comical font')." After being acquired for Netscape's "Open Directory Project," their URL became directory.mozilla.org, which was shortened to DMOZ. Search Engine Land predicts the memory of the Open Directory Project will still be kept alive by the NOODP meta tag.
The site was so old that its hierarchical categories were originally based on the hierarchy of Usenet newsgroups. As it nears its expiration date, do any Slashdot readers have thoughts or memories to share about DMOZ?
A 1998 Slashdot editorial prompted Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation to complain about how "Gnu" was used in the site's name. "We renamed GnuHoo to NewHoo," a blog post later explained, "but then Yahoo objected to the 'Hoo' (and our red letters, exclamation point, and 'comical font')." After being acquired for Netscape's "Open Directory Project," their URL became directory.mozilla.org, which was shortened to DMOZ. Search Engine Land predicts the memory of the Open Directory Project will still be kept alive by the NOODP meta tag.
The site was so old that its hierarchical categories were originally based on the hierarchy of Usenet newsgroups. As it nears its expiration date, do any Slashdot readers have thoughts or memories to share about DMOZ?
I never heard of the site until this very moment and it sounds like what Yahoo was doing in the early days. I never ever recall using Yahoo even when AltaVista and Lycos were the kings.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I've already contacted Jason at Archive Team and the community will fork and continue on at a new location. MusicMoz has agreed to host a static version until then.
If you want to help us continue the Open Directory Project, you can join at the Resource Zone: https://www.resource-zone.com/
I was an editor for a couple of sub-categories for quite a few years, starting soon after the ODP was set up. In the end I gave up though, as you say, it was massively out of date. It was a nice idea, and remains a nice idea, but is simply impractical these days. When the web was largely static it was useful. Now, not so much, sadly.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.