There was a question about which categories are backlogged in DMOZ.

With hundreds of thousands of categories that is not a question that can be answered. Generally if you think of categories with names that sound like moneyspinners those will be the ones backlogged. And those relating to industries with high levels of affiliate and MLM business models - contact lenses, flowers, gift baskets, cellphone ringtones, etc.

Will DMOZ accept help in those areas.

Not from new editors. The reason is simply - to deal with high volumes of submissions and sift spam from the gems, and in order to get a sense of what is good quality content as opposed to a lot of hot air, you need to get some experience first. Webmasters in these areas are often very clever at hiding spam under something that appears genuine so to be able to spot little signs and undertake investigation requires time to learn the DMOZ methods of spotting and dealing with them. Plus DMOZ meta editors who make the decisions about granting category editing rights need to have a reasonable level of trust in the editors they allow to edit in those places.

Anyone wanting to edit in those areas really needs to spend time to gain trust, and put in a lot of editing to learn the ropes, in smaller and less prone to spam categories. Categories where commercial interests are irrelevant - a favorite band or movie, a social issue, sport, academia, etc. are all good places to start. Or home town in Regional or maybe niche shopping sites. Categories with maybe under 50 sites. You then work your way up until you have the trust and experience to handle one of those spam magnets.

So many people think "I'm an expert in that field, I must be able to do a good job there". But really that isn't the case. Subject expertise is useful but editing skills are more important - a good experienced editor can edit in any subject area but not the other way around.

So the high spam categories are not suitable for the inexperienced editors and once they are experienced, many decide they don't want to go anywhere near them, even if that was their original intention. The fault lies not with DMOZ or the editors but with the spammers I fear, who have made many of these categories virtually no-go areas. One solution that can work is to stop spamming - but that is unlikely to happen. Another solution, as happened with MLM sites, is to ban them. Basically block new submissions to high spam categories. That has pluses and minuses but might ultimately be necessary at some point. We already list 25,000 web design and development companies. Is that actually useful to anyone trying to find a web designer in a directory?
Probably not. Over 5,000 online booksellers. Over 9,000 auto related sites. Over 600 sites on kite flying. Perhaps we need to get more selective about what we list and not less. And that is happening already - sites that are listed but are little more than an online business card or an advert are being removed.

Lets go back to web designers for a moment. 25,000 of them is no use to anyone unless you use a search engine to sift them down to a reasonable number - located near to you so you can meet face to face, the type of technology you want, etc. Unless you are particular that your web designer's name must begin with K. So perhaps for the directory's users and the web design companies, being listed in your Regional locality category would be far better. But many web designers give nothing more than their cellphone number and no indication of where they are so a Regional listing can't be granted - there is no local relevance on the site. So whilst Tinyville's local businesses really need to know there are five designers in town, we can't list them because (a) none of the designers says they are in Tinyville, and (b) they want their place in the Computers...Web Designers category along with the other 25,000 and have forgotten to submit to Tinyville locality category where they might well get listed in a matter of days and be one of only 5 choices. An editor won't find them by using search engines because there is nothing on the site to tie them to the town and get picked up by spiders.

The corruption issue is still rearing its head. DMOZ meta editors do everything possible to trap and dispose of corrupt editors, for some that is all they do. To be effective in this they need information, precise information, reported to them. Innuendo, circumstantial evidence etc. is no good. As I said before, you have to be trusted and experienced to edit in high risk categories. Also if you know DMOZ from inside you would know that editors are rarely left completely alone to do as they want. Most importantly a majority of editors do not come from a professional commercial webmaster background - we have students, seniors, homemakers, priests, government employees, doctors, military, as well as real estate agents and lawyers. Most are not in business for themselves and if they are then they must take off their business hat at the login prompt.

"I am not listed, ergo the editor is corrupt and is deliberately blocking my site" is such total nonsense, it can't possibly be taken seriously as evidence. Nevertheless all reports of abuse are looked into. Most times the actions reported as evidence were not even done by the editor being accused and the case is dismissed. As a matter of policy reasons why a case is upheld or dismissed are never revealed, even to other editors, to prevent the development of ways not to get caught.