DMOZ Unavailable for a month

[dviney]

There have been one or two references to this but not - I think - a dedicated thread yet, so I thought I would start one!

It seems DMOZ submit has been unavailable now for about a month. It has been up and down in the past but never - I think - for this long.

Error message is the usual one (We apologize for the inconvenience while we resolve technical problems. Please check back in a day or two.)

http://dmoz.org/unavailable.html

This has also been covered on other forums (see for example http://www.searchbliss.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=327)

Any forum members have an inside track on this? CBP? What is happening behind the scenes at DMOZ?

Rgds,
D.

[Dubbya]

I was poking around in the forums a month or so ago.

There was some noise about them having moved some servers.

Things seem a little mixed up and they've been making some changes to the way things are done. For example, they no longer provide updates as to the listing status of websites. "Don't even ask" posts are abundant.

From what I've read there, they are working to streamline the submission/review process,so that's certainly good news.

I noticed they were down the other night and thought it odd as well. Hopefully they'll get things squared away quickly and resume business.

[Burf.com]

I really hope they improve the submission service and make it fair!

[incrediblehelp]

Maybe they are taking care of that "back log".

[dviney]

There is definitely something going on. Based on further, more extensive, research it seems that facts are as follows:

1) On October 20th DMOZ experienced what (in the words of Wikipedia) was a "catastrophic system failure".

2) AOL techs are working to restore the database but this is taking a long time due to risk of data corruption.

3) In the meantime, the public pages are static pages, generated from a backup. As such, they do not reflect the most recent updates.

4) Scripted pages (e.g. site suggestion & application forms) are down.

5) Editors are unable to check the status of new editor applications.

For more info, check out:

Error messages on DMOZ site:
DMOZ public forums unavailable (http://www.resource-zone.com/forum/)
DMOZ official forum post (http://www.resource-zone.com/forum/)

DMOZ make an interesting comment in their official post:


We do not currently have an ETA for the resolution of the technical difficulties. We will update this announcement when the system is fully functioning again -- please do not start threads asking why the system isn't working properly or when it will be available again. Thanks.

So will this be (as some have suggested) the month that DMOZ dies? There are already moves afoot to start a DMOZ alternative (http://www.resource-zone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=45362) although this seems to be born as much out of frustration with the old system than a genuine attempt to keep it alive.

Being down for a month is pretty serious (and normally terminal in most businesses) but can AOL / Time Warner really afford to write off yet more of it's original investment in Netscape (£4.2 billion)!

Hope not! DMOZ is still just about the best directory in the world (despite all our whingeing). I, for one, would mourn it's passing (even though I haven't got a site listed there for four years now) ;-)

Other references:
Wikipedia entry refers to the failure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Directory_Project)
Inside track from DMOZ Editor Creme de la Creme (http://dmozgrunt.blogspot.com/2006/11/3-weeks-and-dmoz-is-still-down-latest.html)

[Pascal77]

So what does this mean for rankings?

If the links are dead how long does it take for them to lose PR?
How will that reflect on rankings?

[Burf.com]

I never been able to get a site in there but I do hope it comes back up!

[dviney]

Don't think that the pages will lose PR (as they have a static backup there at the moment).

However, inevitable that Google will have taken notice of this. Likely that other long-standing, human-edited directories will benefit from an upgrading over the next six months.

The significance of DMOZ was waning at is was - and this can only accelerate that.