ODP´s editor community has decided to publish regular reports in future, to inform the public about the development of the project.

To get started, a report has been compiled for the last year:
http://research.dmoz.org/publish/chris2001/odp_reports/report_2005.htm

That's a very interesting report, and it shows why submitted sites may never even be looked at.

The number of new editors during the year is the largest part of the number of active editors at the end of the year. It shows that most of the editors are transient, and it shows that there are very few of them who actually do very much.

If you take the number of sites added during the year, and divide them by the number of active editors at the end of the year, you find that each editor added about 28 sites during the year, on average. That's an average of a little over 2 per month each. It's not very many. Of course those figures can't be used for that sort of calculation, but exactness doesn't matter. The 28 sites per year each figure can't be too far out.

Very interesting.

Averages can conceal more than they reveal though. As you will know from your time in the ODP, the range of activity is huge.

Some people who are accepted as editors never even log in. Some just list one or two sites and then time out. At the other end of the spectrum there are editors who average 100 edits a day for years.

We can guess that Pareto's Principle applies and that 80% of the work is done by 20% of the editors.

Yes, I agree. That's why I said that those figures can't be used for that sort of calculation, but the average number of sites added by each active editor in the course of the year is still very low. If 80% of the additions are made by 20% of the editors, then then number of editors who are really doing anything resonable is incredibly low.

Whichever way you look at it, the figures show that there are very few editors who are doing anything much at all. It's not a criticism - it's just an observation of the realities, based on the figures in the report.

Forgive me if I point out that a touch of the judgemental has in fact crept into your interpretation there. :D

I'd say that we have to expect Pareto's Principle to apply. It's not even surprising, let alone incredible. If we apply the principle to the whole lifetime of the project, then we would guess that (in round figures) something like 14,000 editors have listed 4 million sites and the other million have been listed by the remaining 59,000 editors.

That extra million is not to be sniffed at. Few directories have anything like a million listings.

So from the perspective of the ODP, it is perfectly reasonable for people to give as much or as little to the project as they wish. While senior editors tend to have editing stats in four, five or six figures ( http://dmoz.org/edoc/editall.html ), far smaller contributions by a far larger number of people all add up.

I've never heard of Pereto's priciple, and I wasn't being judgemental. I was making an observation about the number of sites added, and the number of active editors in 2005.

It was the phrase "who are really doing anything reasonable" that had a whiff of the judgemental about it. :D

As I say, the ODP thinks it reasonable for editors to put in as much or as little time as suits them. (With the proviso that editors need to show that they can and will edit within the Guidelines before they are given scope for thousands of edits.)

But basically we agree. A lot of the work is done by a bunch of particularly keen editors, many/most of whom have wide-ranging editing permissions. That is often not understood outside the directory.

That sentence wasn't intended as a criticism, or to be judgemental. I just thought that many people would be surprised by the "average" number of sites that were added by each editor during the course of the year. It certainly surprised me, and I've ben there :)

And you were one of the more active editors. :)

Yes I was, but how do you know?

I was too active, and I burned out quite quickly. I made a couple of attempts to get into it again, but my spirit wouldn't rise to it any more. I even got an award in the short time I was there, but even before the voting started I'd already come to a stand-still.

<added>
I didn't use this name as an editor, so maybe you are mistaking me for someone else.
</added>

No I'm not mixing you up with editor philc, who is someone completely different. You were active in UK categories and in the forum.

Very curious how you know me.

I sent a private message to explain. Didn't you get it?

I've read it now, but I hadn't when I posted.

> If you take the number of sites added during the year, and divide them by the number of active editors at the end of the year, you find that each editor added about 28 sites during the year, on average.

Phil, you might find the February report (http://research.dmoz.org/publish/chris2001/odp_reports/report_200602.htm) interesting: it explains why your calculation can not work. To be brief: The number you used was not the "number of sites added during the year", but the difference between the sites added and the sites removed.

Yes I should have brought that into my calculations as well. :o

That's a very good point, Chris, and one that hadn't occured to me. I didn't even know that robozilla unreviewed listings. I remember it producing reds but I wasn't aware that it unreviewed them.

An innovation since your time Phil.

Everything's an innovation since my time - heck, the *wheel* is an innovation since my time :eek: