Why DMOZ is more important than ever

[TerrelShumway]

Originally Posted by andysands

I would say from a cursory review that these forums are effectively a support forum for the web promotion bit of your overall web business though.

They are linked from the v7 site as such. You have chosen to split this aspect of your business off onto a different domain - presumably to facilitate direct linking to the boards, but it looks to me like the V7 site is the parent site and therefore the one that should be submitted.

History lesson:
* IMR came first.
* V7 Inc. came later because John couldn't find a host reliable enough to keep IMR running.


I am not a customer of v7 Inc. -- I am not even in John's target market (too much of a gear head).

But I do spend time in these forums, and I do get a lot of value out of it. I would guess that 99% of the people who frequent these Web Develompent Community forums (especially the ones who participate actively) will never buy hosting service from John. Many of them are direct competitors.

(Bluefind is a different story -- there is a forum specifically labeled as a support forum, and Bluefind is appealing to forum members. I hope no one wants to argue that Bluefind is a "mirror site" or "deep link" because it happens to be owned by V7 Inc.)

I understand why, as a webmaster, you might want the seo forums listed separately in a forums cat on dmoz. But such a listing would really be down to an editor in a forums cat choosing to add your site there. The guidelines were toughened up because of the number of different domains people were spreading their businesses over - effectively the other domains are considered to be 'deeplinks' rather than different sites.

Most people create a separate site on a separate domain because the target market of the two sites is different. It is meant to enhance the customer experience by not confusing them with stuff that is not relevant.

Following the logic above, I guess that means that means that DMOZ should merge the listings for Netscape.com and dmoz.org. And maybe earthlink.net shouldn't get a separate listing for peoplepc.com. And while you are at it, you can also remove the listing for netscape.com because they are owned by and offer substantially the same service as aol.com.


"Our data is to serve our customers"

hmmm. Does rejecting one the most valuable webmaster resources on the 'Net because it happens to be owned by a company that also offers hosting really serve the customer?


my
-- Terrel