An important article for all of us longs:
San Jose Mercury News, San Jose, California, Feb 6, 1999
"Netizens raise a barn called
'Open Directory'
BY DAN GILLMOR
Mercury News Technology Columnist
Barn-raisings are a relic of times gone by, when a community would
come together to help one of its own. Barn-raisings were about
voluntarism and cooperation.
People are constantly raising virtual barns on the Internet. Much of the
software controlling the Net's basic functions, for example, was
created by teams of volunteers. They came together in cyberspace
and they worked at different times, but their goals were akin to the
barn-builders of yore: to help the community and, by extension,
themselves.
One of the most intriguing Net ventures isn't about software, per se.
This one is about sharing information in the purest sense: a directory
of World Wide Web sites, created by volunteers, that is beginning to
achieve critical mass.
It's called the ''Open Directory Project'' (directory.mozilla.org), and it
looks a lot like the category leader, Yahoo. The hierarchy of listings is
similar, following the eminently sensible approach that Yahoo's
founders dreamed up when they began their Web catalog.
The Open Directory is especially fascinating because it is now part of
a for-profit company, Netscape Communications Corp. Will its
thousands of volunteers -- dwarfing the professional staffs at Yahoo
and other commercial directory sites -- keep working so hard on a
project that ultimately benefits shareholders of a large company?
I like the project's chances, partly because of what it is and partly
because of the way Netscape has handled the transition. First, though,
a little background:
The Open Directory people believe their advantage is simple: A
brigade of paid generalists is ultimately no match for an army of
passionate volunteers. Today's Open Directory consists of almost
7,000 people who are managing more than 43,000 categories that
point to 337,000 Web pages and sites -- all accomplished in the past
eight months.
The Open Directory isn't the only service that relies on editors who
spend lots of time on specific topics. The Mining Company
(www.miningco.com), a New York-based operation, has about 500
paid guides on various topics. It's not as broad as the competition, but
if the category is there you'll find useful links.
For many purposes, moreover, I still tend to gravitate toward Yahoo
(www.yahoo.com), which has more than a million listings in its
directory but won't say how many people work on them (total Yahoo
employment is under 900). Yahoo, dating back to the ancient Internet
times of 1994, is clearly deeper in certain categories that many people
find essential, such as company listings and finance.
But I'm impressed with the quality of the listings in the Open
Directory, which was known as ''NewHoo'' before being sold to
Netscape. If the project can maintain its momentum in attracting new
volunteers, and so far it has done just that, it will become one of the
places people go when they start looking for something.
I have especially high hopes for the Open Directory's potential to
archive links for more arcane topics. Someone, somewhere is
fanatical about almost any obscure topic, and is collecting a
comprehensive set of Web links on that subject. The Open Directory
could be a great outlet for such a person's collection. No commercial
directory, no matter how large its staff, will compete.
Netscape is incorporating NewHoo (I still love that name, even if it is
corny) into its own top-level portal site, which in turn was a major lure
for America Online Inc. when it agreed to buy Netscape late last
year. The Open Directory will replace the directory from Excite,
which has agreed to be bought by @Home, the cable-TV Web
access company and Internet service provider.
So why should volunteers keep working hard for a company that's
going to convert their mental sweat into money? For one thing, they
previously worked hard for entrepreneurs who surely had at least
some goals beyond pure service to humanity. (Terms of the
Netscape-NewHoo deal haven't been disclosed.)
More to the point, the volunteers are contributing to a project that has
value to the Net community far beyond Netscape's portal plans -- a
value stemming from Netscape's support for some kinds of openness.
A year ago, the company turned its browser programming code over
to the worldwide user community, putting it into the so-called
''open-source'' model that has gained such strength recently. The
Open Directory, in fact, lives on the Netscape-supported Web site
(www.mozilla.org) from which the open-source browser
development is being managed.
Even more striking is Netscape's laudable decision to open the
directory in the most profound way: by giving it to anyone who wants
it -- free for the download. If you want to create your own directory
site using the data and then sell advertising, go for it. If you want to
download the directory and use a portion of the hierarchy on your
organization's intranet, that's cool, too.
Netscape's license agreement asks little in return: ''The only
requirement is that you put up a link to tell people how to contribute''
to the directory, says Rich Skrenta, NewHoo's co-founder and CEO,
now the directory's technical leader at Netscape.
One of the first people to download the database of links was Jimmy
Wales, who runs Bomis (www.bomis.com), a popular ''Web ring''
portal that links related sites. Bomis is incorporating the Open
Directory into its own data, filling in gaps. Wales hopes for a
''feedback loop'' connecting the Open Directory with a variety of
second-tier Web directories.
Netscape, like Yahoo, is using technology to augment human activity.
A software robot constantly crawls through the site's hierarchy to
locate so-called ''dead links'' that no longer point to anything. The
software, dubbed Robozilla, a play on Netscape's Mozilla mascot,
alerts category editors when it finds a dead link, and has helped
reduce the number of dead links by an order of magnitude in just a
few weeks, so that only about 0.2 percent of the directory's links are
now useless. In a medium where sites and pages change all the time,
that's a remarkably low percentage.
The project has also spawned a genuine community. Netscape
recently created an online forum for the editors. I looked through
some of the postings and was impressed with the dedication and
thoughtfulness of the participants. This work matters to them, and it
shows.
There's power in numbers -- and satisfaction in community. " |
