How to Report Corrupt DMOZ Editors and ODP Abuse

DMOZ (Open Directory Project) is the largest human-edited directory of the web maintained by a global community of volunteer editors. However, corrupt DMOZ editors and ODP abuse brings disrepute to the directory’s quality and integrity. Here are some ways you can report abuse in the Open Directory Project and help protect the directory quality.

Submit DMOZ Abuse Complaint

Open Directory Public Abuse Report System – This official reporting system enables users to complain about suspicions of abusive editors / conduct to DMOZ meta editors and staff. The form is available in multiple languages too. You can also check the status of an existing report by entering the complaint ID which you got when you originally submitted the abuse report. Here is a Report System FAQ of what is considered abuse.

* Editors giving preferential treatment to their sites.
* Editors adding inappropriate sites.
* Sites listed in the Kids & Teens branch which present Adult content material.
* Biased/ slanted categories.
* Editors accepting bribes.
* Sites which significantly change their content so that they are no longer relevant to the category/ description they have been provided with.

Post in Open Directory Project Public Forum

Open Directory Project Public Forum is run by members of the ODP Community. You can browse and read the forum without registering, but you must register to post. There is a Quality Control Feedback Forum where you can “Report quality control issues, and generic abuse reports with no mention of specific URLs, editors, or categories.” Specific abuse cases need to go through the Open Directory Public Abuse Report System as above.

A thread titled How To Report Suspected Abuse By An Editor advises webmasters that -

* Editor inaction is not abuse.
* A site not getting listed is, with 99.9% certainty on my part, due to inaction rather than malice.
* Competitors being listed while you are not is probably not abuse, just a combination of good timing and editor interest in the category.
* Competitors being editors is not automatically a reason file an abuse report – you should have something more substantial than that if you want the meta-editors to investigate.
* Rejection of an application to edit is NOT abuse.

Contact Dmoz Staff

You may directly contact ODP staff using the email address staff@dmoz.org and report the issue. They are always on the lookout for corruption activities in DMOZ.

Read more about ODP terms of use which includes the privacy policy and copyright issues too. Check the ODP Help Central for more information. Also read about submitting your site and how to submit a site to ODP. Major search engines like Google have started supporting the NOODP meta tag which lets you opt out of ODP descriptions.

ODP is a very vigilant community and all attempts of DMOZ abuse and corrupt editors are investigated and dealt with promptly. You just read the ways to report it to them.