[sofia]

I edited about 11K listings in DMOZ.

I joined the Google Co-Op a short while ago.

There are several differences between the two, and I believe the Google Co-Op to be superior to the ODP in a number of ways.

(1) Example. I know of about 100 sites that sells widgets and offer widget plans. Only 10 sites are exclusively devoted to widget plans.

In DMOZ, the "widget plan" category would contain only the 10 sites that concentrate on widget plans. Also, a site selling widget plans would be in "Shopping" while a site giving out FREE widget plans would end up in the corresponding non-shopping category.

Pretty messy.

But the ODP is in the business of listing web SITES, not web PAGES.

In Google Co-Op, I am free to isolate the web PAGES, or clusters of similarly-named web pages using wildcards.

I can legitametely create a category and list relevant webpages.

(2) Google Co-Op allows the assignment of degrees of relevance to each page, site or web cluster listed.

(3) Does it sound labor-intensive? Not more than the ODP. Why? I don't have to bother dreaming of a description of the site, spellcheck, and rewrite the site's actual title (submitters never got that right). I spend less time on nonsense, and more on what's actually important.

I am still unclear on how that works, but if you do a good job, and people subscribe to your topics, good things happen! If you do a poor job, you sink.
Thanks
Sofia