Open Directory Project 152
ODP size by date.By the time Netscape assumed stewardship,
the Open Directory Project had about
100,000 URLs indexed with contributions
from about 4500 editors. On October 5,
1999, the number of URLs indexed by ODP
reached one million. According to an
unofficial estimate, the URLs in the Open
Directory numbered 1.6 million in April
2000, surpassing those in the Yahoo!
Directory.[5] ODP achieved the milestones
of indexing two million URLs on August
14, 2000, three million listings on
November 18, 2001 and four million on
December 3, 2003.From January 2006 the Open Directory published online reports to inform the public about the development of the
project. The first report covered the year 2005. Monthly reports were issued subsequently until September 2006.[6]
These reports gave greater insight into the functioning of the directory than the simplified statistics given on the front
page of the directory. The number of listings and categories cited on the front page include "Test" and "Bookmarks"
categories but these are not included in the RDF dump offered to users. The total number of editors who have
contributed to the directory as of March 31, 2007 was 75,151.[7] There were about 7330 active editors during August
2006.[6]System failure and editing outage, October to December 2006
On October 20, 2006, the ODP's main server suffered a catastrophic failure of the system[8] that prevented editors
from working on the directory until December 18, 2006. During that period, an older build of the directory was
visible to the public. On January 13, 2007, the Site Suggestion and Update Listings forms were again made
available.[9] On January 26, 2007, weekly publication of RDF dumps resumed. To avoid future outages, the system
now resides on a redundant configuration of two Intel-based servers.[10]Competing and spinoff projects
As the ODP became more widely known, two other major web directories edited by volunteers and sponsored by
Go.com and Zeal emerged, both now defunct. These directories did not license their content for open content
distribution.[11][12]
The concept of using a large-scale community of editors to compile online content has been successfully applied to
other types of projects. ODP's editing model directly inspired three other open content volunteer projects: an open
content restaurant directory known as ChefMoz,[13] an open content music directory known as MusicMoz,[14] and an
encyclopedia known as Open Site.[15]Content
Gnuhoo borrowed the basic outline for its initial ontology from Usenet. In 1998, Rich Skrenta said, "I took a long list
of groups and hand-edited them into a hierarchy."[16] For example, the topic covered by the comp.ai.alife newsgroup
was represented by the category Computers/AI/Artificial_Life. The original divisions were for Adult, Arts, Business,
Computers, Games, Health, Home, News, Recreation, Reference, Regional, Science, Shopping, Society and Sports.
While these fifteen top-level categories have remained intact, the ontology of second- and lower-level categories has
undergone a gradual evolution; significant changes are initiated by discussion among editors and then implemented