Editor Resource Zone - Glossary
Definitions of terms which you may encounter while editing and participating in the discussion forums.
- 404
- An HTTP Response code which a web server sends to indicate that the requested page cannot be found.
Related terms: Reds, Robozilla
See also: Common Error Codes
- @link
- A method of linking one category to another. Used when the category being linked to could logically be a sub-category of the first.
Related terms: Relcat
- ADB
- Abbreviation: Affiliation DataBase.
- Admin
- Short form of Administrator. Refers to a volunteer responsible for project management of the Open Directory Project.
See also: Admin Guidelines - Adult
- The Adult/ category holds sites and categories intended for a mature audience. It is not linked from the Open Directory Project's homepage, but is available by direct links, or when a search query includes "adult" terms. It offers protection from children by using PICS tags.
See also: Adult Guidelines - AFAICT
- Abbreviation: As Far As I Can Tell
- Affiliate Link
- Hypertext links which represent a relationship between a primary seller and an affiliate. There is usually, but not always, an affiliate or referral ID embedded in the URL of such a link.
e.g. http://widgets.com/?productID=234&affiliate=widgetgirl is a fictitious affiliate link that might be placed on the affiliate's site (widgetgirl's site) directing traffic to the widgets.com site. Widgets.com would then pay a commission to widgetgirl based on sales resulting from that traffic.
Related terms: Affiliate Site - Affiliate Programs
- Profit sharing strategy which an e-commerce company utilizes where commissions are paid to webmasters of other sites for referring customers to them. Customers are led from one site to another by following affiliate links.
See also: ODP Category: Affiliate Programs - Affiliate Site
- A site which is constructed primarily to drive traffic through affiliate links. Affiliate sites (sometimes referred to as simply affiliates) are not listed in ODP unless they have significant non-affiliate content.
See also: Guidelines: Affiliates - Affiliation Database
- The formal system where editors are encouraged to list affiliated websites. Also known as ADB.
See also: affiliations.dmoz.org, Guidelines: Affiliation Disclosure - Alphabar
- Method of subdividing a category by letter. Letters of the alphabet are listed across the top of a page, and each letter category contains sites beginning with that letter.
- Altlang
- Abbreviation: ALTernative LANGuage. Internal link pointing to the same category in a different language. The display name of the link is the name of the language to which it is pointing.
Related terms: Worldlinkerate
- Bookmarklet
- A short Javascript program that is intended to be contained with a bookmark in the user's browser. Bookmarklets can be useful in various ways, but are most often used to either (a) modify the contents of the current page (or a form field on that page, (b) extract information about the current page, or (c) redirect to a page related to the current page.
Note: bookmark is the term used by Mozilla-based browsers; Internet Explorer uses the term favorites. Thus, a synonym for bookmarklet is favlet.
See also: Editor Tools: Bookmarklets - Bookmarks
- Each editor is alloted a Bookmarks category (in the form Bookmarks/E/Editor) which they can use to gather links of personal interest or to build categories for possible inclusion in the Directory. Bookmarks categories may be viewed by the public, but are not included in the RDF dump.
Related terms: RDF, Test/Editors - Branch Category
- A subcategory in the directory, adopting the tree analogy.
Related terms: Tree - Broken Link
- A URL which results in an error of some kind.
Related terms: Reds, 404 - BTW
- Acronym: By The Way.
e.g. "BTW, that URL is also listed in World/ ." - Bump (a thread)
- Bumping a discussion thread refers to the act of adding a comment to the thread primarily with the primary intent of increasing visibility by bringing the thread to the top of the forum page (which are sorted by the date of the most recent post).
- Cat
- Colloquial form of 'category'.
- Cateditall
- A permission granted to editors which allows them access to catmv and other power tools within a specific category.
Related terms: Editall, Catmv - Category
- A collection of sites and other categories sharing a common attribute. The Open Directory Project is organized in a heirarchy of categories.
- Category Charter
- Refers to the combination of the submission guidelines, category description, and category guidelines for an individual category.
Related terms: Submission Guidelines, Category description, Category guidelines - Category description
- Textual explanation of the topic covered by a category.
Related terms: Category Charter - Category FAQ
- A FAQ for a specific category.
Related terms: FAQ - Category guidelines
- Editor-only information specific to the category. This might include links to relevant forum threads, for example.
Related terms: Category Charter - CatMod
- Abbreviation: CATegory MODerator An editor who is designated the "leader" of a specific top-level node, e.g. /Regional.
See also: Catmod Guidelines - Catmv
- 1 - the process by which a category can be moved to a new location and/or renamed.
- 2 - a permission that can be granted to an editor, allowing them to move/rename categories.
- Chainsaw
- Colloquial. To delete multiple spam or erroneous submissions en masse using the Power Unreviewed Edit or Super Unreviewed Edit tools.
e.g. I chainsawed 300 duplicates from Society: Relationships: Dating. - Child cat
- Colloquial: child category. Used comparatively to refer to a category contained directly within another category. For example, Arts/Music/Styles is a child category of Arts/Music.
Related terms: Parent cat, Subcategory - Classic ODP
- Colloquial. Encompasses all categories outside of Kids and Teens.
Related terms: Kids and Teens - Clickable Link
- In forum discussions, references to categories such as Home: Home_Improvement are preferred in the form Home/Home_Improvement. The forum software will automatically recognize references in this form, and convert them into a link such as Home/Home_Improvement which is easy to click on to see the category.
- Cloaked URL
- See URL Cloaking.
- Consensus
- Strictly speaking, a state when all interested parties agree to support an action or decision, even though all of them may not fully agree that it is the best action or decision. (i.e. consensus is not equivalent to unanimous) Many Open Directory Project issues (e.g. reorganizations) strive for consensus among interested editors.
- Dashboard
- The main editing interface, containing links to your categories, so you can edit them, links to the editor forums, access to logs, etc.
See also: Your Dashboard - Deeplink
- A page found somewhere "deep" within a site, as distinguished from the site's homepage.
e.g. /license.html is a deeplink from the site /
See also: Guidelines: Deeplinking URLs - DMOZ
- Acronym: Stands for Directory MOZilla, which used to be the name of the directory when it was accessed via the URL directory.mozilla.org It is now used to refer to the directory as a whole, e.g. "DMOZ is an Internet directory".
Related terms: Mozilla, ODP - DNS
- Acronym: Domain Name Service. A service which provides a translation between human readable domains (e.g. dmoz.org) and computer-friendly IP Addresses (e.g. 207.200.81.154).
Related terms: Domain, IP Address - Domain
- The portion of a URL which maps to a specific organization, company, or other entity.
e.g. dmoz.org is the domain for the URL /Business/faq.html
Related terms: Top-level Domain, Subdomain, URL, DNS - Domain Hijacking
- A strategy employed to take over control of expired domains to capitalize on incoming web traffic to URLs on that domain. For example, a domain for a popular church site might be hijacked, and used by the new owner to redirect residual traffic to a porn or gambling site. Since URLs listed in the Open Directory are linked to from numerous sources, expired domains with an ODP listing are especially attractive to domain hijackers.
Related terms: Domain - Doorway Page
- A page created to achieve a high ranking in search engines for desirable search queries. This page drives the resulting traffic to the "real" content, which may or may not be located on the same domain.
Related terms: Vanity URL - Dup
- Short form of Duplicate. Refers to duplicate submissions.
- Editall
- An editor allowed to edit in any category in the directory, apart from Kids and Teens and Bookmarks/
Related terms: Catmv
See also: Editall Guidelines - Editor
- A volunteer for the Open Directory Project.
Related terms: Admin, Cateditall, CatMod, Editall, Meta, Greenbuster - Editor profile
- See: Profile.
- Editor-side
- Refers to the editor-only view of category pages, accessible from URLs like /editors/editcat.cgi?cat=Home
Related terms: Public-side - Emoticons
- See: Smilies.
- Entry Page
- See: Doorway Page
- FAQ
- Acronym: Frequently Asked Questions. A list of frequently asked questions and their answers about a given subject.
Related terms: Category FAQ - Feedback
- Editor feedback is a method of contacting fellow editors, or groups thereof,
- Fora
- Plural of "forum". The threaded discussion forum used for editor-editor communication.
- Framed Redirect
- Another term for URL Cloaking.
- Fraternal Mirror
- Two (or more) sites which may not be 100% identical in design and or literal content, but which all offer the same core unique content. Often, such sites are intentionally designed to "look" different.
Related terms: Mirror
See also: Guidelines: Affiliate Marketing Schemes - FTR
- Acronym: For The Record.
e.g. "FTR, I'm from New Zealand; not Australia." - FWIW
- Acronym: For What It's Worth.
- FYI
- Acronym: For Your Information.
e.g. "FYI, I've e-mailed the first draft to your Hotmail address."
- Ghosts
- Colloquial term for an incorrect reported number of sites, unreviewed, or errors in a category. A category which is reported as having two unreviewed, but which actually has zero unreviewed is said to have two ghosts.
- GMTA
- Acronym: Great Minds Think Alike.
- GnuHoo
- See: NewHoo.
- Greenbuster
- Type of permission which allows editors to concentrate on new submissions. Greenbusters are typically granted larger categories than they would be in normal circumstances.
- Greens
- Colloquial term for Unreviewed.
- Hijack
- See Domain Hijacking.
- Holding Page
- A temporary page made available when a domain is acquired with a message like "Coming Soon"; used until real content is hosted.
- IMHO
- Abbreviation: In My Honest/Humble Opinion
- IMO
- Abbreviation: In My Opinion.
- Invite
- Editors with a known interest or expertise in an area are often explicitly invited to a forum discussion by sending them an email via editor feedback. Doing so is common courtesy.
Related terms: Resident Editor - IP Address
- A number which uniquely identifies a computer connected to the Internet. This number is generally represented as a series of four numbers (each between 0 and 255) connected with periods.
e.g. 207.200.81.154
Related terms: DNS
- K&T
- Colloquial term for Kids and Teens.
- Kids and Teens
- Side project of the ODP, with separate guidelines and editors. It is an Internet directory aimed specifically at audiences aged 18 and under. Also known as 'K&T'.
- Lead Generator
- A site focussed mainly on gathering personal information (name, contact information, etc.) about the visitors (for the purposes of entering into some sort of future business relationship). These sites are not listed in ODP unless they contain other significant and unique content.
- Leaf Category/Node
- A category which has no sub-categories are termed 'leaves', or 'leaf categories'.
Related terms: Tree - Link Farm
- A category which contains only @links and other crosslinks, and is otherwise stipulated to be empty, created for navigational purposes.
e.g. Business: Regional or Regional: Countries - Link Mine
- A source (generally a web page or site) which contains an abundance of links, the majority of which are good candidates for listing in the Open Directory Project.
e.g. Lions Links: United Kingdom is a link farm with many links that may qualify for listing in Society: Organizations: Service Clubs: Lions Clubs International: Europe: United Kingdom or other categories. - Listing
- 1. n. The combination of a URL, title, and description (and possibly other metadata) which is added to a category. Note that while a listing consists of exactly one URL, a URL may have multiple listings in different categories of the Directory.
- 2. v. The act of adding a listing to the Directory.
- LMK
- Acronym: Let Me Know.
- Logs
- The vast majority of editing tasks are recorded on logs. These typically contain details such as the type of edit made, when and where the edit was made, and the name of the editor who made the edit.
- Manual Catmv
- Refers to the improper process where the entire contents of one category are moved one by one to a new category in an attempt to move the category.
Related terms: Catmv
See also: Guidelines: Changing the Name and Location of a Subcategory, Newsletter: The Perils of the Manual Category Move (catmv) - Meta
- An editor able to edit anywhere, move/rename categories, and approve/reject category applications.
See also: Meta Guidelines - Mirror
- Two web pages/sites which are identical to each other are said to be mirrors. This is usually the case when one site is available under two (or more) URLs.
e.g. dmoz.org, newhoo.com, and gnuhoo.com are mirrors.
See also: Guidelines: Identical Mirrors - Misplaced Submission
- A site in the unreviewed queue for a category which is not appropriate for that category (either submitted incorrectly by a submitter, or sorted incorrectly by an editor). Editors are encouraged to locate the correct category and move the submission there; if they are unable to do so, the Test/Misplaced category can be used.
See also: Description of Test/Misplaced. - MLM
- Acronym: Multi Level Marketing. A pyramid based marketing scheme like Amway or Quixtar where individual agents recruit other agents and receive commission from both their own sales and the sales of the agents they recruited. ODP does not list the sites of individual agents in MLM schemes, because their sites do not meet the unique content criteria for an ODP listing (i.e. every agent's site sells the same thing).
See also: Business: Opportunities: Networking-MLM, Guidelines: Affiliate Marketing Schemes - Mozilla
- A green lizard image which Netscape Corp. use as their mascot, as does the ODP. Derivative versions of the image are used on various items of official documentation.
Related terms: Mozzie - Mozzie
- 1. Images derived from ODP's Mozilla mascot. Used for customizing category pages.
- 2. Short form of "Mozzie Award"
Related terms: Mozilla, Mozzie Awards - Mozzie Awards
- A set of awards voted on by the editing community to recognize contributions by fellow editors, such as "Best Overall Editor" or "Best Forum Thread". The awards are generally held twice a year.
- Newapp
- Colloquial: NEW APPlication. An editor's application to join the directory.
- Newbie
- Colloquial. A new editor.
- NewHoo
- The former name of the Open Directory Project before it was acquired by Netscape in 1998.
- Newperm
- Colloquial: NEW PERMission. An editor's application to add an additional category to their login.
- Node
- From information architecture, a branching point in a taxonomic tree, technically referring to an ODP category exclusive of its parent categories or subcategories. However, used less technically as a synonym for a branch category.
- Null edit
- Public category pages are generally regenerated after an edit has been performed, but occasionally this does not occur. A null edit refers to an edit made which doesn't actually affect any quality of the category, but which is performed with the intention of forcing a category regeneration to occur.
- ODP
- Acronym: Open Directory Project. Used to refer to the directory as a whole.
Related terms: DMOZ - ODP Search
- The search facility used to search directory listings.
See also: ODP Search Guide - ODPSS
- Acronym, colloquial: Open Directory Project Suicide Syndrome. Term applied to, usually abusive, editors who are rude/insulting in a forum thread that eventually leads to their resignation/removal.
- Ontology
- The hierarchical structuring of knowledge about things by subcategorizing them according to their essential (or at least relevant and/or cognitive) qualities. This is an extension of the previous senses of "ontology" which has become common in discussions about the difficulty of maintaining subject indices.
- Parent cat
- Colloquial: parent category. Used comparatively to refer to the category in which a given category is located. For example, the parent category of Arts/Music/Styles is Arts/Music .
Related terms: Child cat, Subcategory - Parse
- To analyze a document or collection of data by dividing it into its component parts to determine the collective meaning. This is often performed by software algorithms.
- PC
- Acronym: Penguin Cafe.
- Acronym: Portable Document Format. A cross-platform file format created by Adobe for distribution of format-rich documents.
- Penguin Cafe
- Discussion forum intended for social, non-ODP discussions.
- PHP
- 1. Recursive acronym for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor", a programming language used to generate dynamic web pages.
- 2. Acronym: Personal Home Page.
- Profile
- A page containing information on a given editor. Includes a list of the categories that they edit, access to editor-specific logs, the ability to send the editor feedback, and an optional area for the editor to display personal information.
- Public-side
- Refers to the normal view of category pages, accessible from URLs like /Home/ or /Home/ . Note: Only the latter URLs (on dmoz.org) are viewable by the general public. There is a delay for a page on editors.dmoz.org to migrate to dmoz.org.
Related terms: Editor-side
- RDF
- Acronym: Resource Description Format. This is the format in which the ODP data is made available for download. Approximately weekly the "RDF dump" is made. This is when new files are generated. During this time editors with catmv abilities are unable to move/rename any categories.
- Reds
- Colloquial: Erroneous URLs that have been flagged "red" by Robozilla.
- Referral Site
- See Lead Generator.
- Regional
- Refers to the Regional category (or the equivalent for other languages), and is generally distinguished from Topical categories because it organizes sites primarily by geographical relevance.
Related terms: Topical
See also: Regional Guidelines - Relcat
- Colloquial: Shortened form of "related category". This a method of linking from one category to another, and is used when the category being linked to couldn't logically be a sub-category of the first.
Related terms: @link - Resident Editor
- The editor of the category being discussed.
e.g. "Before you proceed with the reorganization of Blue/Widgets, you should invite the resident editor to comment."
Related terms: Invite - Resource Zone
- Unofficial public forum intended for discussion of ODP issues. Sponsored by members of the ODP editing community as a public service.
See also: http://www.resource-zone.com/ - RL
- Abbreviation for Real Life, meaning one's life apart from ODP.
e.g. I have some RL commitments this weekend, so can't comment on the category proposal until next week. - Robozilla
- Automated link checker that marks erroneous URLs red.
- Root
- Current and former Netscape/AOL employees who have contributed to the ODP's backend development and directory content.
Related terms: Staff - Root Category
- One of the seventeen base categories forming the Open Directory Project, such as Arts, Home, or Science. Also known as top-level category.
Related terms: Tree, Second Level Category, Third Level Category - RSS
- Acronym: Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary. A machine-readable file format designed for syndicating content of websites. IN ODP, RSS sites (or RSS feeds) are flagged as such, separating them from "normal" sites.
- RZ
- Acronym: Resource Zone
- Search Engine
- A web service which accepts a list of search terms (words) from a user and returns a list of relevant web pages (a SERP) from an internal database which is constructed by specially designed web spiders which fetch information from internet pages.
e.g. Google
Related terms: SEO, SERP, Spider - Search String
- 1. The keywords or codes input as terms into a search engine.
- 2. The keywords or codes used to query external search engines for sites similar to those listed in a particular ODP category. This defaults to the category name, although it may be edited. One common reason for doing this is to include the context of parent category(ies) to make the search meaningful.
e.g. The default search string for Arts: Television: Awards is awards, but television awards is more meaningful. - Second Level Category
- A subcategory of a root category.
e.g. Business: Small_Business and Sports: Baseball are second level categories.
Related terms: Third Level Category - See also
- See: Relcat.
- SEO
- Acronym: Search Engine Optimization. The techniques used by webmasters to optimize the placement of their site in search engines for given search terms.
Related terms: Search Engine - SERP
- Acronym: Search Engine Results Page.
Related terms: Search Engine - Smilies
- Graphics that can be used in forum posts to indicate an emotion/expression.
- Sort Order
- Refers to the way that subcategories (and/or @links) are grouped in the standard category display. Three groupings are possible: top, middle, and bottom (default).
e.g. Sort order is utilized in Reference: Education: Colleges and Universities. Types of college programs are placed in the top group, geographic divisions are placed in the middle group, and other topics are placed in the bottom group. - Spam
- 1. Unsolicited commercial email. Also known as "junk email".
- 2. In ODP, spamming refers to numerous improper submissions of one or more related URLs, often to improper categories.
e.g. Submission of adult sites to non-Adult categories or submission of a URL and numerous deeplinks all to the same category. - Spider
- A computer program which "crawls" the web, searching for and indexing content from web pages.
Related terms: Search Engine - Staff
- Netscape/AOL employees responsible for hosting and administering the ODP.
Related terms: Root - Stats
- Colloquial: statistics. Refers to the total edits made by a given editor.
- Subcat
- Colloquial term for Subcategory.
- Subcategory
- Category contained within another.
Related terms: Category - Subdomain
- Subdomains are derived from domains by prefixing a name and a period (.) to an existing domain or subdomain.
e.g. www.example.com, ftp.example.com, and books.example.com are all subdomains of the domain example.com.
Related terms: Domain - Submission Guidelines
- A description intended for both submitters as well as editors which describes the types of sites found within the category as well as the types of sites not found in the category. May also include details concerning titles and/or descriptions specific to the category.
Related terms: Category Charter - Symlink
- See: @link.
- Taxonomy
- 1- The science, laws, or principles of classification; systematics.
- 2- Division into ordered groups or categories: "Scholars have been laboring to develop a taxonomy of young killers" (Aric Press).
- Test
- A "workspace" category used for building models and templates for proposed category reorganizations. Test/ categories are not accessible by the general public, and are not included in the RDF dump.
Related terms: RDF, Test/Editors
See also: Test/ category description - Test/Editors
- Test/Editors categories are available for each editor as a "private workspace" alternative to Bookmarks.
Related terms: Test, Bookmarks - Test/World
- 1. Workspace area for World/ categories
- 2. A special, publicly accessible Test/ category for languages not yet represented in World/, including those without editors, with a very small number of listings, or otherwise of limited present utility.
- Third Level Category
- A subcategory of a second level category.
e.g. Business: Small_Business: Telecommuting and Sports: Baseball: Youth are third level categories.
Related terms: Root Category - Thread Stretch
- An extremely long URL forces the width of a forum thread to stretch beyond the width of the monitor. This creates frustration for editors who then need to scroll sideways to read other posts sharing the thread. Placing a space at an approximate mid-point of the URL solves this problem.
- Timed Out
- An editing account times out if an editor does not make an edit in a four month period, or if a new editor does not edit within one month. Editors whose account has timed out may apply for reinstatement.
- Top-level Category
- Synonym for Root Category
- Top-level Domain
- Refers to the rightmost portion of a domain, which is the broadest division in the heirarchical naming scheme on the Internet. Top-level domains are either generic top-level domains (such .com, .org, or .edu) or country code top-level domains (such as .uk, .ca, or .se).
Related terms: Domain - Topical
- Refers to all categories of a certain language (e.g. Arts, Business, Sports) which organize sites primarily by their topic, as distinguished from the Regional category.
Related terms: Regional - Tree
- Heirarchical structures such as ODP's category structure can be visualized as a tree structure. In this analogy, base categories (such as Arts or Shopping) are considered roots of the tree, or root categories. Each level of subcategorization in the directory represents a branching of the tree from a thicker branch into several thinner branches. Subcategories at the edges of the structure where no further subcategorization is present are leaves or leaf categories.
Related terms: Root Category, Branch Category, Leaf Category/Node, Second Level Category, Third Level Category
- Umbrella Category
- Put simply, this is a category that contains other categories. Generally the term is applied to an overarching category which contains more specific sub-categories.
- Unreviewed
- Sites that are awaiting review in a category's 'Unreviewed queue'. They have either been submitted by a member of the public, or moved there by another editor. They are not visible to the public.
- URL
- Acronym: Uniform Resource Locator. A standard way of specifying the location of an object, typically a web page, on the Internet. URLs are the form of address used on the World-Wide Web. They are used in HTML documents to specify the target of a hyperlink which is often another HTML document (possibly stored on another computer).
e.g. / and /cgi-bin/add.cgi?where=Home/Cooking are URLs.
Related terms: Listing - URL Cloaking
- A technique using frames in a web browser where one URL "cloaks" or hides the existence of the second URL.
e.g. http://go.to/etna/ is a vanity URL which cloaks the "real" page at http://personal.inet.fi/musiikki/jusaname/etna/index2.html . The former page contains the latter in a frame which spans the entire browser window.
Related terms: Vanity URL - Usenet
- A global, decentralized system of newsgroups. The original ODP taxonomy (actually, the Gnuhoo taxonomy) was based loosely on taxonomy borrowed from Usenet. Usenet groups can be associated with categories.
e.g. rec.woodworking in Arts: Crafts: Woodcraft: Woodworking.
- Vanity URL
- A secondary URL (generally much shorter) that either (a) redirects to the real URL (b) acts as an doorway page to the real URL, or (c) uses URL Cloaking to conceal the existence of the real URL. Some domains which host vanity URLs are: come.to, welcome.to, go.to, move.to, and jump.to.
e.g. http://welcome.to/showballet/ is a vanity URL for http://www.showballet.com/index.htm
Related terms: URL Cloaking, Doorway Page
- Whois
- A searchable database maintained by a domain registrar that includes details such as the name, address, or technical contacts for a given domain.
- Wiki
- A website which allows the content to be edited by anyone.
- World
- A top-level category that contains sites written in languages other than English. For instance, World: Deutsch contains sites written in German.
- Worldlinkerate
- The process of adding altlangs to all equivalents of a given category in other languages, often done by using the Worldlinkerator tool.
- YGM
- Acronym: You've Got Mail. A reference to the AOL-popularized message to alert the arrival of e-mail.
Additional acronyms can be deciphered with help from Reference: Dictionaries: Acronyms.