My Former Opinion Against Blogs

I used to look at the many awful ODP blog submissions and used to think that there's no useful way to use a blog. Since then, I've seen some blog submissions in Science, of all places, that were dazzling, as well as other ones in various topics. They were well organized and factual. I've done a 180 degrees about the potential usefulness of the blog format. I know that it's a new tool and not everyone, including myself, have totally mastered creating good navigation, content, and good webpage design. I consider it to be a very user friendly basic webpage editor. The quality of the blog totally depends on the author and the relative interest of the person viewing the blog.

I would like to praise social networks like Facebook and Twitter that let people chat about their day and connect with friends. This frees up the blogs to used more for informational content and let the social networks do great work in connecting friends.

Editing At ODP

ODP, also called the Open Directory Project, is a human edited directory, where you look for subjects just like a search engine. I am pleased to be working with such a worthy project. Of course, there are personal challenges of trying to improve my skills, wade through many misplaced submissions, mirrors and sites that don't offer the quality that is expected. And, there are the occasional heated discussions on category organization and general practices, but it's just because we care so much about this valuable internet tool that keeps us motivated.

I say that overall my editing experience at ODP has been extremely positive and have met some of the neatest people there. Another great thing about editing at ODP is that it's an international community. You may be communicating with someone from Argentina one day and then from Japan the next.