Can't someone just shoot it and put it out of its (our) misery?

Yeah, read an article a few weeks back on the same.

Pretty negative about the whole DMOZ site and submission process in general.

The link is below.

Ineffective DMOZ

DMOZ started as such an ambitious project, but without a major overhaul, like any motor, it needs to be junked. Like many of the readers of this blog, I have had sites waiting to be reviewed for a year or more without success.

I was briefly an editor and know how overwhelming submissions can be. Since then, I have firmly believed that the volunteer editor operation is insufficient to handle the volume.

So yes, either turn it into a business operation or put it out to pasture.

I seem to be seeing this everywhere - webmasters asking for DMOZ to be shut down. What on earth is the problem. Submission isn't a guarantee to inclusion, and in any case there are other directories (strange but true). Google say they don't add any particular weighting based on DMOZ inclusion for SERPS. DMOZ don't charge anything for submissions, and there are processes available if anyone believes an editor is abusing his/her position.

The DMOZ is a waste of time, so many valuable sites are turned away while sites that are within the DMOZ are 404. The editors human they may be are not doing a very good job.

As a former DMOZ editor, I can tell you what a complete and totally worthless system DMOZ is. Other editors used their editing authority to give favored treatment to sites they had personal or direct interest in. It was a totally corrupt and completely inefficient system that should be abolished and shut down. It never even remotely fulfilled its mission.

I say kill it if it's still twitching. I was a DMOZ editor for several years, and I'm still feeling irritated about the endless nitpicking by the politically correct super-editors. If they want so badly to have the content of their underlings to appear "just so" then they can do it themselves. What's the point of asking others do do the work if they're just going to complain? Sure, my reviews are not California-standard, but that's what happens with volunteers. The endless PC wrangling was a total waste of (my) time.

Perfectly agree with the above comments. About two years ago myself and a friend spent >2000 man hours creating a new website, full of content on family holidays based on our personal experience (see if you can guess the URL!).
Submitted it to DMOZ and never heard another thing. Now of course I respect their editorial rights.....but I don't think it was rejected.....just stuck in a black hole.
In the meantime we received 505,000 unique visitors in 2006 as a result of listings on all the major search engines. So I wonder how a site can attract so much interest....and yet not be listed on DMOZ.
I can only conclude as the correspondents above....either the system is corrupt (which I don't have any reason to believe)....or it is overloaded.
Shame, it was a good concept!

THE SAME HERE! I POSTED TO DMOZ AND NEVER HEARD ANOTHER THING. IS IT WORKING? DAWN AT WWW.EZ-CASH-4-U.4t.COM--FREE MONEY MAKERS AND ADVERTISING! CHECK IT OUT!

It has been down for months and is finally back so hopefully they've cleaned up their system.
www.buyingcheap.com.au

DMOZ has to work upon some serious techniques to get back the trust which they had sometime back with their users. The process of reviewing and listing the websites is very slow and they should be working on that issue or the time is not too far for them to be in the ditch.

Much of the time I have spent submitting to DMOZ has been fruitless. I might as well be submitting sites to my toaster. It's disappointing, as traditional SEO wisdom says a DMOZ listing is still important.