I heard recently a rumour that DMOZ 2.0 is nearing completion. It's been hinted at that version 2.0 is near completion for quite a while now, People have been saying for months that it's 'just around the corner' or 'launching VERY soon'. DMOZ have not officially announced the roll out date, but there is renewed speculation that it might be in March 2010.

The new face of the ODP (open directory project) will probably not be hugely differerent from the current look, but the way the data is structured, accessed and presented will be built with much better scalability and efficiency. The biggest problem faced by DMOZ is not the way the site is used, but the way sites get listed on there. There are, to date, nearly 85,000 editors registered as working on the project, but still the latency for getting listed can be months or even years. There have been allegations of corruption and bribing editors to get key listings - generally when the allegations get reported to the DMOZ powers that be, the editor is suspended. Still these instances do give DMOZ an undeserved bad name. Hopefully, version 2.0 will not just be a new interface and storage medium, but a rethink of the systems of working to make the whole process more transparent and fair.