I’ve been editing at Dmoz since ‘99. The only thing I know about corruption is that editors caught in shady business are summarily canned, after which they wander the net proclaiming innocence and pronouncing us corrupt.
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As for the big $5000 extortion scam, that was as you’d guess just plain old link bait. Nobody on the planet considers a listing worth $5000 even if we charged. “Shoe” knew bloggers would circle the wagons, and despite Dmoz staff offering to can the editor if he’ll provide the email, he suddenly doesn’t see a need to have an extortionist brought to justice. Meanwhile page after page on google refers to his website. It worked.
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The project has a LOT of work to do to catch up to changes on the net, and we’re working on it. AOL just added staff and resources, and hopefully we’ll emerge a better product.
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Meanwhile the corruption thing is like the Proctor & Gamble satanist connection… a popular urban legend that will never die.

Good luck on your crusade… and yes, simply being able to do something doesn’t mean it should be done. Regards - rj

Unfortunately the power of the internet means that once something is said, it is often too late too retract once submitted.

To me, this is the shameful aspect of the whole situation. That so many within the SEO community would continue to perpetrate an outright lie and fabrication. A fabrication which has been debunked over and over again by many independent people with access inside dmoz. That not a single one of the hundreds of SEO bloggers who have repeated the story without any fact-checking whatsoever has issued a correction or update in their own words says more about the so called “ethics” of the SEO community than a thousand stupid arguments on a thousand blogs.

As regards whether this is professional. The post tackled the issue of whether we should be having public slanging matches at the possible detriment of the industry, something echoed to a degree by Matt Cutts recently

http://www.e-gain.co.uk/blog/its-official-google-doesnt-hate-seos-but-we-do-have-an-image-problem/2007/08/31/

I have to ask in response - how in the context of the post - is an anchor text to our services on our blog not proffesional? When I talk about being professional we talk about portraying a good public image to potential clients in particular.