I am the ODP editor chang, real name Chengappa. I find myself in the unexpected position of having found what I thought would be a private email from me, here reproduced in a public forum.

First comments. I've had two emails so far as a result of this thread, apart from those from Hari Prasad Nadig (HPN). Thanks to the person who sent a useful and constructive email. To the person who emailed me to say there were 'vulgar and blatant' errors in the ODP Kannada section, I've never suggested to anyone that I was competent in Kannada. 4 years or more ago, I posted a message in soc.culture.indian.karnataka news:soc.culture.indian.karnataka , asking for someone to volunteer to set this up. That produced one enquiry, and no further active input. I've also written privately to three strangers who I thought might be interested, and I've tried to persuade some of my relations in India to take on the work. None of this has been successful. My knowledge of Kannada is restricted to a couple of years learning at primary school level, and I am aware that my competence is minimal. I intended, and could only hope to provide a basic public ODP category to attract attention and interest. The results might be vulgar, but there are better answers than to criticise me for not doing things beyond my ability.

But it is is good that there is active participation now. Hopefully this will increase, and this category will improve.

Clarifications of some comments in previous posts.

1.

The ODP has no font problem. The Kannada section is all in unicode, and has always been. The only current font problem is that on my internet facing machine, and I have had this only recently (since installing Suse Linux 9.3 ). I can no longer see any Kannada text. The 'issue' derives from a misunderstanding of my email, which on reading again, perhaps was not clearly written. HPN wrote to me suggesting changes of names, and included the suggestions written in Kannada unicode. All that the message was intended to say, was that my reply to HPN would include the Kannada names written in simplified itrans.

2.

the 'kriiDe is ok' comment. The comments were made in response to HPN's prior email, which he has not posted, and they need to be seen in context of this. This email of his suggests some name changes; aaTe to aaTagaLu for instance, and you can see my agreement or questions on these changes. But it did not suggest any changes for kale, kriide, vignaanya, and others, and that is what I was seeking to confirm when I said 'kriide is ok', et.c.

3.

The misreading of praadeeshika as draadeeshika was just that, literally a misreading. It came about after saving the email from HPN on another PC. On this machine, with WinXP, Firefox and Kannada fonts, the underlining of hyperlinks goes through the middle of the letter, not underneath. I've tried again since with IE6 and it is better.

4.

The current World category exists under the ODP's root only, as http://dmoz.org/World., and houses all other language settings. This displays it in the English section of course, but it is there to keep the directory structure. There is no need for an equivalent 'World' category in any language. Cross referencing of directory categories is available across all languages with 'this category in other languages' links. Whether the English word Regional can be adequately translated as Vishwa is something I'm not well placed to judge.

5.

There is no miscellaneous type category at the root of any language. In general, the ODP does not use such category anywhere if it can possibly be helped.

I feel that there may be some other misunderstandings here, but these may be removed after HPN has had some time to become fully acquainted with ODP culture and guidelines. Despite the negative publicity the ODP gets, mainly because of its antagonistic relationship with the SEO industry, it is a successful, productive and functioning organisation.

Thank you for your other comments, I'll take them on board. I've to go back to real life now.