Sites face serious problems in the fact that Yahoo may not subcategorize them as well as they should do. Certainly Yahoo could, and probably should, hire many more editors. It is facing new competition from players like LookSmart and the Netscape Open Directory. To maintain its editorial lead, it will need to expand and improve its listing system. Srinivasan disagrees, at least in terms of scale.
Users do benefit from a selectively-assembled directory.
But as mentioned above, most sites aren't getting in because they are bad but because editors are not reviewing them at all. That's a weakness, in my book. Perhaps Express will be a first step in a reform of Yahoo's submission system. Webmasters that need an immediate answer now have an option for getting one. We realize there are some folks for whom it is really critical that they hear something quickly.