[zozbot234]

I don't think DMOZ had ranking per se? They could mark "preferred" sites for any given category, but only a handful of them at most, and with very high standards, i.e. it needed to be the official site or "THE" definitive resource about X.

[reaperducer]

You are correct, the sites weren't "ranked" the same way that Google ranks sites now. But there were preferred sites, and each site had a description written by an editor who could be fairly unpleasant if they wanted to.

I had a site that appeared in DMOZ, and the description was written in such a way that nobody would want to visit it. But it was one of only a few sites on the internet at the time with its information, so it was included.