SusieS - Im sure you remember the time when 90% of the submissions to DMOZ were spam - oh yeah - they still are LOL
Seriously though - as a LL owner - and someone that gets a good amount of submissions every day (some days close to top 100s than the lower 100s) while I do look for reasons to list someone, I have also been put in the situation where I look not only at the autosubmit signatures, the content (sponsor or not) etc, but I have to look to boards like this to see who really is trying (or at least use some judgement to try to figure that out) to do good things on a regular basis.
I also have a group of people that I know are trying their best to scam their way into LLs based on posts they make on other boards, mostly in other East European languages, with one thing in mind - to do the least work for the most return. I give them a lot of credit as they do definitely work hard to that end, although I disagree somewhat with their approach, but I also have to take a second look at their submits and what happens in the time range of 3-4 months down the line.
Working at DMOZ there are a few things that help out with finding redirects and changes that affect the listing - although the awesome work of the editors does so much more to ensure the quality of the listings in the long run - but I have to take that same mentality when making decisions on my linklists.
Sure ny bots find some of the easier errors, but when you are hand-checking over 10,000 links every 3 weeks, it gives you a little more jaded view of the approaches used by some submitters.
I have to agree that some LLs have gone too far as far as expressing their views - but then I know of a few of the older LLs that list their views with a little swearing - but I cant disagree with them either - they have been sworn at hundreds of times a week by pissed off WMs that slap sponsor content into a template they stole from the LL owner and then expect to be listed
It has definitely changed in the last 4 years - in some ways for the better and others definitely has gone downhill