lachenm

Editors are expected to review the site contents, not the URL itself. Amazon.com isn't listed in a "large rivers" category... <img src="/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

Supplementing kokopeli's fine answer... To answer your first question: No, we can't give you any idea of the time. It will get reviewed when an editor has time to review it. Since editors are volunteers, and are not required to review sites in any particular order, there is no way to predict exactly when your site will be reviewed. To answer your second question: It appears from your website that you have a brick-and-mortar address, so you would be eligible for listing in a Regional branch category. Many sites are entitled to a Regional listing and a Topical listing, and the submissions are independent of each other. You should submit in an appropriate subcategory of the place where your business is located. Unfortunately, I'm not an expert on UK addresses (OK, actually I know absolutely nothing about them <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" /> ), so I'm guessing that your address indicates that your village is in Belfast. If that is the case, since there is no more specific category for your village, the appropriate Belfast category for an art gallery (or collection of galleries) would be http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/Northern_Ireland/Belfast/Arts_and_Entertainment/ .

Awaiting review in a small pool of about a dozen sites. Please feel free to ask again after at least one month. If you do, please reuse this thread, instead of starting a new one.

[Edited] Darn, motsa... Too fast again. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />[/Edited]

I'm afraid your status is unchanged -- still waiting in a fairly small pool.

To answer the question you posed in the other thread, your submission was received the day you sent it. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" /> The submission is dated Dec. 7, 2002. Please feel free to check your site's status again after at least a month. When you do, please reuse this thread instead of starting a new one.

>>I recently submitted our site<< You're not kidding. It is far too soon to be asking for a status update on a site submitted on April 1, 2003. We ask that you wait at least a month. Please come back again in May (or later). >>I was wondering if you could tell me how many sites are waiting for review ahead of me.<< As has been discussed in many other threads here, "ahead" has no real meaning in the ODP. Unreviewed sites can be sorted several ways, so your site could show up at many different positions. Furthermore, editors are not obligated to review the sites in any particular order, so even giving you a listing of all possible positions of your site in the pool would be meaningless.

We ask that you please wait at least one month before inquiring about site status. Your submission of March 7, 2003 is still awaiting review in that category, along with more than 100 other sites. Please feel free to ask again after at least another month. If you do, please reuse this thread, instead of starting a new one.

Re: WebSite Submission Status Please? Not quite a month -- you last asked on March 3, and it's April 2. To answer your question, there is no change in your status. Please wait at least a month, and then feel free to ask again.

First, a clickable link would be nice. For example: http://dmoz.org/Computers/Multimedia/Music_and_Audio/Audio_Formats/MP3/Software/Rippers . Second, please wait at least a month before asking about your site's status. Your submission of March 7 is awaiting review. Please wait at least another month before checking again. If you do, please reuse this thread, instead of starting a new one.

I believe that you have somewhat misconstrued motsa's reply. In the end, the two bookseller sites you mention are both exactly that: booksellers. As a result, they would be listed once, in an appropriate category for businesses selling books. The category would be the most specific that would reflect all the types of books they sell; they would not be eligible for multiple listings in different bookselling categories, as the single correct listing should cover their entire business. Barnes and Noble is an example of a bookseller with a wide range of books (much wider than your sites), and a variety of information about those books, including the types of information you mention: author, publisher, ISBN, etc. People in many fields use their site to find materials, but we don't give them a listing for each of the myriad subcategories they would cover. We won't give your sites multiple listings either. Actually, I find it amazing that people from smaller businesses argue for multiple listings, when a consistent pro-multiple-listing policy would put them at a great disadvantage. In the specific case of booksellers, companies like Barnes and Noble or Amazon (not to mention WalMart and other general retailers that sell books...) would flood the directory with deeplinks, making it much more difficult to find the listings of smaller concerns. With one listing per company (in general), smaller businesses are on a more equal footing with their larger competitors.

We greatly prefer if you provide a clickable link to the category, such as http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Hosting/C Yes, your site is there. Unfortunately, it's waiting in a pool of several hundred sites. Please feel free to check again after at least a month. If you do, please reuse this thread, instead of starting a new one.

Now, to answer some of your more general ODP-related suggestions: >>Would it not help to include one or more extra fields in the submit site form, so that webmasters or others could state what other sites they operate, and allow them to give reasons why they believe their new site deserves consideration. The point of this would be to help discriminate between honest sponsors (good guys), and the dishonest one.<< I'm not exactly sure how this would help. Spammers wouldn't be likely to tell us what other sites they own, and we'd have to find them ourselves, just like we do now. The "good guys" would tell us, and we'd evaluate each submission on its own merits, just like we do now. Actually, as I said in the other post, we're not really concerned with whether a submitter is "dishonest" (to use your word) or a "good guy". The real question is: does the site offer unique content -- unless, of course, the submitter engages in egregious abuse of the ODP. But we usually find those, too. >>Would it be reasonable to allow a democratic method and allow users to vote on the usefulness of a site or its suitability for inclusion.<< I think that your suggestion, while possibly interesting in an ideal world, would open up the possiblity of enormous abuse. I can just imagine the spammers chugging away with auto-voting bots, getting their sites listed in every category. I'm afraid that I'd vote to stick with the current system of having editors who are accountable for their reviews. >>We noticed a forum reply which told a site owner that inclusion in ODP should be considered a privilege not a right, and while this may be a reasonable statement, it fails to recognise that users are denied access to a resource whenever that resource is denied an appropriate inclusion.<< Taken out of context, I'm afraid I can't tell you exactly what this editor meant. What I would guess is that "no site is guaranteed a listing" would sum it up. However, if a site has unique content, and if the owner plays reasonably well by the rules (i.e. not horribly abusing the system), we are more than happy to list it. Believe it or not, the main guiding principle at the ODP is to try to determine what is most helpful for the end users (the public). Unfortunately, that's not quite the same as what is "most desired by certain webmasters," which is the source of many of the complaints that you see on this forum. >>Feedback by editors would also help honest webmasters to know hwy their sites were rejected. We realise this requires extra time and effort,<< Yes, and we already have a lot of backlogged categories. Unfortuntately, it would also strain the server resources if we were to generate emails to each accepted or rejected site. I'd like to see some sort of notification, too, but it isn't likely anytime soon. For now, you can come to this forum. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" /> >>For our part, although the prime purpose of our sites is commerce, we try to include a high proportion of accurate and useful consumer information in all our sites, along with opinion, and consumer feedback.<< That's great. Personally, I wish more businesses had these goals. I think that providing accurate, useful information is, in the long run, likely to gain more visitors and customers for a website than any number of ODP listings ever would.

Thank you for your polite and thoughtful response. >> we wish to avoid antagonising anybody, and are fearful that any criticism, actual or assumed, may cause any of our existing listings to be reviewed and delisted.<< Please be reassured that neither antagonism nor criticism are necessary or sufficient to cause delisting of any site. Nor is praise necessary or sufficient to cause a site to be listed. That's just not how we work. If a site has unique content, we will list it, regardless of what any editor may think of the owner of that site. If a company has multiple sites for what is essentially one business, we will generally only list one main site, allowing users to navigate the site in the way the company thinks best features their products, as evidenced by their site design efforts. The ODP is neither intended as an index of web pages, nor as a substitute for good web design. One site, one business is not an absolute rule, but it is a general one, and for a site with multiple domains in essentially the same business (selling pink diamond jewelry, blue diamond jewelry, and platinum jewelry, for example), we would list one site that allowed customers to access all their jewelry content. If a jewelry company bought, say, a coin dealer, we might be persuaded to allow two listings, as these may be considered separate lines of business, even if the company is quite small. If the company bought, for example, a web design firm, I would think that they would have another listing, as these are definitely separate businesses, not just different products (or product lines) in the same business. Surely you can see the difference between the analogies you suggested and the specific situation concerning your company. A more reasonable analogy would be allowing Exxon/Mobil to have a separate listing for each and every type of fuel or oil product that it sells (Exxon/Mobil Premium, Exxon/Mobil Regular, Exxon/Mobil Diesel...). Or allowing WalMart a different listing for each item they carry. We don't do that, either. As for favoring the big guys, I'll point out that WalMart currently has exactly as many listings in the ODP as your shop does. Yep, that's right -- as far as the ODP is concerned, your businesses are basically equal, though different in focus. Still think the ODP is favoring the big guys? While I appreciate the thought you have put into your post, you are largely covering ground that has been covered before, both in these forums (I encourage you to check out some of the past discussions in various forums here) and in internal ODP discussions (including many senior editors and ODP staff). In this matter, the ODP guidelines are not likely to change anytime soon.

Re: Site Status I believe we have a misunderstanding. It was a day short of a month from your last status update (Feb 26, 2003), not from your date of submission. Please wait at least a month between update requests. Thanks!

Businesses with a "real world" physical presence are both allowed and encouraged to apply for a listing in an appropriate Regional branch category. Submitting in a Regional category should have no effect on your Topical branch submission. It will be in a different queue, and is likely to be reviewed at a different time by a different editor. In your specific case, it would be somewhat difficult to recommend a category, since your location doesn't appear anywhere on your website that I could see. A Regional/ branch editor reviewing your site would likely have the same difficulty, and might not list it for that reason. If you included an address, it would help a lot.

Fortunately, the answer is very short. We generally only list one site per business. We generally do not list deeplinks for specific products (even if the deeplinks have their own domain). The only site of yours that should be listed is http://www.chards.co.uk/ , not the myriad red, blue, black, pink and other diamond domains you own (not to mention various other jewelry, coin, etc. domains).

Re: Site Status Hmmm, you're still one day shy of a (very short) month, you know... Your site has not been recently deleted. >>otherwise, it would be in a queque still, correct?<< Assuming the submission made it through, and assuming that there were no bugs in the system, yes. You can't always assume both of those things, though. Please wait at least a month before checking again.

OK, I'm not a meta, so please feel free to take my advice with a large grain of salt. The description was just one place you should have looked. Another thing you can do is look at similar categories -- e.g. the "parent" category (one level up), "sibling categories" (in the same level), @-linked categories, sub-categories (if any), and related ("see also") categories. These can help you decide if a site fits best in your category, or would fit better somewhere else. Although adding sites to a category is a big part of being an editor, another part is knowing when sites would be better found elsewhere. Another place to get information is to search the ODP (or the Google directory) to see if the URLs you are proposing are listed elsewhere -- and more importantly, if they are, to try to understand why. In this case, if you had searched, you might have found that iprepare.com was listed in the category above the one to which you were applying, because it doesn't just offer security supplies. We try to avoid having a site listed in both a parent and child category in the same branch. I'd like to emphasize that (as far as I know -- I'm not a meta, remember), there's nothing wrong with submitting sites that are already listed elsewhere, as long as they would be appropriate in the category for which you are applying. Finally, it's somewhat dangerous to assume that all the listings in a category are correct. Mistakes do happen (we are only human, after all), and listings can be overlooked when the directory changes, for example. If you use the majority of sites in a category as a guide, look for category descriptions, look at similar categories, and check out your URL's first, you would be much safer. I think you would probably admit that the two sites you mentioned having submitted weren't exactly in the mainstream of that category. I suppose you could appeal to staff, but honestly, I doubt it would get you anywhere. As far as I can tell, the ODP isn't exactly a legalistic, litigious organization. When editors receive constructive criticism (and most of us do at some point), we are expected to try to improve, rather than to look for avenues of appeal (although disagreement through constructive discussion is both expected and encouraged as a process to help the directory mature). If we didn't take the advice of the editing community, and work as a team, the directory wouldn't work nearly as well as it currently does. I also hope you'll take note of some reasons why I think you should feel encouraged, rather than "rejected". Shopping/ branch categories are notoriously tough for first-time editors to get (due to large amounts of spam and attempted abuse). Also, you probably wouldn't have received any personal feedback if the reviewing meta didn't think your application was worthwhile, at least in part. If I were you, I would try applying again, either to the same category (this time selecting the sites more carefully) -- or perhaps to a Regional/ category (perhaps your hometown, or a subcategory if it is a large town), just because there are a lot of good small regional categories that could use some development, and aren't spam magnets.

Hi Mark, Thanks for checking, but, well...that's not quite all of them. As I noted in the original thread, your company also owns www.luxury-villas-france.com and www.luxuryvillasfrance.com. Perhaps you could ask again if there are any others they might have been listed under. It's possible, for example, that they may have registered some domains a long time ago and have forgotten about them. It is also possible that there was a glitch and that they are not currently listed. However, in a case like this, where a company owns a lot of domains, I'd like to be absolutely sure that none of their mirrors and redirects are listed before taking any action.

Hi. No, the correct way is to go to the category where you think your site belongs and use the "Add URL" link at the top of the page, just like you did for the original listing. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" /> The Regional/ listing in no way affects your eligiblity (or the method of applying) for a listing in a Topical category. Editors generally don't respond to feedback messages, so you would have no way of knowing whether your site was added to the unreviewed queue unless you add it yourself. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />

You're welcome. Adding content is always a good idea. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" /> I do want to make it clear that I'm not going to review your site, so any advice from me may or may not be helpful. You could start discussions among yourself and your closest friends (who might have computers). After all, if I go to a discussion site, and I don't see any discussion (not even a single message from the people running the site), I would assume that no one is there, and I wouldn't bother posting. As a result, an ODP listing, or listings in all the search engines of the world might not help if there's nothing on the site. The successful discussion lists in the areas with which I am most familiar (not necessarily high-tech, either) generally started either from informational pages (where someone published articles on a subject, and then decided a discussion would be useful), or from existing communities (either online or offline groups/clubs/circles-of-friends). You'll probably do a lot better drumming up support by contacting other landscape enthusiasts (but please, no spamming), rather than waiting for them to come because they saw your site in a search engine or directory.

It is awaiting review in a pool of fewer than 10 sites. However, after taking a quick glance at your site, I don't know if I should advise you to hold out much hope. An earlier submission was deleted for lack of content, and I can't say that I see much content now. For instance, your "archive" which says that it will be available as of November, 2002, doesn't appear to have any content at all. You would have a much better chance of being listed if there were actually some landscape-related content on your site.

It is waiting in unreviewed with more than 150 other sites. You may want to consider submitting in the Regional Mount Pocono Business and Economy category, since that's where you're located, and since the Regional categories usually have much less of a backlog (in fact, in that category, there is currently no backlog). You are allowed a Regional/ listing and a Topical branch listing, so submitting in Mount Pocono won't hurt your chances of being listed in Shopping. Incidentally, is your site primarily selling diamond jewelry? I looked briefly at the site, and it seemed to me that most of the jewelry listed was made with something other than diamonds (e.g. precious metals). The Diamond Jewelry category is for sites primarily selling diamond jewelry. I'm just wondering if this is really the right category for you, or if it would fit better somewhere in http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Jewelry/Precious_Metals/ . Of course, I might be wrong, as I only took a quick glance at your site. Please feel free to ask again in a month or two. If you do, please re-use this thread, instead of starting a new one.

No, it means that your site was listed today after I posted. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" /> Another editor came through and processed all the sites waiting in that category. For technical reasons, it generally takes some time before a new listing will appear in the ODP search function, but it will eventually appear there too.