spectregunner

May I respectfully suggest that this may be the wrong approach. Build and optimize your site for your customers/prospects/vendors. That is where your revenue comes from. As far as ODP, simply recognize that we are only going to list your top-level domain (or the one we figure is your top-level domain). Provide good navigation links to you other sites from there, so that any visitors who come as a result of our listing will be able to get to other parts of your enterprise.

We are simply not going to list all of your bikini team -- whether you have one or one thousand. In our mind they are all one site that is divided into multiple URLs.

But you didn't ask for a status check. You asked us to make the move (in between your other rants).

As a matter of policy we do not accomodate move requests as a result of posting in the forum. If you want us to consider a move request do the following: 1. Go to the category where your site is presently listed and submit an Update URL request. 2. You may then come back to this thread, and this thread only, no sooner than 30 days and request a status check. We will not entertain a status request within 30 days of a submission or an update request.

If the category is "not quite right" the reviewing editor will move it as part of the editing process. As to the other question...we no longer share any information about the size of submission pools as it accomplishes nothing but disappointing submitters and adding confusion. Let's say, for example, that there were only one site, yours. Does that say anything about when it will get edited? Now imagine that your is one of 300. does it tell you when an editor will get to it? There is simply no way to predict when an editor will go to a given category, and once there, the manner in which sites will be edited, or even the percentage of sites that will be looked at. some editors like to work in categories with large pools of unsubmitted, others like to knock off those pools with only one or two sites. Some do both.

We looked at it on 3/2. If you want a status check, come back after 4/2. Editors rarely respond to submitters because experience and documented history has shown that entirely too many aggressive submitters get very, very nasty when they don't get the answer they want to hear.

One other thaing to keep in mind is that as the directory has grown (and grown, and grown) the need for deep links has greatly diminished. Editors now rarely approve new deeplinks, but at the sime time don't have a great need to go and remove existing ones, excepts as part of greater cleanup efforts. So the presence, or absence, of other deeplinks is really not a factor in deciding if new deeplinks are appropriate. It is not specifically in the guidelines, but many editors prefer that no deeplinks be submitted, and a site owner's view of the potential importance of a deeplink is usually a polar opposite of what the editor usually thinks.

Some time after 3/15 you can come back and ask for a status.

Re: http://www.doggtagz.com/ Moving a properly submitted submission to a different category in hopes of getting a faster review is a lose-lose proposition, and we strongly recommend against it.

I have personally edited sites that waited more than two years.

My best advice to you is to just be patient (I know, it is hard to do.) When the reviewing editor looks at the site, they will determine if it is eligible for a listing, and if so, will move it to the correct category. If your site should be listed in a category that you do anot agree with, you are welcome to submit a URL Update request to have us consider a move.

A better question to ask is: What content is on my website TODAY and what is the single best category that I can find that reflects that content? Forget about tomorrow's content, or next month's content -- what do you have here and now? What category do you think it belongs in. Post the answers to those questions and you may receive some further assistance in terms of steering you to a better selection, but this editor, for one, is not going to do your basic research for you. I don't do my young guy's homework either -- though I do help him after he has given it his very best shot.

The regional location should be eligible for consideration if that is where you are physically located. As for the other topical listings, please keep in mind that we list websites, not pages and that multiple topical listings are the exception rather than the rule. A site would have to have fairly profound unique content to get a second topical listing at present.

Re: Site Disappeared There are a couple of approaches. Due to changes in the forum rules, we no longer dissect sites to determine why they may or may not qualify for a listing. First, you can look at the editing guidelines. The guidelines and other relevant information link to a page found here. Second, you can go to one of the websites that deal with content issues and placement, such as webmaster world or I help you services. I'm not endorsing either, but those two sites, like others, have proven useful to other submitters.

Your question has been asked and answered.

To clarify: there is no queue, there is a pool/heap of suggested submissions that can be queued by editors in different ways, date of submission being just one of them. Some editors look at site suggestions by date, others do not, so being "first" when queued in that particular manner means only that your site might be reviewed first, it might be reviewed last or it might be reviewed somewere in between. While we understand that you are anxious to have your site considered for possible inclusion in the directory, as a matter of strict policy, we never, ever, review a site based on a posting here. The reason is simple: the first time we did so, the floodgates would open and everyone would use this forum to try and speed up their listing. Be patient, my friend, be patient. We add several thousand sites every day, and someone will eventually get to looking at your submission.

Re: http://www.wi-fitechnology.com As you were told before...this is not the place to make that type of request. We do not review sites simply because someone requests that we do so. There are sites that have been waiting more than two years for inclusion. There is no time limit. My advice to you is to stop worrying about the logs and when/if we make a decision concerning your site. There is absolutely nothing more you can do at this point, and worrying about it is not the healthiest thing in the world. Keep working on your site, keep adding unique content, and continue to submit to search engines and other directories. Those are things that you can do.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. We always appreciate it when someone takes the time and effort to think about the directory and make an emotion-free response that is designed to help us better serve. I would like to comment on a few parts of your reply. Not necessarily to disagree, mostly just to comment. In my experience with ODP, it actually speeds things up. For example, I can edit anywhere in Regional/North_America/United_States/Arizona That gives me the ability to jump into subcategories where no editor is assigned and work to resolve issues there. Today, for example, I attacked real estate sites in Scottsdale, Phoenix, and Litchfield Park. I was able to work on reducing the number of suggested sites, and I fixed some problems with existing sites. If we had to wait until there was a editor for those categories, the changed might have been a long time coming. We don't just let editors run amok within the directory because different parts of the directory have different editing policies or rules, and many parts of the directory require a certain amount of knowledge. For example, while I am very comfortable editing Society/Military/Aviation/Aircraft/ and all the sites below it, I would be very hesitant in trying to edit in Society/Military/Naval/Submarines/ because I may not be knowledgeable enough. Now, at some point an opportunity to help out in one of those categories may arise, and in doing so I may lean enough that I can edit there without supervision...but that is down the road at some point. The point is, we try very hard not to put an editor in a position where they can inadvertantly cause problems -- because cleaning up problems is a major consumer of time and energy. On the other hand, when I was just starting out, it used to frustrate me to no end to work on a site that was submitted to the wrong category and to not be able to publish it in the correct category because I did not have permission to edit there. It still happens sometimes, but as editors get experience they are often granted additional editing permissions. In commenting upon the question of phone numbers in one state and addresses in another, you said: I think you are absolutely correct. To clarify, we don't make a final judgement on things like that, but we do use it as an indicator that the site requires a bit more attention than usual. Most often it is innocent, but you would be dismayed to see how many times it tips us off to a deceptive site that is trying to get multiple listings or is trying to beat the system. Remember I mentioned that I edit within Arizona. We have three telephone area codes here -- 623 for communities to the west, 602 in Phoenix and 480 to the east. I can't tell you how many times wrong area codes have helped me catch real estate agent trying to get listed in multiple cities. So we don't make a final judgement on data like that, but it is just one example of the types of things experienced editors use to set off alarms for us and help us to keep the directory a bit cleaner. Cheers!

Without being rude, the answer is somewhere between two minutes and twenty months. There is no average, only a range. Sometimes an editors will work furiously in a category for a week or so, tire of the content and go off to edit elsewhere and not come back for quite a while. I have, as recently as two weeks ago, dropped into a category and found site suggestions that were more than a year old. And this is within Regional/ where we generally are able to get to sites faster than in other areas of the directory. I know that four months seems like a long time to you, but in "ODP time" it is not very long at all. Also, wait times have little to do with the size of the category or even the size of the heap. Wait times are (usually) driven by four factors: # of submissions and amount of spam in a given category # of editors Editor interest (in the category) Other things on the editor plates. For example, when I logged on a few minutes ago, I had nearly 1,100 site suggestions vying for my attention, plus an entire heap of sites that were miscategorized several years ago, plus some sites that are reporting errors, plus, plus, plus....So I go where I think I can do the most good on a give day or editing session. I suspect that it is similar for most other editors. This is one of the reasons why, if you peruse the threads, you see us often as people to apply to become editors. If someone applies and takes the smallest category way out on a branch of the tree, and they do good work with it, it lessens the amount of work for every other editor -- and helps us, hopefully, have time to work on some submissions. A long answer to a short question, but I wanted to give you a feel for some of the behind the scenes dynamics that can impact the amount of time a site waits for review by an editor. I hope you find this helpful.

Hi: To clarify, no one was asking you to go away, rather they are asking that at least a month pass between queries, so that we have time to actually do some editing. There is an excellet reason why we do not go off and edit sites based on requests here -- to do so would short circuit our entire process. Be patient, an editor will get to your site at some point in the future, and feel free to come back in a month and ask for a status check.

Re: status : http://www.discountedwheelwarehouse.c Tastes vary among the editor community, just like in the rest of the world. There is no requirement, or even encouragement for Editors to use Mozilla. Editors are, often, encouraged to test sites with a different browser if they have trouble getting a site to load properly. This editor, for example, primarily uses Opera, but falls back to MSIE if necessary. The point here is that when an editor in this forum tries to tell you that something is not working right, their motivation is one of helping, not one of criticism. If I think a site stinks, has no redeeming content, horrid design and broken links/menus, I'm not going to waste my time passing along notes to the webmaster. I have better things to do with my time. Yet, if I see a site that has a lot of potential, that seems to have good content, but is hampered by problems, I'll often pass along some unsolicited comments to the webmaster in the hopes that they will fix whatever ails the site. I suspect my practice does not vary greatly from what other editors choose to do.

That, my friend, is imposible to answer. It could be published while I am typing this, it could be days, weeks or even months. Some sites have waited for years to published in the directory. This is because the editing is done by volunteers and no one is required to edit in any particular order. I wish I had better news for you. You are, however, welcome to come back in a month or so and check again, using the same thread, which you were kind enough to do this time.

When you have an opportunity, please change me to Editor.