Lawrence_Chard

Thanks motsa for your answer about size. Following your example about widgets and a Russian composer, the direction we started to move towards some time ago, would mean we gave the single Russian composer page its own website, and expand it, rather than ask for an extra link to be given, but the general rule we are see quoted is one company - one listing. Our original site now has over 1,800 individual pages, I haven't time to count them, but they are probably split about 40% coins, 40% jewellery, 5% Blackpool, 5% cars/parking/safety, plus small sections about search engines, spam, scams, and random thoughts. There are over 2,800 images, with about the same content split. Our coin pages are not all product catalogue, but perhaps 50% information, and similarly with the jewellery section. We do have more than one listing, so I am not arguing simply to try to get extra listings, just trying to understand the ODP editorial policy. It seems to be applied slightly quirkily.

Thanks to all for your further comments, which I have read carefully, and hope to get back to soon, meanwhile another thought occurred to me, although I don't know whether it would be better posted under another thread:- Does size matter? By this, I mean the size of a website and its various sectors, and the amount of content in any sector before any sector would warrant an extra listing either as a subsection of the original site, or as a new separate site in its own right. Obviously the answer would partially depend on quality of content, degree of difference, and other factors such as number and quality of images, but does anybody have any thoughts, or are there any guidelines?

Dear Lachenm, Thanks for the quick answer and explanation. At least I now know why Pink Diamonds was rejected, and also why Blue Diamonds was delisted. We accept this, and do not intend to resubmit them unless your policies change. We do not intend to submit chards.co.uk either. Any comments which follow are not intended to persuade ODP to change its mind about our two sites, we have taken the time and effort to air them out of a desire to see quality internet resources continue to succeed and improve. For some time Alta Vista was the best search engine, sadly it has fallen by the wayside, but fortunately Google has emerged as the only worthwhile search engine. We consider Yahoo to have been the best directory, but it too has had to change its method of operation. We admire the stated aims of ODP, and wish to see it continue to be a valuable resource. Go was also an admirable directory in its time, with amateur volunteer editors, but Disney regrettably killed it. We make our comments not just as site owners, but also as consumer-users of the web. Obviously, like many webmasters / site owners we are not completely happy, but it appears that there is little, if anything, we can do about it. We have only submitted sites which we think offer users sufficient extra new or different content, hence we had not submitted red or black diamonds, or some of our other sites. It has always been our belief that any sites we submitted met your guidelines, and were not aware that there was a one business one site rule, and cannot find a direct reference to this anywhere. Surely what matters more is the total content of each site. If for example Walmart bought Exxon Mobil, would the two former companies be restricted to one single site listing after merging? Presumably not. Sure we have used the world's two largest companies as an example, but does size matter? Again, we think it should not form an over-riding criterium; content or subject matter should be the determining factor. If an individual chose to run two or more sites with different content, one say about rock music, and another about fly fishing, presumably this, subject to other considerations, would be acceptable to ODP. To deny this to businesses is therefore unfair to any business which is enterprising enough to operate in more than one specialised area, and particularly to any business which seeks to serve a number of niche markets. This also affects smaller businesses more strongly than bigger ones. If Microsoft decided to deal in pink diamonds, it could afford to set up a separate subsidiary company, use a different address, etc., and ODP may neither know or care, and would presumably be happy to list both sites, rather than exclude the new one. This would be quite fair in our opinion, but it does tend to favour large companies in preference to smaller ones. While we would not argue that small is good and big is bad, we feel uneasy about global domination by a small number of large companies. As consumers we hope that choice of suppliers will remain. If there is a one company one listing rule, then we believe it should be clearly stated in the guidelines, in the interests of openness and transparency. If not, it would also help to include a statement to this effect. Our main use of ODP as a consumer, is through Google. As such, whenever we search using Google, we would like to believe that the site/page matches we are shown represents a true reflection of all high quality resources available. Our experience would be diminished if that there were sites and pages which were harder for us to find because of a less than ideal selection policy operated by an information provider to Google. We appreciate that ODP receives many site submissions, and that it is operated almost entirely by unpaid volunteer editors. Presumably nobody thinks ODP is perfect, and suggestions and changes will continue to be desirable in an effort to attain or maintain excellence. We hope our comments will be received with an open mind. 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. 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. Obviously this is open to abuse, very few things are perfect, but it could provide helpful feedback, and remove some of the strain from editors. New sites could even go into a "probationary" area until such feedback had been received. 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. This last part requires time obviously. We feel that by doing so we are ensuring that we contribute in proportion to the benefit we receive from the internet. In many cases consumers have e-mailed us to tell us that our sites have helped them make a purchase elsewhere, and to thank us for our help. We believe the spirit in which we operate our websites is beneficial to the world community. We have noticed that a number of our internal pages have been listed in ODP, yet in many cases we have not suggested them, they have presumably been suggested by others because of the value of their content. Whenever we notice this, we try to ensure that the quality of information we provide is maintained to as high a standard as possible, despite our limited resources. With more resources we could improve our content at a faster rate, consumers / users would therefore benefit. We notice that many large companies only seem concerned to sell their products, and offer little consumer information. It seems regrettable that many useful informative and interesting sites may be denied inclusion in ODP because of the activities of totally selfish spammers, is any consideration given to whether the operators or good guys or bad guys? 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. Feedback by editors would also help honest webmasters to know hwy their sites were rejected. We realise this requires extra time and effort, but may ultimately save time by reducing the number of submissions. We saw a reply which said this would alert spammers, but surely this couls help to reduce spamming by letting spammers know their actions are undesirable. Innocent owners of desirable sites may be being penalised for not realising how your editorial policies operate. Although this, as our previous posting is long, we were in two minds as to whether we should make any comments whatsoever, as 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. We would hope that the ODP and its editors would be above such behaviour, but we cannot at this stage be certain. We can only hope that our comments are taken as constructive and positive, and that they do not precipitate any negative reaction.

We already have a number of websites listed in DMOZ and other directories. I am puzzled about the failure to get one of our newest sites listed, namely pinkdiamonds.co.uk (hppt://www.pinkdiamonds.co.uk), and by the removal of a previously listed site bluediamonds.co.uk (hppt://www.bluediamonds.co.uk). We do not know whether pinkdiamonds.co.uk was rejected because:- bluediamonds.co.uk was already listed, there is a similar "look and feel" between the sites, because an editor considered that we were spamming, because there was considered to be insufficient content, or some other reason. We do not know why bluediamonds.co.uk was delisted. Could it have been for any of the above reasons, or because we submitted pinkdiamonds.co.uk also, and the sites were considered too similar in content or style? We have deliberately kept a similar layout between the sites, and not attempted to conceal their common ownership. I have read and re-read the ODP submission guidelines many times, and also read many of the forum posts, and still find it difficult to understand the ODP editorial policy. It appears simple to rule that sites should have unique content. It also seems desirable to stop spamming. We cannot judge what an editor considers to be "sufficiently high quality, content rich resource", but would hope that both our sites contain sufficient unique material. We certainly do not consider that we are spammers. We chose not to set up a "Coloured Diamonds" website which could contain all the different colours possible, because some of the colours are sufficiently important enough to warrant differentiation. Pink diamonds and blue diamonds are different animals with different causes. In the guidelines there is nothing against a company operating more than one website, although we notice the answers to some posting seem rather confused on this point. We could have included pink and blue diamonds on one of our other websites, but we consider as our original website has grown (over 1,600 pages), it has acquired too many different sections, and become slightly confusing, outgrown its navigation structure, and keeps pushing at its bandwidth limits. For these reasons, we decided back in 1999, to try to split it into logical compartments each with its own website. Also if we start a new area of activity, then we try to give it its own site right from the start. In the other forum postings we have read there appears to be a common them complaining about lack of feedback, and although we have seem several answers to the effect that feedback would help spammers, it would also help genuine webmasters trying to provide unique content, and wanting their sites listing, to try to understand what may be precluding their listing. Feedback about reasons for rejection would stop us from resubmitting the same site unless we felt we had made sufficient changes, and make us feel more positive about the ODP project. Not getting replies doesn't help to convince webmasters that ODP is working in the manner suggested by the word "Open" in its title. We have tried using the DMOZ feedback form but with no reply. Sorry if this is rather a long posting. "I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had the time to make it shorter." Blaise Pascal