hutcheson

>There's always a way to make your site original, and by adding researched information about you're product you're encouraging people to visit your site. Always? I doubt it. Often? perhaps. What you describe will not make an affiliate shopping site listable, although it may help improve its standings in the search engines, and (if you believe in marketroid-thinking, which I often don't) it may encourage people to buy from your site. Bear in mind that in most Shopping categories what counts is the Shopping content. A site may contain the world's largest collection of recordings of Brazilian tree frog mating calls, but that won't get it listed in Shopping. (Biology, maybe.) Also consider this official "staff directive," which I'm paraphrasing as best I can remember: "Look at the intent of the (affiliate shopping) site. If the content wouldn't be there if not to support the affiliate links; if the content isn't useful without the affiliate links, then don't list it." Another rule of thumb: "Ignore the affiliate shopping content when reviewing the site; consider listing on the basis of its other content, if the affiliate links don't get in the way of viewing the other content." You absolutely can't turn an affiliate shopping site into ANYTHING and make it listable in shopping. You generally can't turn an affiliate shopping site into an informational site (and make it listable). You can, however, add affiliate shopping to an informational site (without harming its useability or destroying its listability.) It might even increase its useability. Warning: You can also turn an informational site into an affiliate shopping site in such a way as to destroy its listability and your own credibility both.

>And both before and after the site was moved the editor had never not a single time replied to me. I understand that this is unsatisfactory to _you_. But...it is the normal ODP practice. It is, in fact, what we _strongly_ recommend to new editors. And the circumstances which you describe are precisely those circumstances which compelled the normal practice. Our reason is simple. The "Add URL" link is not (from our viewpoint) a way for you to impose obligations on volunteer editors, and force them to help you. It's a way for you to volunteer to help the rest of us volunteers by finding sites we couldn't find (or hadn't found). The various communication channels are set up to support this kind of assistance. Suppose that a submittal is (in the judgment of the editor) spam. Is that help? No, it's harassment. Does the editor have a responsibility to help someone pester the community? NO! Is it prudent to give out an e-mail address to an identified spammer? HARDLY! Does responding to a (true) spammer stop the spam? NO! It increases it! f communications about an inappropriate site are repeated often enough to get irritating, the meta-editors will take steps to -- respond? NO! stop the harassment? YES! Now, the editor may have been mistaken in judging your site as spam. But it was not a mistake to act on that judgment! Summary: you can talk to editors, you should generally expect them not to respond (although from our point of view, they should either act on your communication, or pass it to someone else to consider.) If you need a response, these forums are a much safer way for the editors to respond, and a much more efficient way for submitters to find an editor who is willing to respond. If there is a real problem with an editor (which is a possibility, although not nearly so common as some people believe) the forum is a good way to get attention from other editors. You still may not get satisfaction. But at least you'll have been dissatisfied by experts.

When you get the new services up and running, request an "Update URL" to the site, with a description mentioning them, and a note to the editor [in brackets like these at the end of the description will work] suggesting a category move. Why then rather than now? You'll have a stronger case then (with more "other" services, or at least "more obviously other" services), and the case will look better if it hasn't already been turned down (as it might be now).

I started looking at that category. I ended up chasing mice through Shopping/Antiques. (Don't ask. That's just the way it goes. If I had started out in Business/Clocks, maybe I'd have ended up in RC.)

>But how long will it be till someone other than the current editor does something. Managing a volunteer effort is like herding cats. You don't ask which one will catch which mouse, or when. You just give them a soft warm place to sleep, and try to keep your neighbors from putting out arsenic-based rat bait.

>we also offer online appointment scheduling This is "records" whether or not it's medical. >...personalized travel recommendations This isn't medical at all, and can hardly be an argument for ANY kind of placement under "Medicine" >... and vaccination history management. Um, I'd think that would DEFINITELY be a "medical record." >The medical record services directory would put us in a niche that would limit our services exposure. Do you agree? Absolutely, yes. That is EXACTLY the point of having subcategories. They completely hide the site, except to people who are interested in its particular focus. In a case like this, with everything fitting, say, "Medical Records" except for some outliers that don't fit "Medical" at all, we have two options: 1) list once in Medical Records, and mention the non-medical services, or 2) for a site with "doubly significant outliers" (that is, significant in both senses of the word), we'd consider a second listing in some non-Medical category. For some types of site, option 2 is specifically prohibited; there may be some for which it's specifically encouraged. This doesn't fit either type, so editor judgment is called for. I don't think option 2 is applicable here.

Rejected. IMO, there isn't sufficient content for it to be listed, even if it were considered a different site from the main domain. So I'm not going to do what I'd planned, which was to ask why anyone would have ever considered it a different site.

I thought each site can be listed regionally AND thematically. No. each site _may_ not be _listed_ at all. But each site may be _considered_ for listing regionally and thematically. And your site is conceptually listed in both already. How? Well, as has been pointed out, World: Deutsch: Gesellschaft: Religion und Spiritualität: Christentum is a very general category, and any site should be listed in the most specific category that it fits. Casting my eye over the W/D/G/R&S/C subcategories, I see -- "Österreich@" -- well, THAT'S an obvious fit. But the "Österreich@" "logical" subcategory IS simply the category where the site is listed: "World: Deutsch: Regional: Europa: Österreich: Gesellschaft: Religion und Spiritualität: Christentum." This keeps us from having to list EVERY Austrian Christianity site twice; it keeps us from having to deal with every submittal twice; it gives us a way to collect all the appropriate submittals regardless of whether the submitter was surfing the Regional categories or the Society categories. Generally speaking, a site is NEVER (what, never? no, never? what, NEVER? well, NEVER EVER!) listed in two categories which can be reached from each other with one click. What would be the the point? (Users who know how to use a directory will know which "related categories" to look in; other users will have to learn how to use the directory before anything we do will be effective for them.)

Re: http://www.discoverthecotswolds.net/ To address the more general question: "I submitted my site to Arts/Evanescent, but I later realized it should have gone in one of these other site: -- Shopping/Arts/Evanescent, because it sells stuff -- World/Deutsch/Kunst/... because it's in German -- Shopping/Publications/... because it sells a book printed in disappearing ink -- Reference/Education, because it's primarily about teaching students to spot the stuff before it vanishes What should I do now? The correct answer is, IMO, don't wait for confirmation. Read all the involved category descriptions, look at a few of the other listed sites, and if you're pretty sure your old guess was wrong and the new guess correct, then go ahead and submit to the other category. Yes, it's a duplicate submittal, yes, abusive duplicate submittals can get you into trouble, but (from our point of view) you have new information on the site [that is, the RIGHT category for it], and the submittal process is the best way you have of communicating that to us. The FIRST submittal was the futile one; the SECOND is the helpful one. You're helping us build the directory, and we like that.

>do other senior? editors randomly look at categories that do not have an editor to review the ones that are building quite a backlog of sites sitting in the queue to be reviewed? Yes.

Re: http://www.win4now.co.uk/ First of all, spam isn't "illegal." It's "unwanted". It's "obtrusive." It gets in people's way when they're looking for information. So what you said is logically equivalent to "It's not fair to call me a murderer, because I've never raped anyone." You really need to understand and address the real issue if you hope to persuade people to change their minds. So what's the real issue? Yes, no doubt, you are seeing the results of people's dislike of "permission marketing." This is fair (so far as it goes) because people really do dislike it, and you are really doing it. But why do people dislike it? I won't go into the business model (have we mentioned we are supposed to Not Care about that) or the legality bit (IANAL, and not a British subject, and wise people do not listen to my opinions of what OUGHT to be legal). But it conflicts with the ODP's INFORMATION model. The ODP is about finding, indexing, and categorizing information SOURCES that are available on the web. Sites that aren't information sources -- aren't indexable. "Data collection" is not just not an information source, it's an information SINK. We can't even review it. (How can we know what you do with that information? All we can see is what you claim to do with that information, which one might describe as your business model. And (for confidentiality reasons, no doubt) there isn't much detail to that.) So where would we put sites with "vague descriptions of business collecting consumer information for e-mail marketers"?

I think I didn't make myself clear about the "non-unique" content. I didn't mean that it was duplicated at your other site (as you say, the two domains don't overlap content: they are not "mirrors".) I meant that some of the "free resources" were duplicated elsewhere on the web.

>The problem is that these sites have totally different content, ... the content is entirely different from our company site already listed. Our company site that's listed is a site that just sells our software products. Bplans.com ...has lots of free tools, expert advice, free online book, articles, and lots of free sample business plans. None of this information is on our company site. OK, what you're accused of having is not a "mirror" (the same content on multiple sites) nor yet a "fraternal mirror" (very similar content on multiple sites), nor even a "doorway domain" (hardly any content except links to another domain) but only a "vanity domain name" -- that is, a domain name that doesn't correspond to a whole website, but to a particular page (or pages) within a website. In other words, what the editor seems to consider as "one big site" is spread over URLs in three different domains. That's allowed (as if we could tell anyone else what to name their individual pages anyway!) but WE don't have to treat it as three WEBSITES just because it has three DOMAIN NAMES. It would have just as good a legitimate chance at a deserved deeplink if the content were all under one domain name. (Well, maybe better, since "vanity domain names" represent a common "sneaky spamming" technique, and the second name automatically raises suspicion and hackles which, however unjustifiably, cannot help but affect the initial attitude toward the content.) This isn't meant to address the question about whether your request for additional listings is justified. It's just to define the issues that need to be addressed. Another important issue is "uniqueness". Some of that content is not unique, some seems to be. In such cases, the editor has to go through a lot of work to determine if the amount of unique content is large enough to be significant, and then whether it's large enough to be listable. The problem you face here is that, frankly, in my opinion, having established rather easily that the content's not ALL unique, it's not worth the editing trouble to investigate a large sample of the pages, all for the sake of content that is, after all, already reachable from the directory. There are other sites that need reviewing, and this one (because of the uniqueness issue) CAN'T "obviously meet the exceptional-content bar" for deeplinks.

Re: http://www.win4now.co.uk/ "incentivising users to sign up" I _like_ the term. "We don't ban spammers anymore. Now we simply apply technological disincentivisations."

Bless you, username, for fixing that! (I'm not the editor involved, but I'm sitting here with four carefully sized windows, cycling through edit and forum activities. I HATE it when my desktop gets hosed by some javascript expletive-deleted.) And isn't there a LOT of bad advice available on the internet today?

Part of the application is to explain what knowledge of the topic you have. Depending on the topic, the bar may be set fairly low. "I've driven through Podunk County twice on my way to visit relatives, and it looked like there were some good fishing sites. I've begun researching them on the web." is probably an acceptable level of knowledge for a small category. You may have to show more academic knowledge to get into Quantum Mechanics, but any evidence of a complete absence of cultural or aesthetic sense is about all you'd have to show to get to Britney_Spears/Fan_Sites. The "sample URLs" are more important. If you know what goes in the category, and can find and describe them, you may have what it takes to become an unpaid editor.

>I would hope that the ODP acceptance rate was at least 50% And I would hope that the quality/spam ratio for submittals was greater than 1.0. But, face it, we're both going to be disappointed. As for the "redirection," there's another standard exception: the "bare domain" can redirect anywhere on that domain if it likes -- the index.htm file is a common default. In a case like this, we list the "simplest form." If you submit a URL like http://www.ford.com/en/default.htm , the editor should, as part of the process of checking the URL, strip off everything but the domain name and see what happens. This conforms to two principles -- one variously expressed as "deeplinks are the exception" (technically, index.htm IS a deeplink) or "we list webSITES, not PAGES" and the other as "where not conflicting with other principles, list the simplest URL." The value of having principles is that there are so many to choose from. The trick is to choose the relevant one. "The directory isn't there for the principles. It's the other way round." As for Bekins: if the company should be double-listed, fine (It's exceptional, but known. I once double-listed a company that made both mobile homes and vacation trailers -- very similar from the technological point of view, perhaps, but very different "businesses" nonetheless.) But what was handed to the ODP from Bekins was a doorway page, and that's an open-and-shut case. Well, a closed-and-shut case. All it gets Bekins is a reputation for _devious_ spamming. If in fact Bekins operates in multiple unrelated businesses, then submit the URL -- the same real root URL -- to both categories. If in fact Bekins operates in multiple related BUSINESSES, but the CATEGORIES are unrelated (that is, there is no obvious way to navigate from one to the other), then go ahead and submit the same URL to both categories. Now, you probably won't get LISTED in both categories, but we might notice that the categories OUGHT to be related, and add the "related category" links. Would we in that case curse you for an evil spammer? No way, we'd appreciate the help you had given us by (indirectly) pointing out a deficiency in the category navigation. And your site would be more visible, because it would be in a category that was more visible. (this visibility, by the way, quantifiable as Google page rank).

Re: Request Status-http://www.tiffany-lamps-store. Google is pretty good at seeing only one site, and giving it the total page rank of the links to all the aliases. I can't speak for "other important search engines," if that phrase hasn't become an oxymoron.

>I submitted this URL to Open Directory at least for about a month now. However, I haven't seen it on any of the associated search engine yet. You wouldn't have, even if it had been listed -- technical glitch, which should be fixed Real-Soon-Now. If you want folks here to tell you whether it's been listed, rejected, or neither, you'll need to mention which category you submitted to. >Do I get an email notification if it is rejected at all? It is theoretically possible, but....winning the Irish Sweepstakes is probably more likely. >Should I re-submit after site revision? Not unless the site has already been listed AND the listing is no longer accurate.

Re: URL Rejected? I understand that there are many legitimate reasons for someone to have a "redirector URL". And to be perfectly honest, our policy of NOT listing the redirector sometimes causes extra effort: for instance, a webmaster buys a domain name, and then points it to wherever his website can be hosted most cheaply (and when the host goes broke, he can merely update the redirection. But _WE_ have to track down the original domain name, find the new forwarding address, and change the listing to that.) Unfortunately, we find that listing redirector domains causes even more extra effort; and our experience has led us to prefer the consistency of listing the "real" URL (even with the problems it brings us, and the frustration we know it brings webmasters.) We know you won't like that, and we know that some of you have good reasons for preferring a different approach -- hey, some of the redirector-users are editors, too, and their side of the issue has been well-represented in our internal discussions -- but, sorry, we think we need to do it this way.

This is another case where you might get good results by offering to build a Stephanie Burkett category: Google up another half-dozen or so sites, give the best three good descriptions and apply for the B category, with a note saying you want to create a new subcategory. (The software will allow us to accept new editors to a subcategory of the requested category, and if it's obvious that is what they want, and the parent category is too big, we sometimes do.)

The fundamental questions editors should ask of a site are "does this site provide unique content? is it relevant to this category?" An "affiliate site" label is really not so much a description of the site's business model (which we officially Don't Care About) but the editor's judgment that "aside from someone else's list of products (which could better be gotten from that someone else's website) this site has nothing unique, and is therefore not worth listing; the kind of "nothing unique worth listing" it is, seems to look most like sites that are set up to promote affiliate sales." Granted that your business model may have been misrepresented, you didn't say anything that suggested the editor's judgment (as elaborated herein) was incorrect.

kari, that last was not a failure message...the submittal did get in, although in an auxiliary queue, The editalls are trying very hard to move those sites to the main unreviewed queues in a timely fashion (I've got another browser window open there right now.)

What you have is a directory site, and the usual rule is "list, once, in the most specific category" (duh, just like in the guidelines) and "do NOT deeplink in every (or indeed any) applicable subcategory" -- which is another way of saying that for directory sites, the guideline "deeplinks are the exception" applies in spades. At this point, if you remove the non-county-specific listings (which the ODP would list in a more geographically-compatible category) and the deeplinks into some OTHER site, there is, um, even less than the ODP category has. I wouldn't list the directory at all anywhere. Adding content might make the site worth one listing, but -- one in every county? We've been there before with some other sites, whose names need not be mentioned here, and -- trust me on this one -- we ain't NEVER going there again!

>Evolution based web page design allows for the development of content, before considering ascetic value. I think it's saying, "It doesn't matter whether the artist is starving or not, so long as he produces enough art."