hutcheson

Followup: The primary assassin was probably a site in one of the other windows. This site just does something sneaky and sleazy that disables IE's "Back" button. Java or Javascript, perhaps, which locked up because the JVM was already torqued by the other window?

I trust this site is not DELIBERATELY a browser-killer? Admittedly, the Infernal Exploder 6.0 (or is that 6.66?) is not what anyone would call "stable" or "healthy", but it has a lot of users (or is that victims?) Also admittedly, I had more than two windows open, and that's definitely pushing the limits. And it had been more than an hour since the last crash. So it may not have been the website's fault. But...you might want to check: ODP editors aren't REQUIRED to use a real browser, any more than human surfers are.

>Our careful records indicate clearly a submission. As do ours: multiple submissions, in fact: even, one might say, almost as many submissions as entries in the "directory." We call that "lowballing spam". >It can not be coincidence that none of these are found. It is no coincidence. >We are a internet marketing firm. That is abundantly clear. >Unusual to me is the fact that a number of similar requests (for similar directory sites of other topics) have gone unlisted as well. It is by no means unusual to editors. We delete dozens of such sites daily. We would probably call them "vanity-domain deeplinking spam" -- if they weren't so obviously "advertising banner spam." >Can you please let me know how I can prevent our requests from disappearing in the future? I do not think it will be possible. Internet marketers, like assassins, must clearly distinguish clients from victims. The ODP tends to represent the perspective of the victims. >Should we re-submit? No.

>What will be the best affective way to report regarding abuse of the Bingo categories? Whatever gets through. There is an official automated system "in the works" but it's not yet available. In the meantime: >Is it better to e-mail staff@dmoz.org or to kctipton? Either would probably work. I'd recommend putting "Abuse report--category XXX" in the Subject line. Note that staff will probably just add the report to our automated system and let some meta volunteer to investigate. >And when exactly I use this forum's 'Abuse Reporting'? I know I shouldn't use it for specific site, but what if there is a list of sites like umesh report on 'Matrimonial Spam' is it OK like that? >That's good for less specific problem. A list of sites is pushing the limit a bit, but the rules are there to protect posters from counterattack by frustrated spammers, not to keep us from hearing about spam. >Or maybe I should use this thread as it already mentions some of them (and not opening a new thread because I read in this forum that it’s not a welcome procedure). Probably OK also. But email to kctipton and other meta (or staff) of your choice is probably the best bet.

Go ahead and submit. If it's in the right category, well and good; if it's the teensiest-bit wrong, some kind editor will move it to the right place--a short move isn't a big deal.

>It is not just a tacky affiliate site. You may have misread the submittal policies. They do not say anything about tacky sites. You may submit tacky sites: in fact, we have whole categories of them. What you may not submit are _affiliate_ sites. That an affiliate site was listed for years is a shameful mistake, for which we abase ourselves in apology, and for which we atone by removal as quickly as possible when we are informed.

If you have multiple domain names and point them to the same site, how will the ODP editor pick which one to use? 1) If you only submit one, in the absence of other information, that's probably what will be listed. 2) If one domain uses "cheap redirection" (javascript, frames, one of those inane ".to" domains) the editor SHOULD change the URL to the real one without redirection. (If this doesn't happen, please complain. Those redirector schemes cause major pains for everyone--editors, webspiders, and surfers.) 3) If it is the normal domain name resolution process (the name server points both URLs to the same IP address), then the editor SHOULD pick the domain name corresponding to the business name (joes-shoes.com, not cheap-shoes-4-u.com or good-shoes-4-all.com etc.) or the name featured most prominently on the site (say, in the header logo, or coded in the "Home Page" link on the navigation bar.) Again, if this doesn't happen, feel free to complain. From the webmaster side, 1) Tonga domains are for fly-by-night shysters. Look professional, pay the $6.95 for a real domain; look poor but honest, publish the Tripod domain; or look like a sleazeball quick-e-buck grifter. Your reputation, your choice. 2) If you are redirecting from one domain to another, make the redirection specific ("In three seconds you will go to our spiffy new website new-url.com -- click HERE") 3) If you have two domains pointing to the same place (aside from the stuffed-keywords ones), then make sure the home page prominently mentions the one you want published. 4) Take the steps above, THEN submit an UPDATE URL request. If we can check it out at the website, then it's a no-brainer to change. 5) BUT: Don't submit the "Update URL" request with a newly-hyped-and-keyword-stuffed non-descriptive-marketroid-verbal-effusion. What may happen is that someone looks quickly at the hideous description, says "oh, they want us to stuff their turkey" and deletes without noticing the new URL (which is less prominent on the editor's form).

In such cases, it usually means that your ISP is using proxies to support more users than it has unique IP addresses for. Thatis, every time your machine sends a request to your ISP, your ISP server plugs in some free IP address from its pool of public IP addresses (meanwhile secretly memorizing your private IP address). When it gets the answer, it remembers your private IP address, and frees up the public IP address for someone else. Next time you send a request, it might go out to the world via some other of your ISP's public addresses. And so the ODP server gets a request for the "add URL" from one IP address, and the filled in form from another IP address (both of them from your ISP's pool.) It never sees the IP address of your machine on your ISP's network (and it couldn't use that one anyway, since there's a machine in Kamchatka or Lagos or Boston already using it on the WWW.) Not your fault, and -- as has been said -- not a big problem. Some sites get delayed by the extra queue, some sites get more quickly nudged into the right category. (Very) occasionally a site will even catch my eye and get listed right away.

>how do we go about restoring www.internationalstudent.com? There is nothing you can do to add, remove, or modify a listing. You can ask that a site be reviewed -- the editing community has agreed to do that. Whether it's listed depends on the content. In this case, multiple metas have now looked at the site, and I am confident the removal will stand. The original listing was, in my judgment, an accident. My theory is that the reviewing editor was misled by the site layout to think there was more content than there actually was. >If we were a different company for each site (hypothetically of course) all the sites would be included? Correct? Absolutely certainly unequivocably not. I was not thinking about that specific question: I can see now that if read from that standpoint, it would have been inadvertantly misleading.

Look, this is really simple. A whole slue of domain names set up ON the same subject BY the same organization, is NOT multiple sites. It's ONE site. If the pages link to pages on other domains, it's CLEARLY one site. If they don't link to each other, then it is merely one site with brain-damaged navigation. There are two possibilities: (1) The pages on the various domains link to each other, so the ODP can link to one of them, and have all the content represented. We're happy, users are happy, and the sane companies are happy, since they can link to any new pages from their own home page. (2) Or they don't link to each other, and the only reasonable conclusion is "if the company's OWN WEBMASTER doesn't think his OWN pages ON THE SAME TOPIC are worth linking to, then why on earth would anyone else?" Either way, the listings shouldn't come back. Resubmittals of them (or additional similarly "related sites") could result in -- well, no need to go into that, you can read the submittal policies. "Related" of course could mean "from the same organization." If the organization has an ODP link to a home page for information on this topic, it may use that home page to link to any other content it thinks relevant, including pages hosted on any domains it owns. But don't ask the ODP to compensate for ill-considered and counterproductive internal website navigation or promotional schemes.

Re: Status request for http://www.candybardesigns. >I am not saying it would. I only ask for consistency. There are directories on ODP that list multiple sites selling the same group of products and nothing else. And there are multiple sites selling the same group of products and nothing else, that were never allowed to be listed. And there are MSSTSGOPANE, that were listed at one time, and have now been removed never to return. CNC has _already_ been made consistent. It is, in the judgment of the editors that have had to deal with them, this last group that CNC needs to be consistent with. Greater consistency will come by identifying additional groups of such non-unique sites ... and removing them. Be careful what you ask for. But enjoy it now that you've received it.

Yes, resubmit.

>the old chestnut problem on each of my IP address not being recorded etc. That's not a problem. We take care of those. It wastes some of our time when you submit over and over again, so we don't take care of them quite as fast as we'd like to. In such cases, don't worry, just do the usual: wait a month, try ODP search for the URL and title, and if it hasn't appeared, ask in the forums.

Re: Status request for http://www.candybardesigns. Agree with lissa...and if I didn't I'd defer to her experience. There is a slippery slope, and many affiliate sites try to obscure the real relationship as much as possible. (I believe the ODP stance on affiliates has caused the hotel reservation industry to completely re-engineer their cookie-cutters to better conceal the actual source of the data.) Basically, once company "X" has been revealed as having an affiliate sales, MLM, networking, etc., program, we won't list any _other_ sites that sell their product online. At that point we don't care about their business model: they could be sending the orders back to the warehouse to be filled, or stealing product out of trailers at truck stops. So far, Hewlett-Packard isn't signing up soccer moms to have printer parties with free demos of countertop publishing programs and neon-colored "fun ink cartridges." And if they have a "link to our catalog and get 5% commission on every sale" program, we haven't discovered it yet.

Need categories, please--clickable links for preference.

>Can you please advice on how we can approach this line to have my sites listed in the Dmoz directory so we can help satisfy the needs of the consumers. Simple. Give unique content. In this case, "content" would mean information about companies that provide, or agents that sell, insurance exclusively in Connecticut. And "unique" means, as usual, we don't already have a site with that content. Caveat: if a site has only a few links, we might first list the links ... and then not list the site, since all of its content is already listed.

>But what is a good application? The meta guidelines are open. Basically: information demonstrating knowledge of subject, public-spiritedness, linguistic fluency sufficient to write professional-looking descriptions according to the guidelines, and ability to search the net well enough to find more sites applicable to that category.

Please keep repeat requests in the other thread: http://www.resource-zone.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=status&Number=20814&Forum=All_Forums&Words=kefkah&Match=Username&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Old=allposts&Main=20811&Search=true#Post20814

Bump. Still waiting, with under a dozen other sites.

>I would say that editors who do not show up at least every three to four weeks should (un)voluntarily resign or at least have an 'Out of Office' sign in their profiles with a reason. In the face of a daunting amount of work, we feel that adding arbitrary strictures to the editors' responsibilities, and requiring activities that do not directly contribute to the directory, would be counterproductive. A lot of applicants get all hung up about the presence of a listed editor. (That's why we encourage editors NOT to leave their name on low-level categories if they can edit them because of other permissions...and that way, submitters can get all hung up about the _absence_ of a listed editor.) But these things aren't that big a deal. No editor owns a category, only meta-editors can control who else gets to edit "their" category (and you don't get to be a meta-editor without really really WANTING more people editing in your beloved categories that are being neglecting while doing meta-stuff.) If a good application is written for a smallish category, it will "almost never" be rejected because of the number of editors. If the category is "neglected" (no edits within the last two months or so) I venture to say that it has _never_ happened. We know that "mystery editor XXXX" has 17 count them 17 categories" (just to pick a number out of a shoe), and we'd accept a new editor into any of them in a flash -- given a good application.

To answer the second question first, the Phycology listing has been added. (The other listing is still in the queue.) As for the first question, that's IMO precisely the kind of quirky unique content -- related (but not obviously so) to the business; gaining authoritativeness from association with the business, but accessible to the general public and with usefulness independent of its advertising value -- for which deeplinks were invented. No, there's no need to put it on a separate domain.

Re: Status request for http://www.candybardesigns. It is _theoretically_ possible to add content to an affiliate-sales site to make it listable. But I have looked at over 50,000 site submissions, and I haven't seen anyone actually _do_ it. I am convinced it is for all practical purposes, psychologically impossible. I won't tell you not to try. I'll just say if you succeed, you'll be the first. (Most listable sites start out CONCEIVED as information sources, and add the "links to related Amazon books" as an additional resource for users. Such a site has a whole different look and feel than a "affiliate site with a fright wig on". Quoting staff pilpul on the guidelines (from memory, with a most un-talmudic lack of verbal precision): "If a site's primary purpose seems to be to drive visitors to some other site for commercial gain, it should not be listed." It is hard to disguise a site's primary purpose. Another way of thinking about it: if you can imagine a set of users who would go to a site, easily find the information they came for, WITHOUT BUYING ANYTHING, and leave satisfied and unirritated .... that site could be considered for listing.

Re: Status request for http://www.candybardesigns. It's not the accidental presence of content available on other sites that bars a site: it's the absence of content that's NOT available on other sites. If you shopped for books very often, you'd know that Amazon has a whole server farm of content not available elsewhere (book reviews and "related books" links), as well as products not available elsewhere (OOP books), and it represents the unique online presence of an organization that offers services (i.e. shipment and customer service). If it were not for those niggling details, we'd not list amazon.com.

This has been passed on to the editor's forum devoted to bugs and features. (Netscape employees do all the on-site programming, so their priorities will rule: and I can't say how easy or hard it would be to implement, which would of course affect the priority.)

Hey, you're batting 6 for 7. (I wish all our outside helpers did as well!) Thanks.