hutcheson

Is the business "based" in Canada? Or does it have an "office" there? Does it ship from its "office" in Canada? or the "office" in Asia? Or does it have a "warehouse"? Does either "office" have an address, or am I just supposed to walk the streets of Calgary looking for it? And now you ship from "Canada" -- but ... that is explicitly not where the website says you ship from. This is not the way a real, legitimate business sounds. Do you expect every customer to engage in a round of half-a-dozen e-mails just to find out that you don't have a consistent story about what COUNTRY this product (if there is any product at all, which he must be beginning to wonder about) is going to come from? Let alone what State/Province, city, or street address.... Can you not see that you have done nothing to establish credibility, and a number of things to destroy it? And can you not see that these things are visible to potential customers?

>by saying he "hangs his shingle" means that that company holds his license and takes a cut of his pay to share office space, but he is his own broker and legally responsible for his sales. Understood. >This is not a made up name but his REAL company name Understood. And the spammers have not one but many REAL company names. So we don't list REAL company names. We list person name, and license-holder (agency) name. >and I take offence of being clumped together with unscrupulous web designers or realtors. Sorry, but we clump all the realtors together, and ... sigh, you know how it is. We can't redefine categories based on our judgment of scrupulosity, which is a good thing, because we can't expect to be able to judge that very well. We just do websites. Same with web designers. And I'm not particularly proud of some of the other folks in my categories, either. But...that's life Just imagine how both of the honest lawyers feel.

>Yes we agree that we had a link to another website in our website earlier which was vstore affiliate, which is already removed. I am not sure if that impression still makes you think that we are doing affiliate business. How could it not? >I do not think there is anything wrong written in About Us page on our website and it talks about just we we do. I'm sitting down here in Podunk, Illinois, thinking about where to buy my next technogizmo. I read your "about" page and see that you import stuff, and that you have an office somewhere in Asia where they DON'T make these technogizmos, and where I'm not going to buy one, and another office in the frozen north where they also don't make them, and where I'm also not going to buy them. And THIS is supposed to convince me that you're a retailer in MY country? >I am surprised as everytime you are saying that I am doing affiliate business, which I am not. As per my understanding if any website deals in affiliation it shows links to other websites from where it has taken affiliation and directs traffic to them. No, that's a "doorway." An affiliate business is one that collects orders on behalf of some other party who actually fulfills them. Many websites do collect the order by means of a tagged link to another site, but that's merely a bit of technical trivia in which we are not intersted. >We are retail distributors of consumer electronics and involved with importing merchandise. We do not do any affiliation business and we do not direct traffic from our website to another. We don't care whether the shopping cart is on your site or somebody else's! >We sell products on our website and take all responsibilities of dealing with our customers. >This website www.ewis.ca is fully owned and governed by our company East West Imports & Services and we have included same information including Our registered business number in about us section on our website. I'm very sorry if I left the impression that we didn't think you owned the domain name. That was never in question. >May I request you to reconsider our website for submission and pl. feel free to let us know if something still makes you feel our business is affiliate, we would like to clarify any doubts. I looked for unique information. I didn't find it. That's really the bottom line.

The real estate guidelines for listing titles are very strict. That is because real estate agents have historically been very agressive about using alias URLs, mirror and fraternal mirror domains, etc., and we have to list them in such a way that we can easily spot duplicates. So, if his name is really Gary Ward and he really hangs his shingle out at Oak Forest Realty, then the listing title is correct. It doesn't matter how many times he changes his webserver or site content, so long as he doesn't change his own name. And if, following a lot of his competitors, he went out and incorporated as "Large Carolina Estates", "Mega Carolina Homes", Gross Carolina Domains", "Big Carolina Shacks", AND all possible permutations thereof, we'd spot him more quickly because of our guideline. We do what we have to do. And this is what we have to do here.

Re: Status of http://www.ewis.ca/ I think dfy is right. There's still nothing there but smoke and mirrors. Look, you need _unique_ content. If you copy someone else's product catalog, that's by definition NOT unique. If you offer products from someone else's catalog, that's by definition NOT unique. Why is this concept so hard to understand? Say there's a Walmart on the corner of 15th and Main street in Podunk, New Jersey. That's unique. They design an advertising flier. They post it on their website. That's unique. They pay $.03 to everyone who posts a copy of that flier on their own personal site. That's ... their business. But we don't list every personal page in town under Podunk/Business_and_Economy/Shopping/General_Merchandise, just because they post a copy of that Walmart flier. This rule still applies even if they use Photoshop to draw beards and mustaches on all the models in the fashion pages. They're still advertising Walmart product, and that's not unique.

>Interesting however that our closest competitor (also UK based) People say this a lot. But it's completely irrelevant. What would have been relevant if they regarded _you_ as _their_ closest competitor IN THE PORTION OF THEIR BUSINESS THAT CAUSED THEM TO BE LISTED IN THAT CATEGORY. Not even a horse of a different color: more like an ungulate of a different genus. Which doesn't say that they both couldn't be true at the same time. Make sure that your website includes SOME kind of evidence of services provided from or to points in Europe. Give Contact numbers or addresses of offices in France, name Belgian customers or German-based projects, give prices in Portuguese doubloons, ... whatever. Then resubmit. Mention in the proposed description something like [provides xxxx services throughout the EU] or whatever. (Did I mention make sure that information can be easily verified at the website!)

>Any indication when there might be specific quidelines posted for affiliate sites? The editor's guidelines. And they're very simple. "Do. Not. List." They do not have unique shopping content, and in the presence of the website of the REAL retailer, they do not add shopping value. They do not have unique directory content, and in the presence of the ODP they do not add navigation value. Now a site that could be created and published and used without affiliate links, doesn't immediately get banned if it adds sufficiently inconspicuous links. But I have never seen a site that started out as an affiliate site successfully converted to a listable site. Doesn't mean it couldn't happen in the right hands: it just means the right hands almost certainly don't build affiliate sites first.

Re: Status of http://www.ewis.ca/ Can you tell your viewers enough about your business and the value-added services you offer to products you redistribute, that they can _tell_ the website is not just another [long sequence of expletives deleted mask for vstore? If not, please do not resubmit.

>Site owners are not going to be happy that there sites get lost in the listing in the next dump. Possibly. This is absolutely no concern to the ODP. >Asking them to change there sites to conform to quidelines is kinda "Big Brother" don't you think. But asking the ODP to change ITS site to conform to their self-centered expectations is perfectly OK? I think...rather not. So: the ODP doesn't in fact ask ANYBODY to change ANY sites. It simply builds a directory based on whatever, in the collective experience and judgment of the editors, is useful to the surfer AT THAT TIME. It builds on what is available, not what it wishes were available. "No site is guaranteed a listing, nor is any listing guaranteed to be permanent." >Yall are probably talking about this in current editor meetings, I bet. In view of the fact that "aggregated advertising" sites (AKA "affiliate banner farms", one of the most ubiquitous forms of spam we face) usually masquerade as directories, yes, there are always discussions of how best to deal with them.

>I am quite astonished that the editor of the section I wanted to submit to edits so many sections: _I'm_ quite astonished that anyone _ever_ wants to edit any of the commercial-web-development sections. Talk about the cobbler's children having no shoes...hardly any of _these_ even wear pants, and some are naked up to the eyebrows. But, hey, he volunteered, and someone figured he could be trusted, and better him than me, and that's an end of it. The ODP wouldn't get anywhere if we only let editors do what interests _me_. There are any number of reasons why an editor would seem to take on what seems like too much work. But so long as they're doing good work on _any_ of it, and they're finding something they can derive pride or enjoyment from, then the ODP is better off with them than without them. Managers may want to work with slaves; marketroids may want to deal with cattle; but neither one of them make good editors. So we make do with volunteers. They're cheaper to feed than slaves and push the millstone harder than cattle do, but you gotta let them pick their own millstone.

Re: Status of http://www.sainiherb.com/ Oh, I see. Keyword-stuffing. Not cricket, me boy, not cricket at all. .

>Reversing that order reduces your chance of being listed. Not necessarily: that's not possible for some sites. Other sites have a better chance of being viewed sympathetically before their content is added. But I must agree with your thesis. There are some stupid pests out there that repeatedly submit a site for 6 months to a year without turning a finger to actually create it. Now, maybe these slimeballs think that their best chance of getting listed is by accident....and there's no point in developing 100 sites just to get one of them in by accident, when they could just develop the one that got in by accident. And they may be right. But, for the rest of you who actually plan to develop the site regardless of whether it gets listed first: DON'T submit it first. Consider this scenario: editor reviews site, rejects saying "nothing there." Three months later, another editor reviews the next submittal, sees that there was nothing there before, and deletes without another review. Result: a good site doesn't get listed. Whose fault is it? Not the editor, who has certainly kept full faith with the ODP social contract. They made absolutely sure that that submitted site had been reviewed -- and deleted a duplicate submittal to concentrate on sites that hadn't been reviewed yet. And the social contract doesn't promise a SECOND review of a site until we've finished the FIRST review of all the other sites on the internet. Now, sometimes the site gets a second review -- even from editors like me that heartily contemn and condemn this antisocial submittal practice. But ... you are building a reputation for yourself and your site. Try and make it a good one.

Rejected, apparently due to insufficient unique content. <note type="facts_of_life">As the ODP grows, it gets harder and harder to build a _directory_ site with "unique content." The bar keeps gets higher -- new sites must have substantial more content than it used to take to get accepted; old sites that don't keep up tend to get removed whenever they're re-reviewed. (This last is a slow process, since editors often concentrate on new sites, so many currently listed directory sites couldn't currently receive new listings, and might even be removed if reconsidered.)

>The bottom line is we provide a valuable service to our visitors. That's fine. Put whatever you want on the site, and promote it however you wish. The ODP isn't and can't be a monopoly; the ODP doesn't and can't list every website. The ODP bottom line is that there is no unique information to review on the site, and therefore it will not be possible to find a reason to list it. A desire for more profit is not a relevant reason, nor is a history of past profit. Even the presence of invisible content (which you say is the case here) can't be a reason, although (as mentioned before) if we could have seen it, it could have been a reason. We don't keep the ODP editing guidelines secret, so you know what it takes to have the ODP as a customer. But the final choice is yours.

>A status report that tells whether the site is in, awaiting review, or rejected would be nice Agreed. I sat down once and tried to map the actual internal statuses into reportable statuses like that. It is far from a trivial problem. All of the factors I mentioned interact with each other in complex ways.

If the old URL is still working (which it is) and there is no indication at the old site that the NEW URL is preferred (as there isn't), the editor should NOT change the URL. The reason is simple: it enables the editor to easily keep the ODP listing working, while avoiding tedious investigations and not falling victim to malicious listing-hijack submittals. We don't want to waste the editor's valuable time on tedious investigations of the bona fides of every submittal. We just review websites. So, if you want the new URL to be listed, you can either take down the old URL, or put the NEW domain name as the header or home page link. Otherwise, we're happy with the old one.

We list sites based on "information flow". Editors review sites looking for what "unique contribution to the sum of human knowledge" they offer, and then categorize and describe that content. One kind of "unique content" is "information" in the traditional sense -- science, history, etc. What is under discussion here is "information about commerce." The fact that I can go to 123 Park Street, Podunk, Maine, and buy a lawn mower; or mail-order a Model T car kit from Sears Roebuck in Chicago; or hire Johnkrushna Doenanda in Bangladore to build you a webpage: these are all bits of commercial information, and we can easily check whether they are unique on the web. But a "lead generator" is completely different. It doesn't give out information [although it claims that that information is available somewhere.] It takes in information. There's nothing unique about that--zillions of sites want to collect your e-mail address, mostly for predatory reasons. So, that simply doesn't count as "content" for our purposes. And (precisely because there are so many e-mail predators out there) this is one case where we simply cannot accept claims, either made on the website or otherwise. We have to review. If you want to get credit for database content (whether it's stores or anything else), you should allow the visitor (and editor/reviewer) to browse it. That way they can judge whether it's unique or valuable.

General question: 'My site was submitted to "category Y". It was moved to, and eventually listed in, "category X". Is there any chance it will also be listed in "category Y"?' General answer: It would never have been moved to another category if the editor had thought there was any chance it should have been listed in that category. Now, the local editor could be wrong, but (outside of major spam targets, which this isn't), I'll give you 20-to-1 odds going the other way _anytime_, and 50-to-1 on days I'm feeling lucky. When the site has already been listed in another topical category, I'll give 200-to-1. I should also probably admit that if the site is _not_ listed or waiting review somewhere else and is _not_ in a major spam industry, I'd _accept_ 400-to-1 odds your way. I'm figuring on collecting the house margin on all those bets. (These statistics are not altogether made up: they're based on reviews of tens of thousands of submittals in the Test/Misplaced queue.)

Re: Site Submission Status >>Can you give me some indication of the time frame? >No, we can't. Too true. But suppose there HAD been an editor in that category? Then the conversation could have gone something like this: >>Do you know when the category editor will log in again. >No, we don't. >>Or how many sites they'll review before logging out? >Not exactly. >>Or which unreviewed sites they'll look at first? >Not really. They might even spend all their time doing web searches for unsubmitted sites, or rechecking listed sites. >>Or how long they'll wait before logging back again? >Not as such. >>Or whether they'll spend all their time in other categories and not even look at this one? >Could be, we really couldn't say. In short, whatever warm fuzzy feeling you might have gotten from the presence of an editor in that category, wouldn't have been justified anyway. All we can say is: lots of people work hard, lots of sites get reviewed, some people can be cajoled into working for awhile on some of the staler unreviewed heaps. But there's nothing in the process that you can build a business plan around.

Before looking at the site, I'd strongly suggest that you drop everything and look for a Furniture Sales category under Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom, and submit there also. It will be closer to your target audience, and it will probably get reviewed more quickly.

You know, some of us strip out the artist list when we list record labels. There are several good reasons for that practice. This is one of them. We certainly don't want to contribute to a misunderstanding like you've had. Technically and legally, the performer should be contacting TW/AOL/Netscape, not you, since the guidelines clearly state that the editor is responsible for the site description: and when push comes to shove, you have no control whatsoever over its text or contents. Feel free to tell them that. Practically speaking, we like to get inaccurate descriptions fixed quickly. There is a technical difficulty: update requests (such as I assume you made) are in the same heaped-non-queue as new site submittals, and tend to get processed at the same time--whereas for the sake of quality (and legal issues) it would be better to give them a higher priority (or at least a higher visibility, which is the nearest thing to priority in a volunteer effort.) That means that, unlike for a new site submittal, posting here with a genuine accuracy problem (such as yours) will almost always always get a quick response.

Resubmit. To keep this forum usable, the moderators _have_ to keep it from being an alternative-fast-submittal route.

Re: www.vitalcomms.com any info on submissi No. But if you've only submitted it once or twice, I'd recommend poking around in Shopping or Business subcategories of Reg/Europe/UK to find the closest match, and submitting there. If you find the exact right place (or something close) and an editor reviews it there, we'll just delete the other submittal whenever we run across it. No big deal. Generally speaking, if you submit again (as the guidelines say) after three weeks, it is generally a good idea to look around and see if there isn't a better category than where you submitted before. ("better" doesn't mean "with more listed editors"! It means "the other sites in the category are really more like yours.")

Now, you're asking for a combination of information that isn't directly available even to editors, information that is intended to be available only to editors ("this submittal is spam because of the following evidence"), and concepts of information that simply aren't well-formed from a logistical perspective ("Whose submittal is it? and what changes to it cause it to cease to belong to the submitter?") and concepts that simply have no relationship to any palpable reality ("number in the queue"). It is usually easy for an editor to say what can be said, or to see that the question should be left for a more experienced editor or more thorough investigation; it is not at all easy to describe what an automatic process should do, in order to be useful to submitters and not fatal to spam investigation. And finally, we have to ask if this kind of expensive design and development effort is really the best use of available resources. The "what is my status" questions don't bother editors -- since the editors that would be bothered can ignore the forums where they are currently asked.

For Texas Regional categories, just wait. It's pretty aggressively edited, and (based on historical activity) the wait is 90% likely to be less than 3 months.