A long long time ago...

in a galaxy far far away, there lived a Jedi who submitted Hemaka.com

http://www.resource-zone.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=30958&highlight=hemaka

For the love of God please tell me if I should resubmit (again!) or if it can be accepted. PLEASE.

www.hemaka.com is a great website and a great company and deserves to be listed on dmoz.org. Thanks!

According to what you said in your old thread you already suggested it several times. This means that sooner or later an editor will review it - please do not suggest it again. Suggesting a site more than twice tends to make the review process slower, and increases the risk of all copies of the suggestion being removed accidentally.

Whether it will be listed or not is impossible to know until it is reviewed, so we can't tell you that. If it has unique content that is easy to find for a casual web surfer, you can count on it being accepted. The best thing you can do now is forget about dmoz.org, as there is nothing more you can do to make sure your your site is reviewed.

... but don't neglect your site - with or without an ODP listing you should still continue to work on, and build, the content, build links, and make the site into one that an editor would want to add even if it hadn't been submitted.

giz said:

... but don't neglect your site - with or without an ODP listing you should still continue to work on, and build, the content, build links, and make the site into one that an editor would want to add even if it hadn't been submitted.

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Sure! I mean, I respect that approach and I feel that my site is technically and aesthetically wonderful and clearly puts forward its argument for the company. I plan to add an articles section soon to discuss openly some of the methodologies and/or standards I go with and why. For example, the site is currently XHTML 1.1 compliant, passing the appplication/xml+xhtml header and so forth. Different style sheets for print vs screen, etc (try a print-preview). It looks great from Firefox to IE 5.2 on the Mac. Even is design and specially formatted to present information clearly on Lynx / text-browsers. (So much more, for example, use firefox and turn images off; the replacement ALT tags information has been formatted!) :icon_idea

I've spent a considerable amount of time getting the site to layout like that in XHTML using valid CSS. I took a prior critcism on the site from this forum to heart and now i truly believe it represents a good mastery of standards and is technically among the finest quality websites on the web. :yy:

Thanks for all your feedbacks on this.

Nearly everything that you mention is something that we do our best to ignore. (Not that I think those are bad things to do -- not that I think a professional would ever consider omitting some of them -- not that I think they don't make the site more useful for more people -- it's just they are not things an editor is supposed to review.

All that matters is: that the site clearly tells who the company is, and what they'll do for money.

Beyond that, it's just a matter of waiting for an editor to decide that particular industrial category needs to be developed....and then waiting for him to work through (some percentage averaging 50% of) all the OTHER possibly relevant sites.

badaei said:

I've spent a considerable amount of time getting the site to layout like that in XHTML using valid CSS. I took a prior critcism on the site from this forum to heart and now i truly believe it represents a good mastery of standards and is technically among the finest quality websites on the web.

Click to expand...

Beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder and what makes a site listable (and by association makes editors interested in reviewing) is the actual content-useful and unique information the site provides. The amount of time spent in design, the layout and technical quality of a site plays no part in a sites listability.

*note: Hutcheson as usual types faster

Okay, and shadow sped by me.

While, some days, my eyes may need a break from bright colors and wild patterns, a visually-appealling site still has to tell me something I didn't know about the business or topic I'm researching.

Technically-crafted is great, if that means that all of the images load and the links work right. Beyond that, it doesn't mean much to me when I'm surfing or editing.

I'm much more likely to notice (and be upset by) the 4 typos and 3 grammatical errors on the front page of a site touting someone's technical expertise, than I am to notice if they're w3c compliant in xhtml. Or, I start getting a deja-vu feeling and find sections of the page are pirated from another source. Or, click on an interesting link and see "Coming Soon!"

As always - unique content, accurate content, rich content, completed content.

What are you talking about?

DesertJules said:

I'm much more likely to notice (and be upset by) the 4 typos and 3 grammatical errors on the front page of a site touting someone's technical expertise, than I am to notice if they're w3c compliant in xhtml. Or, I start getting a deja-vu feeling and find sections of the page are pirated from another source. Or, click on an interesting link and see "Coming Soon!"

Click to expand...

So, if I may ask, which parts of the content feel ripped off? I wrote it all myself. And if you just want to read text without fancy images then go ahead and turn off CSS! It becomes more bare than this site.

And what about a site that looks good AND has good content for what it is. Why be so anti or negative? I'm not applying to get the site into a tutorial category, i'm asking to get it listed as a business in San Diego. So what that I charge for the services I offer, what's wrong with that? For someone in San Diego looking for the services I offer then more power to them. I've done Open Source work as I feel I want to give back to the community. I am American and I do business here, yes, for money; such is life. The content is "original" and useful for those who seek it. Compare it to the sites accepted in the category i'm applying for!! Give me a break!

Lets get off the abstract "too many bad sites with fancy graphics" mindset because i'll get categorized and pre-judged that way. The content of the site is important. I agree. I'm not Hemingway but the content works and has been proof read. Geez! Its from my heart, my mind, and I believe in what i'm doing... why stand in someones way? I feel like i'm being made in example of but i'm mis-judged as your pointing to a gem and calling it garbage.

There are no broken links, no spelling errors, and grammatically its fine.

Whoa!

First, I have not viewed your site, I have no idea of the content or anything else about it.

Second, I was speaking in VERY general terms about how I view sites [as a consumer, as well as an editor] and why the underlying structure doesn't always directly relate to the quality or usefulness. And, hopefully, why the energy put into a site shouldn't all be directed at technical compliance with html or css gold standards.

Lastly, if my statements caused offense, I heartily apologize. They were not directed at or about any specific site, webmaster, or circumstance.

My mis-understanding

I see your points in general and in general I agree with you, which is why i made sure not to make those mistakes on this site.

All the best...

>Why be so anti or negative?

Badaei, what you're seeing is the natural and inevitable of your being so "promotional" and "hypish", honestly expressed. And -- if you don't like the impression you gave, now you know how not to give that impression.

That is the greatest gift we can give you -- the ability not to be so offensive when you want most to put your best foot forward.

And for that there can be no apology.

If you wish to look at the site as an editor will look at it; if you wish to understand how and by what standards it will be reviewed -- then you know now.

And -- surprise! NOBODY, nobody on EARTH is going to look at your site in as positive a viewpoint as you do. And it is hard, extremely hard (almost as hard as it is necessary) to see your site like visitors do.

But -- ODP editors can't quite look at the site like visitors. I (as an editor) don't really have a right to allow myself to be repelled by bad web design (and conversely, I do not have a right to be snookered by attractive web design.)

So ... now you know what you need to do.

You need to look at your site like an editor. If you had never seen the site before, could you find the unique content instantly? If the answer is "no", all the clever coding in the world, compliance with all the standards since ISO-1, graphic design worthy of the love child of Escher and Rembrandt -- none of that matters an iota.

So -- let's make a deal. You don't go on and on about things we should not consider, and we'll not tell you we should not consider them.

hutcheson said:

If you had never seen the site before, could you find the unique content instantly? If the answer is "no"...

Click to expand...

Remeber the A-Team? "If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, then maybe you can hire the A-Team"

If we define the unique content as content found no where else then no-where else on the web can one read about what this particular business is about better from that opening paragraph on the site; so, then, from that point of view I would say "yes"!

hutcheson said:

So -- let's make a deal. You don't go on and on about things we should not consider, and we'll not tell you we should not consider them.

Click to expand...

Sounds good! I merely mis-understood the one comment about bad content -- they were speaking generally on a side note. I got the point about content being the point and not design. Lets all move on pass this issue now, I was educated by the editors about what they are looking for and I said my bid about feeling like its there just fine. I do plan to add more to the site so that should be a bonus as time goes by. Just feel like people are being way too harsh and that the site is taking forever just to be listed amoung like 100's of other sites in that category and I truly miss this entire deep argument about "original" content when 90% of those sites in that category that go on and on about providing "Website design, with e-commerce solutions and hosting." over and over again. If THAT's original then why not me? See my dilima?

Again, I appreciate the time and considerations given here.

OK, now we get to another concept. Some services are more unique than others. John Doe's Plumbing Services in Nether Haversack, New Jersey is very very likely to be unique -- for two reasons: (1) there aren't many plumbers in NH, NJ; (2) the plumbers in NH, NJ don't have the vicious habit of setting up fake offices (complete with dummy phone numbers and inflatable office staff) on every street corner all across the world.

The same cannot be said of web developers. There are many of them; and (like lawyers) in the absence of real clients they can drum up business for themselves at the expense of society at large, just by engaging in their normal behavior.

So -- editing in web development categories is relatively strenuous (gotta weed out the vanity domains) and relatively unproductive (lots of sites don't get listed after all the trouble of reviewing them, and -- when it comes down to it, the difference to our users between having 4000 web developers listed, and having 4001 web developers, isn't very much at all.)

Now editors, not being stupid, and not liking to waste time, tend to focus on categories where a bit of work makes a lot of difference, not the other way 'round.

See where this is going? There's no reason to suppose your website won't be reviewed -- eventually. But don't expect it soon. And you have mentioned no reason to suppose it might not be listed -- after the editor has checked all the usual suspicious activity typical of your competitors.

But ... there is certainly no reason to expect this to be a high priority among the volunteer editors.

What sometimes happens in extremely competitive spam-target category, is that it will languish for months or years without significant work -- any work that is done will likely be absorbed in trimming the obvious spammers. And then a group of editors will form an informal "task force" and do a weekend "editing bee" on the unreviewed submittals.

But until then, the relevant question is not "why is my site not unique", but "why would an editor want to work in THIS category, and if someone did, how many other sites would they review before getting to mine?"

Of course, we have no way of knowing the answer to either of those questions.

Got it.

When the moon hits your eye like a big-a pizza pie
That's amore
When the world seems to shine like you've had too much wine
That's amore

Bells'll ring ting-a-ling-a-ling, ting-a-ling-a-ling
And you'll sing: "Vita bella"