A personal experience

While reading through a number of forums recently I saw that DMOZ is struggling due to the shortage of active editors and a massive backlog of unreviewed sites, and I developed a desire to help if I could. I chose an editorless category with which I have some experience but no vested interests and I spent a good number of hours putting together an application to become the editor. The application was rejected about two hours after it was submitted. Although there is a section in the rejection email for the reviewer to make comments, it was left empty.

I had no idea why the application was rejected and I thought it was rude and inconsiderate not to tell me after I had spent so much time preparing it - in an effort to help DMOZ. The bulk of the time was spent finding the three sites to suggest. With relatively low level categories where the subject is narrow, this is always going to take time and I assume that reviewers realize that. I was disappointed at the result, but I was annoyed at the lack of comment. I felt ignored. It would have taken less than a minute to show a little courtesy and write a few words in the space provided, but it didn't happen.

Applications are rejected for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes the applicant's spelling and/or grammer is so bad the (s)he would never be accepted. Sometimes the reason is more technical, e.g. unsuitable sites, descriptions not written in the DMOZ way, category doesn't really need an editor, category level too high, etc. etc. etc. If I'd been shown a little common courtesy and told the reason for the rejection, the next part need not have happened.

I decided that the reason for the rejection was probably of a 'technical' nature and so a few days later I decided to apply again. I chose a very low level category, to be on the safe side, and in a different topic area. It was one of dozens of tiny categories in its area, none of which had an editor. The one I chose had one sub-category which help only two sites. I spent another four or five hours (maybe more) preparing the application and I submitted it. In it, I politely asked to be told the reason if it is rejected.

An hour later it was rejected and the comments area was blank - again. I was very angry - not because of the rejection but because of the absolute rudeness that I was shown by not giving me the reason. I wasn't afforded the few seconds it would have taken to write one or two sentences. I couldn't have asked for the reason any more politely.

If there is a reason why I would never be accepted, I should have been told the first time and I needn't have wasted my time and effort on the second application. If it was clear from my application that I would make a decent editor but not in this category for whatever reason, I should also have been told. It would have prevented my anger, I might have applied again and DMOZ might have gained an active editor.

The point I am making is this. I am a person who came along with a geuine desire to help and by being shown such discourtesy and rudeness, I am now a person with a great deal of animosity towards DMOZ - not to individuals but to the organization. I would not now lift a finger to help - and that's sad. If I'd been told the reason after the first application, I need not have wasted the time on the second one. But having wasted more time, I was still totally ignored.

On the first day that this forum opened I learned that the situation is even worse. It is part of their guidelines that reviewers are not required to send even the standard rejection email and, from what I've read in various posts, some of them don't. Treating people so badly when they came along to help is totally indefensible. My new impression of DMOZ is that there are people in it who think they are so high and mighty and the rest of us are insignificant beings who are not worthy of even a few seconds of their time. What benefit is there in alienating people like that? There must be many people like me who came along to help and who went away with animosity and illwill, not because their applications were rejected, but because they were ignored.

This post is nothing to do with sour grapes although I realize that some people may interpret it as such. I had a genuine desire to help if I could and not to become an editor as such. In fact my first thought was to offer programming help (I'd understood that programming was going on). I am disappointed that my editorial help wasn't wanted but I have no sour grapes about it. However, I now have animosity towards DMOZ (not individuals) for the reason stated above. It's not sour grapes - just animosity. In spite of that, I have written this post rationally and without any heat. If anyone has a mind to consider it, it could even be useful to DMOZ. It may also be usefuly to anyone who is thinking of becoming an editor or to people who have applied and heard nothing.

Before anyone suggests it, I know that many job applications go unanswered. That doesn't make it right or defensible. It just means that other organizations are also rude and inconsiderate at times.

One last thing that doesn't apply to my own experience:
What is the point of asking for two or three websites in the application form and then sometimes rejecting people because they only suggest two? (I've read that in forums) If you really want three, ask for three. Don't waste people's time, effort and goodwill.

I agree that people rejected should be told the reasons why if they inquire. I think that your experience is not quite representative of the ODP as a whole, but this problem does occur a bit too much. Still, most meta editors or at least a great deal of them will reply to requests about why people have been rejected with ways to improve your application and perhaps get accepted. Of course, some of them don't reply to editors who get rejected because they are worried about ones who would abuse the knowledge of their email address and perhaps receive hate mail or flamebait as a result. Remember that this is still a volunteer organization and volunteers who invest a lot of time and energy into this shouldn't have to deal with this type of email.

Hi mjmendl,

Thank you for you comments. I can only speak from my own experience and from what I read in the various forums, but it appears to me that is more usual to reject editor applications without giving the reason than it is to give the reason.

Your suggestion that providing a reason would divulge the reviewer's email address is mistaken. There is a standard rejection email from staff-app@dmoz.org. This is the email address that is used and not the reviewer's, and this is the email that contains the pre-prepared space for the reviewer's comments. It really would take only a few seconds to show a little common courtesy and use that space.

Phil.

Hmm. What you've experiencend might look kind of rude to you, but:
There is a relatively small number of persons to review a big number of applications.
They have to deal with a lot of aspects of an application.
Look at at the application itself: Does it provide unique content for the choosen category? Is the description according to the guidelines? Are there any personal interests of the future editor not mentioned in the application? And so on ...
What about the cats, she/he has applied for?
What size has the category? Yes, this is one of the criteria. A new editor won't get a 200 Entries category.
Is the cat in good shape? Or would it lead the new editor to a wrong way of describing sites (Oh yes, we have categories stuffed with titles and descriptions which are not according to the guidelines).
How many unreviewed entries are in this cat?
If there are 10 entries which are available on the public side (that is what you see as a new volunteeer) but 150 unreviewed sites in the same cat, it is unlikely to be approved as a new editor for this cat.

All those aspects (and more I don't know about ) have to be handled by the people reviewing the applications.
It is a lot of work to be done. And they all are involved into a lot of other processes regarding ODP.
Might be a reason, why they don't bother too much with applications which are rejected.

But after all, it might be *really* helpful to give a short answer to the people rejected.

A personal experience:
I've asked someone to request a cat. He would have been perfect for it and a valuable addition for this cat. He is the maintainer of a web based FAQ for the topic, has valuable information about the topic on his own website and is the maintainer of an other site about the topic.
He submitted all those sites in his application, has been honest about beeing affiliated with those sites and has been rejected. According to the guidelines kind of correct.
He didn't get an answer either. I've asked in the fora and got some hints why he might have been rejected.
I've told him what might have been wrong (difficult enough for a German trying to help an Englishman ), but he wasn't interested anymore. We missed to get a competent editor for a special topic :-(
I think it would help a lot to send at least a short message, explaining in a few words why volunteers are rejected. A lot of people might have made an experience like you did and that's an other good reason for a forum like this one.

Yes, I do realize that reviewing an application is bound to take time but that still doesn't excuse the lack of consideration shown to many, if not most, applicants. After all, the applicant almost certainly put in a much greater amount of time preparing the application in a spirit of helpfulness.

Incidentally, from what I've gathered around the forums, there aren't many applications these days and any meta editor can review them.

It's interesting that your friend also lost interest for the same reason. DMOZ would probably be in better shape now if it weren't for this official practice of ignoring people. I say "official" because it is written into the guidelines they don't have to respond if they don't want to.

> the applicant almost certainly put in a much greater amount of time preparing the application in a spirit of helpfulness. <
Beeing the Editor of http://dmoz.org/World/Deutsch/Computer, I also take a look at what new editors submitted to get approved. Beside reviewing submissions and collecting new links I spend a big amount of time to help new editors. And sorry, most of what I've seen doesn't conform to the guidelines. A lot of them not even submitted to the right cat.
Those are only the editors which have been accepted. I can't imagine how worse the rejected applications might be.
I've also have had sessions with World/Deutsch Metas 'till dawn about accepting new editors (yes, I'd welcome anyone who is willing to add something to the project) and preparing categories for them. There is no lack of applications or interest in ODP, there is only a lack of time to handle all this. We are volunteers, like you wanted to be one.

PS.:
Sorry for my german english ;/images/dmoz/purplegrin.gif

Your German/English is perfectly understandable, ikoch /images/icons/smile.gif

Yes, I am probably mistaken to assume that most applicants spend a lot of time preparing their applications. On reflection, I should have assumed that many would be done on the spur of the moment and, therefore, rushed.

But I do maintain that courtesy costs nothing (well, about 30 - 60 seconds) and can gain a lot, whereas discourtesy can alienate potentially good editors, and that doesn't help the ODP at all. In fact, it's a hinderance to the project.

Sorry your experience was such a negative one.

As one of the editors who reviews applications, however, I'd like to explain a little of the "other" side. Let me begin by emphasizing that none of us want to discourage people from applying. We want good editors -- and lots of them.

But we don't always have as much time as we'd like to devote to the project. We're all volunteers -- with jobs, families, commitments, etc. Processing a single application can take anywhere from a few minutes (in the case of a really bad application that's an automatic reject) to two or three hours (in situations where an applicant appears to have some potential). And while the number of applications we receive on any given day varies, the number always exceeds the number of reviewers -- usually several times over.

Writing a customized response takes anywhere from 10-30 minutes, depending on the situation. Initially, that doesn't sound like much, especially when one considers that an applicant may have spent three or four hours completing an application. But the applicant completes only one application. It's not uncommon for a reviewer to process a dozen or more applications in a single sitting. Sometimes, it's mathematically impossible for us to write personal responses and still process as many applications as we need to process in the time we have available to edit. At other times, real life intervenes. There have been a few times I've rejected without feedback because I suddenly got called back in to the Job That Pays The Bills, or because the baby woke up, or because the dog needed to go out, etc. Especially in instances where one of us has spent a great deal of time reviewing an app, we don't want to throw our work away and leave it sitting in the queue just because real life beckoned.

If you truly want to be a part of this project, please take time to read the editing guidelines, available at http://dmoz.org/guidelines.html. Look for a small category (fewer than 100 listings, including listings in any sub cats). And give it another shot. We do need and want editors, even if it is humanly impossible to write a personal response to every application.

Hmm, well I think that perhaps a standard letter should be sent out upon rejection. After I joined the ODP, I soon applied for new categories (as do tons of people), and I was rejected for the first three of these. I didn't hear anything back from the metas the first two times but on the third time I received a friendly letter from susanna when I was rejected for what should have been obvious reasons for a new category (I had only done 22 edits and it was a second level category with thousands of sites, lol). After this time I worked on the category I already had, and haven't been rejected for any new category since.

I agree that a customized response might be asking for too much, but if these people spend lots of time preparing applications shouldn't they at the very least receive a form letter with suggestions?

Plus, it would cut down on multiple applications from people who don't know why they are being rejected. Thus, it would increase productivity greatly.

>>I agree that a customized response might be asking for too much, but if these people spend lots of time preparing applications shouldn't they at the very least receive a form letter with suggestions?<<

Under the current system configuation, a standard letter noting the most common reasons for rejection is sent by default unless the reviewing meta selects the no feedback option (a rare occurence).

Thank you for your input, holidayzone. I do appreciate that reviewers need to take time to review an application that looks good at first sight. I am surprised that it can take up to two or three hours though. Even so, I wasn't suggesting a report. I was suggesting something like, "Your application was good and I think you would make a good editor but, unfortunately, this category doesn't need one at the present time. You might like to try a different category" or "Unfortunately, your grammer isn't up to the standard required".

These state the reason and took less than a minute to write. That personal touch would probably encourage the first applicant to try again and the second one would know that he/she isn't going to be accepted - the right result from the applicants' and the ODP's point of view. Without such a brief statement, both of them may lose interest and go away or the second one might waste more of his/her time unnecessarily by applying again.

The standard rejection email has a space for small comments so it isn't as though a reviewer would need to compile a fresh email each time. And, correct me if wrong, but I imagine that sending the standard email is done by a click on a checkbox or something equally quick but judging by posts in forums, including this thread, even that isn't always done.

I realize that no system can be perfect. Dogs do need to go out from time to time /images/icons/smile.gif. But in this case, no attempt at perfection is made. This particular imperfection is written into the guidelines. If the guidelines were altered to say something like, 'whenever possible, give the reason for the rejection in the space provided', then this common (usual) occurence would be a lot less common.

>>If you truly want to be a part of this project...

I truly wanted to help when I saw in the forums that help was needed. That's my nature. I presented two very good applications which, if nothing else, indicated that I would make a decent editor. I won't say how I know they were good. It isn't just my personal opinion but you'll have to take my word for it. I have no idea why they were rejected. The advice is always to choose a small editorless category that has fewer than nn sites in it, including sub-cats. To be on the safe side, the category I chose for the second application was so small that it almost didn't exist. Perhaps it was so small that an editor wasn't actually needed. I just don't know. The reviewer chose not to tell me.

The animosity I mentioned when I started this thread won't last all that long and I may even feel like helping again. But, one thing that I will never do again is prepare and submit another application. I feel that I have been messed about and I won't be messed about again. I still have the second application in a text file. If anyone wants to see they are welcome to. The only way that I will ever become a DMOZ editor is for someone to look at that application, decide that it's fine and suggest a different category. But I can't see that happening.

Incidentally, on that thought. It had occured to me that when you receive good applications that have to be rejected for some minor technical reason such as the cat level is too high or so small that it doesn't need an exclusive editor, wouldn't it be better to find a more suitable category for the person and perhaps give him/her two or three sites from the actual backlog to review (a sort of half acceptance) rather than just reject the application and leave it at that? That way the person feels that (s)he is almost there and feels very encouraged - a completely different feeling to the anonymous, uncommented rejection from which many potentially decent editors won't return. My guess is that DMOZ would gain decent editors that would otherwise have simply gone away. Just a thought.

Phil.

>>Under the current system configuation, a standard letter noting the most common reasons for rejection is sent by default unless the reviewing meta selects the no feedback option (a rare occurence)<<

The standard email is fine. I find no fault with it. It states a number of reasons why people are rejected and it also states that the reason why 'you' were rejected may or may not be one of them. It also has space for the reviewer's comment, if any. That's where it would be polite to state the reason - nothing elaborate - just the reason. That personal touch would make a world of difference. People who take time to apply deserve better that the anonymous "no!" I don't mean that reviewer's should include their names. That's unnecessary and would sometimes be problematic for them.

There are currently over 500 applications waiting for review (and this doesn't include Kids_and_Teens). I have seen the numbers go up by over 100 in a day, and this with some applications undoubtedly having been processed during that time.

I think you can't speak for more rejected editors than yourself, phil, so you can stop saying that "many if not most" rejected people are being treated rudely. The form letter isn't that bad; however, appreciate that you wished for a personal note and didn't get one.

Of course I can only be sure about what I found personally. But I can also judge by what others say and also by what others don't say. For instance, I have seen quite a number of people saying that they didn't get a reply but I haven't seen anybody saying that they were told the reason. Also, I haven't seen any reviewer saying the s/he gives the reason. I think it is safe to conclude that it is more normal not to be told the reason than it is to be told it. In fact, it's begining to look as though being told the reason is a comparitve rarity.

I agree that the standard email "isn't that bad". I've already said that there's nothing wrong with it. If it's built-in space for the reviewer's comments was used, then there wouldn't be a problem. For me, there is no problem as I have no intention of becoming an editor. The problem is the way that DMOZ is perceived when treating editor applicants in this way. It generates illwill and DMOZ ends up with fewer decent editors than it would otherwise have had.

I've done what I wanted to do. I've written down the effect (from this side of a rejection) of a common but discourteous practice, and I've explained my reasoning the best way that I can. I've no intention of attempting to push my views by keeping this thread going.

The concensus of the few people who have posted seems to be that it would be a good and beneficial thing if the reason for the rejection is given. Nobody appears to be against it and nobody has suggested that it doesn't matter one way or the other. I think that what I've said makes good sense and I think that the benefits to DMOZ of responding to rejections and providing the reason makes good sense too. That's all I can do. I've had my say and I thank you for the opportunity.

Phil.

Thanks for your input. /images/icons/smile.gif

I agree that personalized responses would be ideal, if not always feasible. (And as a reviewier, I generally take time to include personalized responses unless the applicant seems like a totally "lost cause.")

As for those people who get no response whatsoever, (barring the occasional technical glitch) they truly are a minority. Generally, "no response" options are reserved for well-known abusers or instances when we receive multiple copies of the same application (and don't want to send the same applicant rejection e-mail 15 times over).

That said, certain spam filters were do block e-mail sent from dmoz.org. Thus, we can actually send e-mail, but the recipient's e-mail filters may prevent them from getting it. This doesn't just hamper the receipt of rejection notices, but also acceptance letters, communications with webmasters, editor-to-editor feedback, etc. ... A real nuisance!

Once again, thanks for taking the time to get involved in this forum. Conversations such as this one help us build a more user-friendly directory.

There can actually be good reasons for not explaining exactly why someone is rejected. If the reason is simply something like atrocious grammar, capitalization, punctuation, etc. the applicant may be extremely careful the second time around, but we probably still would rather not have someone who needs to be reminded to format their writing correctly. In the case where the motivitation is entirely self-serving and the only URL suggested belongs to the applicant, do we tell them exactly that so that they can reapply and try not to be so obvious?

The screening exists so we get (hopefully) decent editors that don't need too much hand holding for things like constructing sentences or figuring out what a URL is. The problem lies in that, yes, it's polite to tell someone exactly why they were declined, but it's not always in our best interest to tell them the exact reasons why when it's just going to allow them to circumvent the whole purpose of the application process. OTOH, we definitely will tell a good applicant to apply for a smaller category, provide more URLs, etc.

We have been making more efforts over the years to be more informative. As a longtime meta editor, I can definitely say that the bar has been raised significantly on both the time spent with each application and the reply expected. However, it is still almost a certainty that people will be upset to some degree when their application is declined. I know I would be.

I can't argue much with that, stevesliva. What you said hadn't occured to me before but I can understand and accept that it is better not to tell some applicants why they were rejected. I will modify my conlusions accordingly /images/icons/smile.gif. But I am forced to maintain that not all reviewers are the same as you. I think it is clear from my posts that my grammer, punctuation, spelling (apart from typos), sentence construction, etc. are perfectly good, so that aspect couldn't have caused two seperate reviewers to reject my applications without giving me a reason. It may be that I was biased in the sites that I suggested or that I have some sort of affiliation with the category's topic, but I can assure that neither was the case. As I said in an earlier post, anyone is welcome to check out my second application and even to do a virtual review of it. If the rejections were entirely to do with the applications, then there was no reason not to tell me why - especially since the second one included:-

"If this application is not accepted, I would greatly appreciate it if you would briefly tell me the reason(s). Thank you". It couldn't have been a more polite request.

>>...we definitely will tell a good applicant to apply for a smaller category, provide more URLs, etc.<<

I'm sorry, stevesliva, but I can't accept that. I am sure it is true of some reviewers such as yourself, but I know from my own experience that it is not true of them all.

Phil.

My pleasure, holidayzone /images/icons/smile.gif and thank you for your input too. I've said what I wanted to say and got it off my chest. I don't know if this thread will make a difference to anything or anyone. I'd like to think that it will but it isn't my business. I still don't want to be an editor but I have less animosity towards DMOZ as a whole than I did when I started the thread /images/icons/smile.gif

Phil.

*grins oddly*

To make the thread a little more positive...I remember once when I was rejected once, I was given a short reason, and was able to elaborate on the trouble with other editors who helped me out. Remember, other editors are always around to help out and they might be able to help you realize what went wrong. Also, there are quite a few metas, so who knows, you might not get the same one next time. /images/icons/laugh.gif