Accurate or Precise Time Frame

I have read in numerous sections, threads, and in the FAQ that the time it takes to review a submission is anywhere from "two minutes to two years" - due to the voluntary workforce etc.

I'm assuming that:
-there are some sections that are more popular than others (ie more incoming submissions)
-there are some editors who work more frequently than others
-there are some sections that have more existing sites than others
-there are some categories with fewer/more editors

These are all relevant factors. Is someone willing to take a stab at how those affect turnaround. I personally, think that these have a lot to do with the process...but please enlighten

My sob story: I submitted my site ~10 months ago & the section I submitted to now has no specific editor assigned (ugh )...so I'm trying to be patient.

But I'm curious what people have to say on this topic.

-there are some sections that are more popular than others (ie more incoming submissions)
-there are some editors who work more frequently than others
-there are some sections that have more existing sites than others
-there are some categories with fewer/more editors
...
the section I submitted to now has no specific editor assigned

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I'm afraid none of those factors has anything to do with if or when any suggestion will be reviewed, for three simple reasons:

1. The primary role of volunteer editors is to build and improve the directory in all sorts of ways, and reviewing site suggestions is merely one option.
2. The listed editor for a category may know far more useful places to look for sites than among those suggested by other people. In that case he or she may never review a suggestion made to that category.
3. There are more than 200 volunteers who can edit in every category, and if one of them decides to spend some time in a particular category, they may or may not review one or more of the sites awaiting review there.

Those three reasons explain why the time until a suggestion is reviewed will always be un-knowable.

> -there are some sections that are more popular than others (ie more incoming submissions)
Yes. There are categories that recieve more suggestions. There are also categories that receive more spam suggestions. I wouldn't call such categories 'popular'.

> -there are some editors who work more frequently than others
Yes. But an editor that is very active this week might go on holiday tomorrow and do no work at all for the next for 4 weeks.

> -there are some sections that have more existing sites than others
If you mean that there are more websites available to be listed in certain categories than there are for other categories the answer is yes.
BTW available = suggested + non-suggested websites

> -there are some categories with fewer/more editors
Not realy.

> These are all relevant factors.
Hmm. No. They are not. Atleast not that I am aware of.

> Is someone willing to take a stab at how those affect turnaround. I
It is impossible to determine the effect of anything on the time it will take to review 1 website. Why? Because DMOZ activity does not focus on single suggestions. If all editors would decide tomorrow never to review any suggested websites DMOZ would still be able to grow and function as intented. It probably won't happen but it could.

> personally, think that these have a lot to do with the process...
People outside DMOZ often don't understand the process. Or are focussing on a process that is not available in DMOZ at all.
DMOZ is about building a directory it is not about reviewing and listing single websites.

Thanks for your thoughts!

I still have to disagree with "unknowable" - not because I want/or expect an answer on the topic. But more from a statistical argument. makrhod & pvgool, you both jumped on disproving the assumptions I offered rather than acknowledging there are undeniable influences on how an editor does his/her work. You would have me believe that dmoz is the one place in the world where regressions don't work

-- I do concede that most people view dmoz as a directory that primarily *takes* submissions rather than *finds* them. I admittedly had my head in the sand, when I first wrote my questions. Please know, I undestand that DMOZ is rigorious for a good reason and were it different dmoz might not have the same influence it has achieved.

The question that does keep popping up in my head is how do editors effectively "search" for websites without using an SE as their starting point - it makes me smile (for another thread).

Back to statistics and assumptive intelligence:

-Humans are creatures of habit - especially those who are interested in organizing, categorizing, and extremely detail-oriented work. I'm taking a wild guess (not really) that the self-selected editors (people who volunteer) are much more likely to be habitual than the average person. Self-selection is about as transparent as you can get.

-The dmoz editor community is relatively stable by nature and reinforces my first point. Editors stick around and do their thing. Yes day to day and week to week is highly variable - but year over year data will not be random.

-Normal distribution still exists, even in dmoz There is always an average. Obviously it's a waste of time for everyone to try to pinpoint the average time for a suggested site to get reviewed on dmoz. But there are also averages for sports sites, and different averages for shopping sites. And furthermore there are averages for how many new sites an editor finds on their own, etc, etc, etc.

So my point is not to get an answer, but argue that there is one. The reality is, knowing the answer doesn't help me or other website owners, developers, marketers, etc. But please don't tell me there isn't one...

Eager to hear your responses - after you have done your dmoz work of course

The question that does keep popping up in my head is how do editors effectively "search" for websites without using an SE as their starting point - it makes me smile (for another thread).

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No one ever said editors don't use search engines to find sites. But that's not the only place listable sites might be found, nor is the pool of suggested sites -- they're also found on brochures and business cards, on the sides of vehicles, in newspapers and magazines, passed on by word-of-mouth, linked to from other sites, on TV, in shop windows, etc.

The dmoz editor community is relatively stable by nature and reinforces my first point. Editors stick around and do their thing. Yes day to day and week to week is highly variable - but year over year data will not be random.

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It is, from an outside point of view, something very close to random.

- An editor may spend 24 hours on ODP tasks today, or may not edit at all, and they may not know which it will be until the day is over.

- Of the time they *do* spend on ODP tasks, anywhere from 0-100% of it may be spent actually adding sites.

- And of any time they *do* spend actually adding sites, anywhere from 0-100% of it may be spent in any given category.

- And anywhere from 0-100% of their time in that category may be spent reviewing sites suggested from the outside. And whatever time they spend reviewing suggested sites on any given day may not result in any of those reviewed suggested sites being listed.

And so on.

For those with broad privileges, hunt and peck tends to be the usual pattern -- a couple of edits here, a few more over there, more time doing something else somewhere else completely, etc. Take me, for example. I rarely know which categories I'm going to find myself editing in or how much editing I will do there, and I personally rarely ever look at the suggested site pool in those categories while I'm there. You might be able to come up with an estimate of the average amount of edits you might get out of me over a specific length of time, but that would still not tell you where I might edit or what I might do while I was there. So the estimate would be pointless.

The listed editor for a category may know far more useful places to look for sites than among those suggested by other people. In that case he or she may never review a suggestion made to that category.

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But there is a possibility they might dip into the suggestion box. With no one there is a 100% chance of that no one will do anything - if we are just talking about the category editor. 1% is better than 0%, would you agree?

There are more than 200 volunteers who can edit in every category, and if one of them decides to spend some time in a particular category, they may or may not review one or more of the sites awaiting review there.

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These are probably the most experienced and senior member of ODP and therefore the most predictable. Which means there is a knowable probability that 1 out of 200+ will go to a specific category out of n categories and review a specific site out of m suggestions. Like you hinted, one should not expect this to happen but it can.


Here's the deal - if I play out all the possible scenarios, I can roll them together and have a semblance of what might happen. For instance:

What are the chances that my site will ever be reviewed?
-above 80% since the suggestion request never goes away and I have faith in my site that either someone will review my suggestion or find it elsewhere on the net

What are the chances that the section editor will review my site (suggestion or from the net) this month?
-right now 0%, as I pointed out above

What are the chances that an admin/meta/catmod/editall will review my suggestion this month?
-let's just say I'm not betting on it

What are the chances that an admin/meta/catmod/editall will discover my site on the net this month?
-based on your comments this is more probable because this is what editors are doing if they are not looking at suggestions - however my personal opinion is there are way more websites/web articles/blogs/forums/ than site suggestions on dmoz even if it were stacked 90% net searching to 10% suggestion reading on how an editor spends their time...I expect better odds on the suggestion getting read. There is more to this as well.


All of these have some range of feasibility, and I can put my thumb in the air and make a guesstimate based on some fact and some educated assumptions.

So, I guess my point is that these things are relevant. They are definitely not precise but they are at least relevant.

I take it you're bored and looking for a way to kill the time?

Well, regression doesn't EVER work, in ANY field, to give accurate information about a SINGLE datum. I wouldn't expect the ODP to be any different: any statistics applied to a single site suggestion are meaningless.

In addition, regression is descriptive, not proscriptive: that is, it tells what was happening last year, not what might happen next year (when a different site of volunteers are active, or the same set of volunteers are doing something different for variety.)

Furthermore, statistical information is descriptive, not proscriptive: that is, it may say your suggestion is 20% more likely to be reviewed in category A than in category B: but submitting inappropriate sites to category A won't increase the chances of getting a quick review, it will simply lower NEXT year's retrospective "category A chances of review" statistic.

And finally, statistics about any single editor may be indicative of something, but since any particular editor has a less than 1% chance of being involved in any particular suggestion review, that indication can't very well be considered SIGNIFICANT.

A far more useful way of looking at the probabilities are to ignore the volunteers completely (they constitute the best sample of 'generic surfers' you can find), and ignore the suggestion completely (since there are so many ways of finding sites) and look at things completely from the point of view of the WEBSITE.

And the simple question you ask of the WEBSITE is this: if it disappeared from the internet today, permanently, what information would be lost? how much would the internet's value for surfers have been reduced?

Obviously, if other websites can completely, transparently, take up the slack, then the chances of a surfer (or ODP editor) finding value in the site is zero. If, on the other hand, the site is clearly the sole repository of SOME information, there's a good chance a surfer interested in THAT information will visit. (And if the ODP doesn't have one of those kind of surfers now, it may get one any day.)

So the trick to increasing a website's chances of being listed is: focus on what's not already on the web. Make that easily distinguishable and prominent on the website.

And if that's not what the webmaster wants to do with a website, the trick is: look for listings somewhere other than the ODP.

motsa said:

I take it you're bored and looking for a way to kill the time?

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I was reading a book on procrastination...but this is more fun

Plus, I needed a break from PHP...

This has actually been very cathartic for me...hearing from people.

The various explanations of the process and little anecdotes is oddly gratifying - even though it does nothing to change my situation.

hutcheson said:

A far more useful way of looking at the probabilities are to ignore the volunteers completely (they constitute the best sample of 'generic surfers' you can find), and ignore the suggestion completely (since there are so many ways of finding sites) and look at things completely from the point of view of the WEBSITE.

And the simple question you ask of the WEBSITE is this: if it disappeared from the internet today, permanently, what information would be lost? how much would the internet's value for surfers have been reduced?
...

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You mean I have to invest in my website first! - I want my free lunch & then I want to eat it too, jk.

Point *very* well made, thanks for your thoughts Hutcheson.

In my case, I'm juggling many options on how to craft a useful & unique angle on my subject. Getting others to notice, better yet care, is a tough journey - 90% defeat and 10% success. C'est la vie...

rvwschools said:

Normal distribution still exists, even in dmoz There is always an average. Obviously it's a waste of time for everyone to try to pinpoint the average time for a suggested site to get reviewed on dmoz. But there are also averages for sports sites, and different averages for shopping sites. And furthermore there are averages for how many new sites an editor finds on their own, etc, etc, etc.

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Let's see.
some sites will be reviewed within 1 day after being suggested
some sites will be reviewed within 1 week after being suggested
some sites will be reviewed within 1 month after being suggested
some sites will be reviewed within 1 year after being suggested
some sites will be not be reviewed within the next 100 years
What does this give you for an average. And what would such an average tell you about the time a specific website will have to wait after it has been suggested.

All these numbers are totaly irrelevant.

I'll tell you how I process suggested websites.
Comapre DMOZ to a house with many rooms, each room is a category.
I walk trough the house stopping in a room I like.
I see a lot of marbles lying on the ground (the marbles are suggested websites).
I look at the marbles and pick up one that seems prettier than the others (the website is reviewed). I either put the marble on a shelf (list it), or throw it in another room (move to a better category), or put it in the dustbin (rejected).
I pick up another marble and repeat the process.
This is an interesting marble, a very usefull one and it has a lot of links to other marbles. I decide to look at all the linked marbles. Wonderfull, I find a bunch of marbles we want to show to the public.
By now I have already spend to much time in the house (DMOZ), my family needs attention or something else in real life.
Some time in the future I return to the same room. I realy can't predict when that will be. I am not one of those 200+ that can work in all rooms but I have access to several 1000ths of rooms.
There are still a lot of marbles on the floor. Some might have been there the previous time I was here. Some will be new. This time I notice that there are a bunch of marbles that seem not to belong in this room. I look at the marbles and throw them in the right room. Oops, I have to go to work. Sorry, no marbles have been put on the shelf for public view.

I might visit the same room 20 times and some marbles that were there the first time are still on the floor after my 20th visit and at the same time marbles that entered the room after my 19th visit might be looked at during my 20th visit.

My point: the change of a suggested website being reviewed during one of my sessions in a category is reset each time I start to work in that category.
Every new day there is a change a suggested website is reviewed. Also every new that there is a change that a suggested website will never be reviewed by me.

Statistics are useless for work done in DMOZ. The time between suggestion of website A and it being reviewed has no influence or meaning on the time for website B.

@pvgool - you seem annoyed by my questions. I hope I'm just reading too much into your tone. No hard feelings

Doe voorzichtig!

rvwschools said:

@pvgool - you seem annoyed by my questions. I hope I'm just reading too much into your tone. No hard feelings

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You read to much into my message.