Advice please on forum protocol....

[Mystery Guest]

Thank you in advance for advice regarding my query.....

Perhaps I have not looked hard enough, but under my own steam alone, I have been unable to determine the answer to the following....

Is it acceptable through these forums to enquire of the editors the progress (or otherwise) of a web site submission to the ODP?

I submitted a site for consideration some 8 months ago and to date it is not listed.

A subsequent follow up mail sent by me to staff@dmoz.org requesting feedback has yielded no reply after several months....

Would it breach the rules of the forum for me to post the URL of my site within this forum, requesting that an amenable editor might be kind enough to send me feedback regarding the status of the application?

Thank you again for any advice regarding this.

Mystery Guest.

Edit:

Having now posted this thread, the site has helpfully shown me a link to information on the policy change which precludes editors from giving feedback on the status of applications.

There is a hint though that some editors use 3rd party sites / forums through which they might be amenable to give feedback?

Can anyone perhaps give me some pointers to these other forums?

Many thanks.


Mystery Guest

 

[Callimachus]

Perhaps I have not looked hard enough, but under my own steam alone, I have been unable to determine the answer to the following....

Is it acceptable through these forums to enquire of the editors the progress (or otherwise) of a web site submission to the ODP?

Please see this thread posted at the top of the forum sections.

I submitted a site for consideration some 8 months ago and to date it is not listed.

Please see the FAQ

Would it breach the rules of the forum for me to post the URL of my site within this forum, requesting that an amenable editor might be kind enough to send me feedback regarding the status of the application?

Please see the first answer above.

Thank you again for any advice regarding this.

You're welcome.

 

[Mystery Guest]

Thank you

posted at the top of the forum sections.

Hi Calliimachus. Many thanks for your prompt reply.


Curiously when trying to access that thread I get the following message.....


Mystery Guest, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation.


At least now I know though. Thank you again.




Mystery Guest.

 

[windharp]

*g* That specific announcement thread has a different URL depending on from which forum you access it. Try http://resource-zone.com/forum/announcement.php?f=15 - this one should work for you as well.

 

[Mystery Guest]

Thank you both....

Thank you both....

Notwithstanding that the rules of this forum preclude any editors from fielding enquiries relating to the status of applications to the Open Directory.....

....I remain of the understanding that there may be other forums populated by Open Directory editors, where an enquirer might successfully be able to learn the status of their application to www.dmoz.org

I should be most grateful if any kindly soul might be able to give me a pointer to the URL(s) of the forum(s) concerned.....

 

[pvgool]

I don't know of such a forum.

 

[hutcheson]

What I'd really really like to know is: what would you do with this information if you got it? What conceivable legitimate practical use could you make of it?

I presume you know the site's not listed. That leaves two possibilities:

(1) Site ain't never gonna be listed. You need to promote your own site, elsewhere -- you've done all you can here.
(2) We don't know whether the site will ever be listed (and we have no way of knowing other than reviewing the site, which would be a total waste of our time -- why not review sites when it makes a difference, like when you're about to list it!) If the site is listable, we cannot possibly know when it may be listed -- there are no editorial priorities except in each editor's head. In the meantime, and just in case, you need to promote your own site, elsewhere -- you've done all you can here.

But suppose the site really is almost listable: the editor could tell me what was missing?

No the editor could not. Only the webmaster knows what unique information he might be able and willing to publish. The editor cannot possibly know that! Nor can the editor know, any better than any other surfer, what information is or isn't already available on the web.

But ... maybe the site is already listable, and the editor mistakenly did not list it? It happens. Based on my experience, it probably happens to about a tenth of one percent of suggestions. But ... every day several million listable sites aren't listed. We'll catch them in some other sweep, or we won't catch them. That's OK. The ODP isn't complete, and won't ever be. But the more efficiently we look for sites, the more efficiently we can find good places to look for sites, the more complete it will be.

And rejected site submittals are (in my experience) 99.9+% worthless. It's hard to imagine a more unpromising collection of sites. And it's an extremely poor use of editor time to re-review them, either systematically or (even more so) on webmaster request (because spammers will dominate the request pool even more strongly than they dominate the rejected heap.)

No, we try not to miss good stuff. But if a site is worthwhile, we'll eventually pick it up out of Google or off of a business card, or from some website's links page, ... in other words, from one of our MUCH BETTER sources of links.

And if not, we'll find more OTHER worthwhile sites, and the surfer will come out ahead. And that's what matters.

 

[Mystery Guest]

Thank you Hutcheson...

For taking the time to provide such a detailed response. You pose a question regarding practical use of information pertaining to the status of site submissions the ODP....

What I am about to write bears no malice at all to thje ODP or its editors or staff....

It is just that my experience of dealing with large corporations (whether they operate for profit or otherwise) is that they cannot always be trusted to deal efficiently and effectively with the correspondence they receive, whether by e mail or otherwise.

I have had numerous problems dealing with organisations including banks, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority, Local Governemnt, my cable provider, my electricity supplier, travel agent, etc etc (and etc again...) who have acknowledged receiving e mail from me (and then later admitted having "lost" it), or, who deny ever having received the mail in the first place.....

Submissions to the Open Directory are effectively sent via e mail, and the wait for acceptance (or rejection) can be a lengthy one; this aspect, allied to the fact that a resubmission of the application is likely to damage or significantly delay further the prospects of being accepted, effectively leave me (and many others like me) having to accept on blind faith that the Open Directory Project employs people and systems which are clearly more efficient than the plethora of other organisations which routinely foul up or lose correspondence....

It would just be helpful if some system or resource was in place so that webmasters aspiring to have their web site(s) listed with the ODP could be confident that their application was still "in the system" and would, at least eventually be accepted (and not lost for all time in some labyrinthine system!), subject of course to the submitted sites meeting the criteria of the ODP in terms of original content, etc.

It is comforting to learn, in any event, you are likely to find and index worthwhile sites via Google.

Thank you again.

Mystery Guest.

 

[Mystery Guest]

Following on.......

Regardless of whether any site submitted to the ODP is accepted or rejected for inclusion within the directory, is any formal notification of the acceptance or rejection sent by the editor concerned to the person who submitted the site?

Clearly, successful applicants will eventually see the fruit of theit labours displayed within the directory, but those webmasters whose submissions are not successful might wait for all eternity (well, ok perhaps a couple of years or so) hoping and praying.....

Please can someone advise if there is ODP policy on dealing with rejections in terms of advising the hapless webmasters concerned, or is the courtesy of a rejection e-mail left solely to the discretion of individual editors?

Many thanks for any advice from any quarter on this....


Mystery Guest.

 

[motsa]

Regardless of whether any site submitted to the ODP is accepted or rejected for inclusion within the directory, is any formal notification of the acceptance or rejection sent by the editor concerned to the person who submitted the site?

Very, very rarely. Editors are in fact encouraged to *not* contact submitters as we've see far too much harassment result from editor-to-submitter email contact.

 

[pvgool]

It is just that my experience of dealing with large corporations (whether they operate for profit or otherwise) is that they cannot always be trusted to deal efficiently and effectively with the correspondence they receive, whether by e mail or otherwise.

I have had numerous problems dealing with organisations including banks, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority, Local Governemnt, my cable provider, my electricity supplier, travel agent, etc etc (and etc again...) who have acknowledged receiving e mail from me (and then later admitted having "lost" it), or, who deny ever having received the mail in the first place.....

But these situations can never be compared to DMOZ.
In all these situations you were the customer of that organisation.
But with DMOZ you are not the customer. DMOZ is the customer and you are the supplier.
It is more like all the unsolicited mail you receive. All companies can send you mail but you decide which mail to read and when to read it, and more importantly you decide if the mail is of any relevance to you or to throw it out. Have you ever send a notice to any of the companies that you have read their mail or that you decided to throw it away?

 

[hutcheson]

The ODP deals "fairly efficiently" with suggestions. It does not necessarily deal "expeditiously" with them. And "efficient" does mean -- some do get lost.

I worked once in a place which had an absolute-zero-tolerance for lost paperwork. If one sheet of paper was misplaced, they'd shut the facility down until it was found. A more recent employer had a 25% foulup rate for product orders, of all things! ("It should be the easiest thing in the world for customers to give us money!" said an outraged employee. But, hey, if you wanted accuracy you should have been hiring accountants, not salesmen. So what can you expect?) The ODP has neither the massive micromanagement overhead of the first place, nor the massive error rate of the second. The ODP is somewhere in between. The drop rate for suggestions (not orders!) is, in my experience, about 1%.

So what's the best thing to do?

Wait six months, if nothing happens, suggest the site once more.

Now the compounded error rate would be somewhere between .01% (for quick reviews) and 1% (for dilatory reviews). And that's really good enough -- our investment is best thrown at efficiency, or at more significant quality issues.

This is a recurrent concern among webmasters. But in reality it's simply not on the radar screen. (And ... I know some people are more concerned about perception than reality: MY perception is that they ought to be stuffed in non-padded cells and told to perceive padding.)
such people are c