Correct category and description updates

Good morning,

I have tried unsuccessfully for the past 6 to 7 months to get my website category updated as well as my description to better reflect my service to the correct market. I notice you say too many requests will not achieve the goal and in fact do the opposite. How does one know what is too many when they wait for months between update requests and still there is absoluty no response? Perhaps if you had some way to acknowledge the changes requested or we could see the changes as requested within a reasonable time you would not be bombarded with the same requests time and time again for the same sites. We have no way to know if there is even an editor in our category of if the requests are just being ignored. I think we all can work together with a better system and this would alleviate a lot of repeat updates requests thereby saving you time and making your job as an editor easier. A win-win solution is something worth thinking about. I know I would appreciate some acknowledegement in a reasonable time and it would eleminate the need to send repeat requests.
Thanks for all the work you editors do and it is appreciated by most, I am sure. We do not want to cause any one unnecessary work. Help us help you is all I ask.

Best regards,
Don Beck

Update requests are processed much faster than suggestion of sites. If you made the request 6 or 7 months ago and the change you requested is not to be seen you can be very sure that your request was denied. Most of these denials are because the request is for a title/description that doesn't match DMOZ guidelines.
There is no need to make the same request more than once.
Requests are never ignored.

Hi Don

One of the difficulties with updates is the reason for the update which can often lead to whether the change is made being based on a value judgement.

If you look at the foot of the category page you will see either something along the lines of 'Volunter to become an editor of a category' or an editor name. In the former (most common case) you can go up the category tree to see where an editor is named. The higher up you get the more experienced the editor and the more likely they will be to have handled your request. (Updates stand out on our editing screens)

The basic rule is that if the update is correcting a mistake (incorrect title, spelling mistake, misleading/outdated description etc.) which is checkable on the website then it should be processed fairly quickly. If not, we have the Quality control thread.

However descriptions should not be about how to 'to better reflect the websites service to the correct market'. In theory the category in which your site appears combined with the site itself should do this. Updates along these lines are prone to frustration since the editor would be taking care to avoid turning the description into an advert. [Of course if your site is only for a particular section of the community (e.g. disabled) that would be another matter].

Descriptions are not designed to fully explain nuances of a sites business model but to let people know what the content of the site is. Geneally updates are checked out relatively quickly so it would appear that the proposed change is not seen as being necessary in your case.

While we appreciate your frustration, unfortunately we cannot be more helpful as we do not discuss aspects of an individual site here. I would suggest seeing if your proposed update is in line with the descriptions of other sites in the category. This may indicate what is acceptable in that category. Certainly there is no point in re-suggesting the same update again.

There is a no-ODP tag (see other SEO-type forums) which you can add to your sites meta-descriptions to encourage search engines to use your sites description raher than the ODP's if that is the problem.

regards

Also note that in some categories there are very stringent rules regarding descriptions and title. Sometimes these rules are included within the category descriptions, but you may have to go up the tree to find them all. For example in one area I edit, names of people must be put in as last name then first name. However 99% of the submissions are not doen this way, since no-one tends to read the categroy descriptions, then I get repeated requests to update and change the name back to Firtnam Lastname order, and I just delete the update requests.

Unfortunately these rules are not always apparent to the public view. For example for sites about website design companies, there is a fairly rigid set of rules requiring a whole page to define. Therefore if the description was done correctly in the first place, the chance of an update being accepted is almost zero.