Could a site submittal be intentionally rejected ?

Hi Guys !

I submitted an URL several times for the last 2 years but never had the chance to have it accepted.
What worries me is that I only see in the category I target a few sites handled by the same guy and his close friend. I happened to know that the guy in questions is the editor of the category.
As he always considered me as a direct competitor, could he be the one intentionally rejecting my submittal ?

I mean do anyone know if submissions are directly sent to the Editor of the category ?
If this is the case, is there any "independent" Headmaster that can be contacted in case of such a doubt ?

Thank you all for your answers !

Barry

I mean do anyone know if submissions are directly sent to the Editor of the category ?

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No on two counts.

Suggestions are put in the unreviewed folder of the category where they are suggested and any one of more than 200 editors have the right to review those suggesitons -- thus it is impossible for a single editor to control a given category.

If you have evidence of editorial abuse, please click on the report abuse link at the top right of the category page and umm report it.

First of all thank you spectregunner and jimnoble for your reply and help.

I was away for a while but back again on the track and very concerned by your feedback.
Spectregunner you said : "any one of more than 200 editors have the right to review those suggestions - thus it is impossible for a single editor to control a given category"

You mean that every category has 200 or more editors ?
Of course that depends on what level we are talking about.
I suppose you are talking about the top one on DMOZ index page with only 16 choices or a bit further in the drop down system.

Now what I want to emphasize is the fact that categories by location are much more sensible when manual reviewing especially if the editors are from this location. If the location is still small will there be a lot of editors ?
Do note that I am not talking about sports for example when one reviews a football website one day from New Zealand and the other day from Germany.
I am talking about Regional (city) websites where the editor of course easily knows or may know the author (company) submitting their website and could interact on the review.
What if moreover the editor is a professional website developer in this city (category) promising potential customers unique results in websites ranking ?

Do you think it is totally impossible for this guy to have any influence on DMOZ privileging his and/or customers websites ?

Thank you very much for your time.

Barry

You mean that every category has 200 or more editors ?

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They mean that over 200 editors have the ability to edit in every single category in the directory.

Do you think it is totally impossible for this guy to have any influence on DMOZ privileging his and/or customers websites ?

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Nothing's ever impossible but if someone is abusing their editing privileges in such a way, they are generally caught, if not by another editor then by a member of the public submitting an abuse report.

In Regional we haver a lot of experienced editors who drop in and out of given states.

For example, several experienced editors are now giving Indiana a lot of attention.

The number of listed sites in Iowa has nearly doubled in the last few months.

We have a lot of informal activites that result in fairly experienced editors making edits in some of the deepest subcategories -- and when highly experienced editors edit in a give category, they tend to eyeball the entire category to see if there are items that need their attention.

What this means is that no sub category is immune from being visited by experienced editors who will usually spot any editing abnormalities -- be they malicious or the result of inexperience/lack of attention. Some times errors are corrected, sometimes a note goes out to other experienced or meta editors saying something like: take a look at Barry2008's edits in East Timbucktoo.

We all take responsibility for quality control, and many take this responsibility quite seriously. That is not to say that bad things don't happen, but in the vast majority of cases where someone says "Barry2008 is a competitor and is keeping me out of the directory" the allegation is laughably wrong.

Barry2008 said:

You mean that every category has 200 or more editors ?

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The short answer to your question is "yes", the long answer is: when an editor gains permissions on a particular category they also gain permission to edit ALL of the subcategories in the tree above it. So because of the way that works there are actually more editors with access to the smaller categories, not less. While the larger categories closer to the root of the directory have less editors they are generally more experienced and trusted editors with a proven track record. Of course there are also editalls and meta editors who have access to the whole directory.

Barry2008 said:

Do you think it is totally impossible for this guy to have any influence on DMOZ privileging his and/or customers websites ?

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Nope, not impossible. But it is pretty likely he would be caught and have his privledges removed.

It is more likely that your website is either still awaiting review or that it was rejected for perfectly valid reasons.

A big thanks for all of you !
OK I think it is clearer for everyone !

Wing you said "It is more likely that your website is either still awaiting review or that it was rejected for perfectly valid reasons."

I wish you gave the right answer which might be awaiting review as the website is ranked in MSN, Google, Yahoo and quite a few other directories for a long time...

Thank you again.

Barry