curious why one category and not another

I have authored several pages/sites and gotten them listed in ODP. My experience in dealing with the ODP and several editors has been a good one. So this post is not a complaint, but driven by curiousity.

The one site I had problems getting listed is The Visible Policy. It thoroughly documents my life insurance policy and is informational/educational in nature. The natural category for it seemed to be Home: Personal Finance: Insurance: Life. During the last 16 months I tried to submit it there 3 times, about 5 months apart. Each time the submission was either ignored or rejected. (No editor, so I don't know which.)

If it was rejected, I wonder if it was because the site was considered too "technical" for a Home category. Because I thought that might be the reason, I went the other way, and submitted to Business: Financial Services: Insurance: Actuarial Science. That category's editor liked my site and added it to his category the same day. I'm happy, except that to date it has not yet been indexed by ODP. (I assume this will happen "any day" -- it has been listed for 3 weeks.)

I am not asking that The Visible Policy be recategorized. Once ODP searches will find it, it's fine where it is. BTW, Mike (Actuarial Science editor) suggested I apply for editorship of the Home .:. Life category, and I did so. No word yet (and wouldn't expect any in just a few days).

I personally think it belongs more in the Home category than the Business one (since the site's information is aimed at providing consumer information to consumers). Just out of curiousity, did you use a different URL each time you submitted to the Home category? There's only one submission (from early Sept.) sitting in unreviewed there and it was for the deeplink http://dbatitan.home.att.net/vp/vl08.html . Neither that deeplink nor the main URL have been touched more than once.

The Business category you chose just happens to have an active editor who only looks after that one category. The Home category, on the other, doesn't have quite the same level of babysitting. So it could take longer to get reviewed there than in the Business one you picked.

Motsa,

My first post simplified some of the submission details. Probably around August 2001 was when I first submitted The Visbile Policy to the Home ::: Life category. I may have used the site's formal address, which is http://home.att.net/~dbatitan/vp/ . AT&T Worldnet offers what they call "vanity URL's" -- in this case http://dbatitan.home.att.net/vp/ . They resolve to the same place, without any silly URL-forwarding.

(I think Google realizes they are the same, because it does not index both forms. Google is inconsistent though; sometimes the vanity URL gets in the index, and sometimes the true URL. I have started using the vanity forms exclusively, although some of my ODP listings use the true form.)

After several weeks with no response, I tried a different category, Business: Financial Services: Insurance: News and Information. The editor of that category was resistant to accept it, and I admit that my site is not a good fit. I sent him another e-mail asking how to get it in the Home ::: Life category, and his response was to go ahead and list it in his. After about two months, though, he removed it. (I'm not b*tching -- just giving the "long version".)

So around January I resubmitted the site to the first category, and there was never a response. I didn't follow up until early September. Thinking that the entire site might overwhelm the Home ::: Life reviewer, only a single page was submitted, one which I was sure belonged in that category.

About two weeks later, I saw that this category had updated, but without my page. I assumed the page had been rejected, and submitted the site to where it now is.

It may well be that the entire site does fit in Actuarial Science. The "deep linked" page (the one you say is still in the queue) still belongs in the Life category, IMO. The page is subtitled "How does participating whole life insurance work?", and it was authored to be complete in itself.