We don't ask editors their motives every time they do an edit. We only ask that what they do conform to the letter of the ODP guidelines and the spirit of the ODP mission. So the answer to that question simply isn't available.
The editor reviewed a site -- that's what editors do! The editor thought the site shouldn't be listed in its current state -- that's the kind of judgment editors exercise. I presume you've resubmitted, which makes the site very visible to someone who wants to review and judge that kind of site.
It is hard for someone who hasn't worked on a collaborative public-service information project to realize just how different our management is. Normal corporate management focuses on TIME management to the virtual exclusion of all else. These volunteer projects don't do time management at all. At all. Virtually all the management we do is "QUALITY ASSURANCE management" -- which is no concern whatsoever of the typical corporate management hierarchy: it's shuffled off into a separate but low-level department.
So the typical management questions (why haven't you done this? why did you do that? when will you do the other thing) we don't ever ask and can't ever answer. About all we ever ask is, "do you see why it was wrong to do that, and can you avoid doing it again?"
This kind of thinking is completely alien to many people who've been trapped in the corporate world too long; but it is not at all unique to the ODP. Do you see Project Gutenberg promising which 3000 books they'll release in the next 12 months? Wikipedia giving a list of errors fixed in the past month, and announcing that the next error fixes will be Tuesday after next? Linus Torvalds announcing that he's going to release Linux version X.Y.Z in 2008, and then releasing something else in 2010 and calling it the same release number? Longhorn, pronghorn!) That's time management, and the first simple fact is, the only thing you can produce on schedule is excrement. (Just slop the pigs, and set your watch!)
And the second simple fact is, volunteers are self-motivated. Or they're not volunteers. So the open-participation model just works. Linux gives Gates the willies: and no wonder. Project Gutenberg, which has a community much smaller than ours, is still the largest book publisher in the world (measured either by its current or new offerings.) The ODP is twice the size of any of its older competition. Wikipedia shames Encarta eleven ways from Sunday in scope, comprehensiveness, and accuracy. (OK, you say that's about as faint as praise can be: well then, it also frequently beats Encyclopedia Britannica online.)
