DMOZ is a bureaucracy based on a tissue of excuses

I, too have been waiting a LONG time to get listed. Everywhere you look on the internet, you'll find that you "should only submit your site once every three months" or so...There is no reason in the world why it should take over a YEAR to get listed. You have some 9000 active editors and you cant process sites within a year? B.S.! All you editors are rude, knowing that you hold a very important key to our successes. You do not give very good feedback (other than fluff and excuses) and you have taken away the ability to give status checks...here's an idea, have a status check web page that will allow us to check our status ourselves...not just take it away completely! Charlesleo is right. hate to admit it but he is right - DMOZ is nothing more than red tape and a bloated beast that doesn't do anything....it's too bad that DMOZ won't be used as a major resource for search engines like Google - another year or two, they will have their own directory. It is then that the dmoz will get it's **** together - but then it will be to late..

Thatnk you, editors. You have effectively ruined what was the greatest internet based resource for webmasters and the like.

PS: Just in case you FEEL like it....if one day any one of you editors gets in the mood to list a site... my site (<url deleted>) is still waiting to be listed. I know is isn't in some queue somewhere...that's an excuse. And with no status check, you can neither prove nor deny that it is.... you editors are simply lazy. If you know what is TRUELY good for DMOZ (as you all claim), you'll review it and maybe give me a reason why it could not be listed, if that is the case. I am not asking for much - none of us are. We are looking for professionalism.... no more excuses...

One more thing...

For all of you webmasters out there trying to get your rankings a little higher, we all know that permanant reciprocal links will do the trick. I have <self-promotional url-dropping cleaned up> Personally, I am tired of DMOZ's inefficientness...although, for now, we all still kinda "need" them for our won success...

dan.kotarski said:

I, too have been waiting a LONG time to get listed. Everywhere you look on the internet, you'll find that you "should only submit your site once every three months" or so...There is no reason in the world why it should take over a YEAR to get listed. You have some 9000 active editors and you cant process sites within a year? B.S.! All you editors are rude, knowing that you hold a very important key to our successes. You do not give very good feedback (other than fluff and excuses) and you have taken away the ability to give status checks...here's an idea, have a status check web page that will allow us to check our status ourselves...not just take it away completely! Charlesleo is right. hate to admit it but he is right - DMOZ is nothing more than red tape and a bloated beast that doesn't do anything....it's too bad that DMOZ won't be used as a major resource for search engines like Google - another year or two, they will have their own directory. It is then that the dmoz will get it's **** together - but then it will be to late..

Thatnk you, editors. You have effectively ruined what was the greatest internet based resource for webmasters and the like.

PS: Just in case you FEEL like it....if one day any one of you editors gets in the mood to list a site... my site (<url removed>) is still waiting to be listed. I know is isn't in some queue somewhere...that's an excuse. And with no status check, you can neither prove nor deny that it is.... you editors are simply lazy. If you know what is TRUELY good for DMOZ (as you all claim), you'll review it and maybe give me a reason why it could not be listed, if that is the case. I am not asking for much - none of us are. We are looking for professionalism.... no bull**** excuses...

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Charles answered this fairly well already, but I will add a couple of points more:

1. The directory is not and was never intended to be a resource for webmasters. Any benefit received by a webmaster/site owner is purely a by-product and unintended.
2. Not sure what you are waiting for, there is not and never has been a guarantee that a site will be listed.
3. Sorry that I am so lazy, that my 15000 edits haven't been to your site
4. Many of the SE's have their own directory and use data supplied by the ODP to supplement their own.

Website promotion is an accidental side-effect of the ODP, not a part of its purpose. So, yes, if you're looking for website promotional services, you should be looking elsewhere: this is the message we've been trying to get out for years now; it's unfortunate that you just now heard it, but better late than never.

There's a part of the message that you haven't gotten yet, though: I hold no key to your success at all. And if I did, I'd drop it immediately. Your success is always your own responsibility, and you really really don't want to give it to someone whose interests lie in another direction altogether (being neither commercially oriented nor centered on you).

As for status checks, we're persuaded no honest use can be made of them. Your best course of action is always to assume your site has been rejected forever, and take the appropriate steps. Then, if you are rejected, you've already reacted. And if you are NOT rejected, you'll be a leg up on those people who didn't do anything except wait for an ODP listing. And so you don't need a suggestion status for any practical purpose.

As for excuses: none offered, none needed. We're all on the same level here. Nobody ever needs an excuse to do something other than what you want. And you don't need an excuse not to do anything I want.

As for professionalism, find a professional: as you say, there are many of them out there, and there's no reason for us to compete in that crowded field. The ODP is a volunteer (amateur) directory in the most literal sense: people do what they do because they love it. And it is unique in THAT field.

As for "what is good for the ODP" -- feedback on rejected sites is known with absolute certainty to be hardly ever part of it. Feedback on not-yet-rejected sites is known with perfect certaintly to be never part of it.

dan.kotarski said:

Everywhere you look on the internet, you'll find that you "should only submit your site once every three months" or so...

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Since your nearly duplicate post was responded to in the other thread already, I will just add one point that I forgot in the other one.

1.) It may be "written everywhere" but certainly not in the Suggestion Instructions where it is pretty clear in stating:

Please only submit a URL to the Open Directory once. Again, multiple submissions of the same or related sites may result in the exclusion and/or deletion of those and all affiliated sites. Disguising your submission and submitting the same URL more than once is not permitted.

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My point is simply this: When someone submits a site, there should be some kind of communication between the submitter and the reviewer. There should be some type of notification (manual or automatic) that will AT LEAST let us know WHY a site was denied. On the "How to suggest a site to the Open Directory" page, it is stated that it "...may take several weeks or more.." to get reviewed. Ok, that's fine. It does not say, however, that it could be an infinite wait....you can't resubmit, you can't contact anyone (except for here - in which case you cant get a status check anymore), you never get a straight forward answer - you're just plain stuck waiting for that one person to review your site. And, when they do (if they do), there is no indication whatsoever that it was reviewed. The only way to know is if it gets listed.

Now, I'm not saying that you do absolutely nothing. I am not trying to discredit you in any way shape or form - 15000 reviews is alot. But, like CharlesLeo said in his original post, 6 years ago, he got reviewed and listed quickly. Now he is waiting over a year. It's not because there are "so many more requests" and "not enough people to process them all". I am sure there ARE more requests, but there are also a lot more people to review those site and process those requests.

Removing the ability to get a status check or a reason why a site was rejected is like paying someone to put a new roof on your house (before they do the work) and then they never show up. No way to contact them to say, "What's the deal? Are you still going to do my roof?". None of his friends will tell you, no family will tell you, no neighbors will tell you....you're left in the dark. Eventually you simply say, "The heII with it" and assume you will never see or here from that person again. But there is always that thought in the back of you mind that annoys you. You know that somewhere out there is a person with your money that would pay for the new roof...now you still need a new roof and you have to pay someone else to do it. I know the ODP is free, you get my drift.

In another analogy, it's like being given a new sports car. It will get you from point A to B very quickly and costs nothing. It runs GREAT for everyone else. Yet everytime i go to drive it, it wont even start and then being told, "Well, then, if you don't like it, get a different car!"

Web site promotion is no accident, hutcheson. As a webmaster, it is critical that I get as much exposure to the world as possible. My site is partly my living - and with the ODP being so important to my success in that regard, it's difficult to understand how a free, volunteer service can be so malformed. True, DMOZ is not REQUIRED to do anything....But it is universally understood that the level of frustration, generated by DMOZ's slow review process, is magnified when absolutely no feedback regarding a sumbission is made available. I do not DEPEND on DMOZ for my success - but, because the ODP data is used by search engines like google that determine the rank of a site, it IS imperitive that I get listed. When others in my field are listed in the ODP and I am not, they get a higher PR (from google, anyway). I cannot compete with them because my PR is not as high - so their site gets returned in a search way before mine. In order to compete with them, I, too, would need to be in the ODP. In that regard, you DO hold a key to my success. If my site is not reviewed, i should not have to ASSUME anything...I'm trying to run a business here - and unfortunately, getting reviewed is like pulling teeth. Also, when editors review sites, you say it is their hobby - they love to do it. However, the way DMOZ is run right now, it is only a matter of time before before DMOZ is dead - especially when Google hosts their own directory. Yahoo was the biggest and the baddest at one point in time. Then Altavista, then MSN, now Google. I can tell you that the next "great" search engine comes about, it will likely not use DMOZ. You guys would have, in that case, destroyed your own hobby.

You're right, the ODP doesn't offer ways to get help. It offers ways to give help. The suggestion system is a way of helping editors find sites.

It is not a way of requesting website review services (which we don't offer, because our experience is it's not worth it to us or the webmaster) or website promotional services (which we don't provide at all). Unfortunately, people often assume otherwise, and end up very frustrated.

dan.kotarski said:

My point is simply this: When someone submits a site, there should be some kind of communication between the submitter and the reviewer. There should be some type of notification (manual or automatic) that will AT LEAST let us know WHY a site was denied. On the "How to suggest a site to the Open Directory" page, it is stated that it "...may take several weeks or more.." to get reviewed. Ok, that's fine. It does not say, however, that it could be an infinite wait....you can't resubmit, you can't contact anyone (except for here - in which case you cant get a status check anymore), you never get a straight forward answer - you're just plain stuck waiting for that one person to review your site. And, when they do (if they do), there is no indication whatsoever that it was reviewed. The only way to know is if it gets listed.

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This is something that I always am stumped by. What possible good outcome would there be for someone to tell you your site was rejected? I can give you plenty of examples of what bad effects it have. Just peak into the submission status archive. Not to mention the less than honest site owners (yes there are some, no not all of them are) can have then turn around and send out the next round of spam suggestions.

dan.kotarski said:

Now, I'm not saying that you do absolutely nothing. I am not trying to discredit you in any way shape or form - 15000 reviews is alot. But, like CharlesLeo said in his original post, 6 years ago, he got reviewed and listed quickly. Now he is waiting over a year. It's not because there are "so many more requests" and "not enough people to process them all". I am sure there ARE more requests, but there are also a lot more people to review those site and process those requests.

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Ahh but that isn't what was said. You stated very clearly that

B.S.! All you editors are rude, knowing that you hold a very important key to our successes.

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and

you editors are simply lazy. If you know what is TRUELY good for DMOZ (as you all claim), you'll review it and maybe give me a reason why it could not be listed, if that is the case.

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15000 plus edits, not site reviews by the way. You see there is a lot more to being an editor to just reviewing sites. Reviewing sites is just one hobby we enjoy. We also like fixing category structures, removing non-compliant sites/dead urls, fixing old descriptions to make them factual and compliant, and believe it or not finding sites on our own with absolutely no help from the webmasters. I for one normally like to work on suggested urls on occasion (yes I may be odd) but then again I edit mainly in Regional where the spam, duplicates, miss-suggesteds, and junk is minimal. My shopping and biz categories on the other hand are usually responsible for a couple of hundered edits but typically 95% of those are removing dead links and deleting spam duplicates being suggested every three months.

dan.kotarski said:

Removing the ability to get a status check or a reason why a site was rejected is like paying someone to put a new roof on your house (before they do the work) and then they never show up. No way to contact them to say, "What's the deal? Are you still going to do my roof?". None of his friends will tell you, no family will tell you, no neighbors will tell you....you're left in the dark. Eventually you simply say, "The heII with it" and assume you will never see or here from that person again. But there is always that thought in the back of you mind that annoys you. You know that somewhere out there is a person with your money that would pay for the new roof...now you still need a new roof and you have to pay someone else to do it. I know the ODP is free, you get my drift.

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No actually I don't think that comparison makes any sense at all. Roofing is very seldom a hobby, it is a service and yes when a service is promised it is expected. The ODP is not a service, period. It is a hobby of volunteers to build and organize a directory of sites so that surfers seeking information can find it more easily (whether directly through dmoz.org, or indirectly through one of the data users) and is not a service listing or otherwise.

dan.kotarski said:

In another analogy, it's like being given a new sports car. It will get you from point A to B very quickly and costs nothing. It runs GREAT for everyone else. Yet everytime i go to drive it, it wont even start and then being told, "Well, then, if you don't like it, get a different car!"

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It is a little better but still a bit flawed. The ODP never promised to give you anything, therefore implying that what you want can be better given from a different source isn't the same as telling you to get a new car.
Look at more like a giant suggestion box. You read through the menu and generally like the offered cuisine. However, they left your favorite dish off their selection menu. You can freely fill out the suggestion card stating that your recipe would be a great fit for their menu but there is no reason to believe that by doing so, it will ever be added or responded to for that matter. Yes on occassion you might recieve a letter stating "Thanks for the suggestion" but if I remember correctly the ODP suggestion form gives you something very similar to state the suggestion was received. In essence what you do by "suggesting" your (or anyone's) URL is suggest that it might fit the ODP directory. Eventually someone will take a look and see if they agree. If the site meets the listing criteria then you will see it listed, if not it won't be listed. You know your target market, making the site useful to them is the key and chances are if they find it will be listed on its own without ever having suggested it.

Hopefully that helps at least in a small part.

Your first analogy is just wrong -- you don't pay the ODP, you do not enter into any kind of a contract with the ODP, there is no promise or guarantee of anything from the ODP in return for your suggestion.

Your second analogy is similarly inaccurate. You're not being given anything, working or otherwise. It might be more accurate to say it's like other people being given a free sports car that you want. Maybe you'll get a free sports car one day, too, but it's not something promised to you.

Now he is waiting over a year. It's not because there are "so many more requests" and "not enough people to process them all". I am sure there ARE more requests, but there are also a lot more people to review those site and process those requests.

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I wouldn't say "a lot". The net number of active editors really doesn't change significantly -- new editors are joined all the time but existing editors time out or are removed regularly as well.

Any website promotion _I_ do as an ODP editor IS accidental. (If deliberate, it's called "editorial abuse.")

>it IS imperitive that I get listed.

What happens if you don't?

I ask just out of curiosity. My advice stands. Prepare for the site not to be listed, and nothing that happens can possibly cause you frustration or dissatisfaction.

End of problem.

NOTE: I've merged your posts (and the replies to you posts) from the other thread with this one.

dan.kotarski said:

Web site promotion is no accident, hutcheson. As a webmaster, it is critical that I get as much exposure to the world as possible. My site is partly my living - and with the ODP being so important to my success in that regard, it's difficult to understand how a free, volunteer service can be so malformed.

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Site promotion is an unintended by-product of the directory, so yes it is an accident that anything we do is beneficial to a site owner. It would truly be sad if getting one link to any directory was that important to the success or failure of any business. I see that you are not relying on a listing to make or break you, so that is good since the ODP is not and will never be a promotional resource for any site.


There is an abundant of mis-information around, and yes there are things that are confusing from the ODP standpoint. That is one reason that some of us volunteer some of our free time to try and explain things here. But to be called lazy, biased, abusive, power hungry dictators, etc for the effort it is no surprise that only a couple of handfulls of editors ever frequent this forum.

shadow575 said:

15000 plus edits, not site reviews by the way. You see there is a lot more to being an editor to just reviewing sites. Reviewing sites is just one hobby we enjoy. We also like fixing category structures, removing non-compliant sites/dead urls, fixing old descriptions to make them factual and compliant, and believe it or not finding sites on our own with absolutely no help from the webmasters. I for one normally like to work on suggested urls on occasion (yes I may be odd) but then again I edit mainly in Regional where the spam, duplicates, miss-suggesteds, and junk is minimal. My shopping and biz categories on the other hand are usually responsible for a couple of hundered edits but typically 95% of those are removing dead links and deleting spam duplicates being suggested every three months.

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In that very sentance, you told me exactly what we have all known for a long time.
You stated "...and believe it or not finding sites on our own with absolutely no help from the webmasters."
Translation: "We just kinda do whatever, whenever we feel like it...."

So, why have a suggestion form?


What possible good outcome would there be for someone to tell you your site was rejected?

Disclosure.

In the amount of time spent in this forum, my site could have been reviewed. If you dont want to review it, fine....but then why have the service? (When I say service, I mean "a Directory that provides search services to those who search for content" not "a service for webmasters"

Let me correct you by your own terms

Let me correct you by your own terms.
Acording to http://www.dmoz.org/add.html, it is stated that:

Procedure After Your Site is Submitted
An ODP editor will review your submission to determine whether to include it in the directory. Depending on factors such as the volume of submissions to the particular category, it may take several weeks or more before your submission is reviewed. Please only submit a URL to the Open Directory once. Again, multiple submissions of the same or related sites may result in the exclusion and/or deletion of those and all affiliated sites. Disguising your submission and submitting the same URL more than once is not permitted.

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It does NOT say:

Procedure After Your Site is Submitted
An ODP editor might review your submission if he/she is in the mood that day and the moon is purple to determine whether to include it in the directory. Depending on factors such as the volume of submissions to the particular category, it may take several weeks or more before your submission is reviewed. Please only submit a URL to the Open Directory once. Again, multiple submissions of the same or related sites may result in the exclusion and/or deletion of those and all affiliated sites. Disguising your submission and submitting the same URL more than once is not permitted.

Click to expand...

As a webmaster, it is critical that I get as much exposure to the world as possible. My site is partly my living - and with the ODP being so important to my success in that regard, it's difficult to understand how a free, volunteer service can be so malformed.

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Consider the other thousands of 'honest' webmasters who have also suggested their sites to be listed by us. Then add on the hundreds of 'dis-honest' webmasters who constantly spam us with duplicate or unlistable (as per our tlistability criteria) websites. Then add to that the fact that there's a lot more to editing the directory than reviewing suggested sites. Then you might have some idea of why in all probability no-one's got around to reviewing your particular site yet.

What you may think is mal-formed is a result of false expectations. We are not here to be a listing service for webmasters. We take in suggestions from the public as one source of sites to consider for listing, as a way that people can help us without being editors. That system is quite heavily abused by a few webmasters/SEOs, so we can make no guarentees about how long it will take to review all the suggestions.

When I'm reviewing sites, most are either listable as they are (in which case I will list them) or completely unlistable (due to being mirrors of already listed sites, or other types of site we just don't list). For sites in the latter category, there's no point in providing feedback since there's really nothing the webmaster could do to make the site listable (other than perhaps a complete change of business model), and from reading our public policies they will already know that their site should not be listed. Indeed providing such feedback could well be harmful, since it would help altert spammers to which of their tricks we'd caught on to. On the very rare occaision that a site is almost listable but for a small detail, I would probably contact the owner to suggest how they could improve the site (I think this might have happened to me once or twice in tens of thousands of edits).

So if you have a site that's listable under our criteria, and you've submitted it to an appropriate category but it hasn't been listed yet, it will, in all likelyhood, still be waiting in the pool for an editor to come along and review it. There is really no reason for anyone to think otherwise. If you're worried something might have happened by mistake *one* additional suggestion of your site shouldn't do any harm.

If anyone wants to help out the project (rather than just complaining about it), and contribute a little to easing the frustrations being spoken of, then they should vounteer to become an editor. But remember volunteering just to list your own site is not looked upon very highly...

We just kinda do whatever, whenever we feel like it...."

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For each individual editor, that's pretty much the situation -- editors work where they want, on what they want, as often or as infrequently as they want. They are not required to review suggested sites if they can grow a category better by hunting down URLs on their own.

So, why have a suggestion form?

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As a courtesy.

In the amount of time spent in this forum, my site could have been reviewed.

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True. But we don't review sites simply because their owner found this forum and demanded a review. Posting here does not and should not expedite the review and listing of a suggested site.

If you dont want to review it, fine....but then why have the service? (When I say service, I mean "a Directory that provides search services to those who search for content" not "a service for webmasters"

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Any "service" that we provide is not about listing any specific site. If yours is among the sites that editors choose to review and list today, fabulous. If not, maybe some other day but hundreds of other sites will have been reviewed and listed.

Let me correct you by your own terms.
Acording to http://www.dmoz.org/add.html, it is stated that:

Procedure After Your Site is Submitted
An ODP editor will review your submission

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Ri-ight. I'm not sure what the problem is with that. It doesn't say that an ODP editor will review your submission within any specific timeframe (beyond a general--and very broad--"several weeks or more"), just that an editor will review your submission...which is accurate. It may be 2 days or it might be 5 years but eventually someone will review the submission.

Every site suggestion will be reviewed, there is only no proper way to predict when. So the description of the "Procedure after your site is submitted" is correct.

dan.kotarski said:

In that very sentance, you told me exactly what we have all known for a long time.
You stated "...and believe it or not finding sites on our own with absolutely no help from the webmasters."
Translation: "We just kinda do whatever, whenever we feel like it...."

So, why have a suggestion form?

Click to expand...

To help those editors find sites that they may have not yet found. That doesn't mean that the editors number one priority is to review those suggestions. And yes the brillance of being a volunteer is that I (following the published guidelines) can choose when, where and how much I wish to edit during any of my free time editing sessions.

dan.kotarski said:

In the amount of time spent in this forum, my site could have been reviewed. If you dont want to review it, fine....but then why have the service? (When I say service, I mean "a Directory that provides search services to those who search for content" not "a service for webmasters"

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Doubtful that I even have access to your suggestion, since it isn't of regional relevance I am guessing. An editor will at some point will have a look at the suggestion (if no one has already) but it does not guarantee a listing and a review doesnt always result in a listing or deletion. The editor may move it to a more appropriate locations, delete any duplicates waiting (either submitted by the owner, a surfer or another editor) and leave one for review. For the record, the dmoz.org search (if that is what you are referring too here) is typically more of a tool for locating categories not specific sites although it is possible to do so when the search is working We build out the categories of interest to us (with in the guidelines for editors) and at this point there are many that find that of use and freely download the directory data files for their own use. Those are often other directories and SE's who tend to do a much better job at site specific searches than the dmoz search does

There is massive expectation by webmasters of what editors should be capable of doing, but the reality is that that we do not have enough editors to process all the suggestions we get on a timely basis in all areas. (And as is often pointed out here, reviewing suggestions is often less effective than plain old searching for listable sites using search engines.) It is certainly unfortunate that we don't have editors with an interest in every area that we have categories for. I wish we did!

The biggest help the webmaster community could give to ODP would be to for more of them sign up as editors for areas that interest them and review/list sites.

It is not a trival task to understand our guidelines, and even with that understanding, individual site reviews can take a substantial amount of time (particularly when the site has been suggested to the wrong category).

Some categories receive so much irrelevant spam, that venturing into the unreviewed section is a largely fruitless and demoralising task.

I increasingly focus my own efforts on regional localities, where it is easier to see whether or not a site is relevant or not, and where spam tends to be lower than in other areas.

It is a shame that so few webmasters post here with a positive view on the time we editors (as volunteers) commit. I know it is difficult to be thankful when your own site hasn't been listed or reviewed yet. But the real way to make a difference is to become an editor yourself.

My thanks to those people who have posted thanks on R-Z in the past for the work editors do.. It is appreciated

Kind Regards,
Andy