Do editors only add submitted sites?

Often the only submissions we get to small towns are mass-spammed deeplinks of directories with very little or even no content. (Yes people often submit deeplinks with zero content - scary eh?) These obviously get shown the fast-track to the ODP recycle bin

Often the reason we don't get submissions is because at the time the locality is created the editor creating it searchs for sites relating to that town and lists them. So they don't need to be submitted.

(And the sort of webmaster who is savvy enough to know about ODP is the sort of webmaster who will already have submitted their sites to major search engines, so they'll get found at that time anyway.)

We don't create empty categories and wait for them to be filled, we create a category if and when we can find sites to fill it.

So what people are trying to say is that submissions are just as valuable for small town categories.... just that we don't really get that many usable ones - hence the need to rely on our own research.

Especailly since the majority of submissions will be made to "big towns" on the basis that is where their customers are. Most submitters to Regional - either don't understand we want to list them at the lowest geographical level, or want to ignore it, and get listed in the metro area.

As a result the editor at the lower level has to wait until another editor at the higher level, realizes that site is misplaced and pushes it down to the right level.

I find that when searching for small-town sites, to look for a local ISP. They usually have an index of what sites are hosted by them.