Editor Feedback Form broken

I'm not sure if this has been reported, however I'm trying to send a message to an editor using the feedback form and I keep getting the following error.

Proxy Error
The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request POST /cgi-bin/send2.cgi.

Reason: Error reading from remote server

It's been reported.

It's also been noted that the message usually seems to go through anyway.

hutcheson said:

It's been reported.

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I guess like anything on DMOZ it should take a few years to fix.

I got the same! I wish I'd known the emails got through before I tried it 3 times and presumably swamped the editor...

I tried it 3 times and presumably swamped the editor

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There is almost never a reason to contact an editor directly.
In any case, not only is there no way of knowing if that editor is currently active, but volunteers are strongly advised not to respond to such feedback, for reasons explained in detail in other recent threads here.

If you wish to suggest a site or to request changes to an existing listing, there are far more appropriate tools for doing so (see the FAQ here), and as more than 200 editors can edit in every category, there is no point in contacting an individual.

makrhod said:

There is almost never a reason to contact an editor directly.

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Hi Mak,

Thanks for that, but I need to contact them, since I have submitted my website a few times over the last year (within the guidelines, without promotional text) and nothing has been approved.

Also, for my category it simply stated at the bottom that Ixen was the editor, which is why I contacted him to enquire whether there was an issue at all. (Actually I hadn't realised that there could be multiple editors, but of course it makes sense).

I presume I'll just have to wait and see; it is a bit frustrating not to know if they're active or not - is there any timeout for inactive editors?

Thanks, Paul.

Thanks for that, but I need to contact them...

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As Makrhod said, there is almost never a reason to contact editors directly. If anything, it could be counterproductive.

Webmasters should remember that editors just edit as a hobby in our spare time. Most of us have day jobs, and only have time to edit occasionally. Sending demanding emails will only discourage editors from working in that particular category. All you can do is wait patiently.

As for timing out, editors time-out if they do not make any edits for four months.

I have submitted my website a few times over the last year...

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You may wish to review our guidelines at http://www.dmoz.org/add.html . In particular: "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."

First, please stop suggesting your site. Each time that you suggested it, you have clicked that you have read and agreed with our submission guidelines. Which include

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.

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While we appreciate site suggestions, they are only one source of listings. And thanks to spammers, the suggestion pool is frequently a very dismal source. ODP isn't a listing service, we're a group of volunteers building a directory from a variety of sources. Someone will review your suggestion, but we have no idea when. It can be years. And it is a suggestion pool, not a queue. There are several ways to sort the suggestions, and if an editor chooses sort by date, you've dropped your suggestion to the bottom of the pool every time that you've suggested it.

Contacting editors is not necessary and is almost universally useless. Editors are not encouraged to reply to emails, since such exchanges frequently turn nasty and editors have even been harassed, stalked, and threatened. Personally, I never review/list a site after I receive feedback about it. Additionally, you don't know who will actually review a site. It could be the listed editors, but all editors listed higher in the category tree also have privileges, as do about 200 editors who have directory-wide permissions.

Thanks to both of you for your feedback. Just to clarify I did make it clear in my message to the editor that I fully appreciated that it is a voluntary job, and that he / she must be busy. I would never dream of flaming them, but of course there are unpleasant people out there unfortunately.

Also thanks for the information about listings, I'll leave it as is then and see what happens. Can I recommend perhaps placing some of the points you've mentioned on the feedback form? It might reduce the amount of spam / hassle you all get.

Thanks once more, and I'll just wait and hope for [URL removed]to one day be added to your fine directory.

All the best, Paul.

Can I recommend perhaps placing some of the points you've mentioned on the feedback form? It might reduce the amount of spam / hassle you all get.

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All of the information provided in the above responses is already freely available in numerous places including the public documents, the FAQ of this forum, and countless forum posts here and all over the internet.
For example, the warnings about repeated suggestions appear not just once but twice on the instructions that everyone acknowledges having read every time they suggest a site.

So I'm not sure how much more obvious it could be.