Far to be perfect ...

The fact is, that situation is so rare, so exceedingly rare, that it's hardly worth while wasting any time at all trying to figure out what to do.

So it's up to the editor.

Now, I know every affiliate spammer on earth is convinced that if he could only add a few more vapid information-free marketroiding blurbs to his doorway pages, the editor would suddenly fail to recognize it as AdSense Doorway Spam, and the site would shift from the middle of the 90% of all submittals that are spam, into the bottom decile of the 10% of listable sites.

But it ain't so. It just ain't so.

nea said:

Quote:
* add a code verification number to the submission page (a distorted image) to avoid automatic submissions by SEO tools

It's possible that something like that might be implemented, however I believe that's been discusssed internally and there are reasons why it isn't a good idea. I am not sure why, off the top of my head.

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These images (commonly known as CAPTCHA's) present a barrier to those who are visually impaired and rely on screen readers. The often create problems for people even with good eyesite depending on their implementations.

Very poor for accessibility, which is important.

The real issue with capchas is that ... there is no real issue. So far as we know, there is no significant load of automatically-generated submittals that we don't already have better ways of handling. Remember, we have some really skilled techies, we're running databases orders of magnitude bigger than anything you've ever done, and ... the kind of solutions needed for little, low-volume, non-newbie-friendly sites often simply aren't appropriate for the much larger scales involved in the ODP.

Thank you, Calli. *thwaps self* I knew there was a good reason!

>> >> Suppose you know a site is rejected? You need to promote it somewhere else. << <<

>> ... if I get a note on the reason for which it was rejected (i.e. rejected by one of the most important directories on the web ... not rejected by the next-door-web-kid) I try to improve it and/or correct it ... <<

Most of the stuff that is rejected, is completely unlistable spam. There is no way that the site can be reworked to make it ODP compliant. The content, and purpose of the site is not to provide information but to channel clicks towards adverts or to provide a PageRank network, or some other purpose not consistent with what the ODP wants to list. There is zero point in opening any discussion with such webmasters. Delete and move on is all that editors will do, and that has already wasted their time. We surely do not want to communicate any sort of status at all as to which sites have already been discovered and deleted, and which are still waiting.

if I get a note on the reason for which it was rejected (i.e. rejected by one of the most important directories on the web ... not rejected by the next-door-web-kid) I try to improve it and/or correct it

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No need. If a site meets all of the published criteria for listing in general, and the category charters, then it will be listed provided the content is at least as good as the best site already listed in that category - unique content and lots of it. If a site has been rejected then the cause will be either it fails the criteria (easy to check) or it has insufficient content - compare to the most comprehensive one listed. Then if the site has changed significantly no editor would deny you the right to suggest it again for another review.

oneeye (former editall/catmv)