General listing advice

Hi.

First, let me say that this IS NOT a request for site submission status. So please read on.

In a previous post I asked:
Please let me know the status of:http://www.tropicalretreats.co.uk/ submitted to: http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/Spa...cation_Rentals/ on the 28th May 2004.

The response told me that it was received and was awaiting review.

Today, my site is still not listed and I don’t know what to do next.

At that time ( May 2004) the DMOZ 'rules' suggested that if you re-submit a site then it goes to the bottom of the queue. So I have never resubmitted.

However, I now see that some DMOZ submission guides (not official) suggest that you should resubmit after 2 months or so without seeing a listing. Is this true? Should I resubmit my site and continue to do so every few months or so? or should I just continue to sit back and wait? How long for? If I do, would I get an e-mail from DMOZ at some future point in time to inform me of the review findings?

You can appreciate that I do not want to jeopardise my review. Let's face it; if I did resubmit and went to the bottom of the queue again then I know that I've got at least another 18 months to wait !!!!!

Thanks for asking, before doing anything too crazy

The reason we ask for a resubmit is because, since we don't offer status any more, there is no real way of knowing if that first submission went through, so we ask people to submit once more, to drastically lessen the odds.

In your case, though, knowing that the submission was received, there is really nothing more that you can do that will help. Resubmitting will not help in any way, and may make things happen even slower.

Thanks

OK. So I wait. But as I asked before, will I ever get something (an e-mail) from DMOZ to say that my site has been reviewed (assuming that it will be - some day) to let me know that it's been accepted/rejected? If not, then how do I know what is going on?

No, you won't get e-mail, in either case.

There aren't any provisions for site-tending information; in any case, it's not a socially acceptable practice even among editors.

So, I don't know if my site has been reviewed (having patently waiting for 18 months and abiding by the rules), you wont tell me if it is or is not still awaiting review, I won't be told when the review has been done (regardless of outcome) and so I don’t know whether to resubmit now or not (and possibly suffer a longer delay if my site is still waiting review but decide to resubmit anyway just in case it has been lost or previously rejected).

An earlier response from you in this thread said:
"In your case, though, knowing that the submission was received, there is really nothing more that you can do that will help? Resubmitting will not help in any way, and may make things happen even slower."

But how do I know if it is STILL awaiting review or BEEN RJECTED?

My God, it's the blind leading the blind.

People do it better? Not in the case of DMOZ if this performance (and lack of logic) is anything to go by.

WELL, TO GO SOME WAY IN "DOING IT BETTER", MAY I SUGGEST THAT A SIMPLE MESSAGE TO SAY "YES" OR "NO" REGARDING THE SUCCESS OF A SUBMISSION WOULD BR A GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND. Else, how do you expect us to know what is going on?

Do you have anything truly constructive to offer me as to what I should do next? And that is not a sarcastic request. I guess that there must be hundreds of others like me (and more to come) who are now at a complete loss as to what to do next, without jeopardising their situation regarding GETTING a review.

But how do I know if it is STILL awaiting review or BEEN RJECTED?

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Do you have some reason to believe that it would be rejected by an editor who reviewed it, that it wouldn't meet our guidelines? If not, then it's fair to presume that the site is still awaiting review.

People do it better? Not in the case of DMOZ if this performance (and lack of logic) is anything to go by.

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Humans do it better has nothing to do with notifying site owners of the status of their suggestion.

WELL, TO GO SOME WAY IN "DOING IT BETTER", MAY I SUGGEST THAT A SIMPLE MESSAGE TO SAY "YES" OR "NO" REGARDING THE SUCCESS OF A SUBMISSION WOULD BR A GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND. Else, how do you expect us to know what is going on?

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If you read through the forum and the FAQs, you'll see that you're not suggesting anything new and we've already commented ad nauseum on it all.

Do you have anything truly constructive to offer me as to what I should do next? And that is not a sarcastic request. I guess that there must be hundreds of others like me (and more to come) who are now at a complete loss as to what to do next, without jeopardising their situation regarding GETTING a review.

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There is really nothing you can do now to speed up your suggestion's review (or find out the status of it from us) so really all you can do is just forget about it and move on. Do what you would do if we didn't exist.

General answer:

If your site is listable, then someday it will be listed. Resubmitting does not hasten the time for when that might happen.

Even if it had never been submitted, editors find and list sites using other methods than the suggestion pile, so it could still get listed that way.

If it has been accidentally rejected, then it can still get a listing via the alternative entrance. .

If the site is not listable, then we do not want you to resubmit it. That to us, would be spam. That is why we don't ever tell people when we reject a site, because the submitter in 99% of cases resubmits the exact same site just a few minutes later.

If the content improves significantly then an editor might find the site by some other method and list it at that time.

If a site isn't listed a year after first submission, then sending it in one more time (and only one more time) is not seen as spam. Of course you will have expanded the content massively in that time no?

So you see, if it is waiting there is no need to resubmit. It is waiting, and will stay waiting until beitng either listed or deleted.

If it is rejected, there is no need to submit again. You would only be wasting the time of the person who needs to hit the reject button again. Multiple iterations of that is called spam, the the guidelines have tough and exact penalties for that.

Mr. Porky, from an editor's point of view, one of the most disturbing things about giving status reports was that people thought the status was a guide as to what action they should take next. It isn't, it never was, and EVERY action performed on the basis of a status report was always invariably a wrong thing to do. So ... if you were waiting for a status report to do something, we can tell you with perfect confidence -- JUST DON'T EVER DO THAT SOMETHING!

The submittal policy is really the best guide as to how to submit a site and when to do it -- regardless of any other circumstances. That's how you know what to do.

Motsa, foret about getting a listing.

Hi Motsa,

I have been trying to get my site into DMOZ for years also (Also a travel related site).

Essentially you can forget about it. The corruption is DMOZ is so rife that to get your site listed in a category that contains competiror sites owned by an editor is impossilbe.

The simple fact is that most DMOZ editors are owners of commercial sites who became frustrated with not getting a listing, so became editors in order to enter their own sites.

Unfortunatly, they now control who can be a new editor, so you can forget going this route yourself. (We should have all been quicker!)

The ability for DMOZ to show if a site has been rejected, listed, is in a queue etc. would take any programmer about 2 days work max.

Not supporting this funtionality is clearly another way for DMOZ editors to block competitors the 'their' categories.

Your best option (In my opinion) is to email google and suggest that they should drop DMOZ as their source for a directory, and add it to the SPAM link exchange list that they maintain. - This may start DMOZ enough to get them to clean up their act.

Ahhhh I feel better for getting it off my chest!

(How long will this message last I wonder......... :icon_excl )

You said exactly the same via an Abuse Report shortly ago, and I explained that the category editors have nothing to do with reviewing new editor applications, so your accusation is rubbish (sorry for sounding harsh, but that's how it is).

This job is done by the group of meta editors and CatMods - experienced editors who have shown that they aren't selfish for a long time before being granted the Meta-rights. See http://dmoz.org/guidelines/meta/apps.html for more information on the reviewing process.

The ability for DMOZ to show if a site has been rejected, listed, is in a queue etc. would take any programmer about 2 days work max.

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Yes, but we - which includes the Time Warner/AOL staff members working for the ODP - decided not to do so for many reasons - you might find some in the FAQ at the top of this forum. It's our right, isn't it?

Andy,

Like many others who like to criticise the ODP you have made some very broad statements of fact for which I would like you to provide some sort of concrete evidence. Others in the past, when similarly challenged, have come up short, and our only conclusion is that there is no real evidence, and this is just another person with a personal beef about their own site not being listed according to what they feel is an appropriate times, shooting from the hip and trying to troll the boards and boost their own egos.

This is your chance to prove us wrong...

Andy_S said:

The corruption is DMOZ is so rife that to get your site listed in a category that contains competiror sites owned by an editor is impossilbe.

The simple fact is that most DMOZ editors are owners of commercial sites

They now control who can be a new editor

Not supporting this [review feedback] funtionality is clearly another way for DMOZ editors to block competitors the 'their' categories.

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I challenge each of these points as factually incorrect. For each of these points, please provide some sort of evidence that we can not easily refute. (One has already been addressed by the previous poster).

If you can not do this, we will assume that you fall into the category of all the others that have gone before you....

Sort of like the feeling when your body is full of poison and you throw up.

So far, I have been told by a moderator (whatever that is):

"There aren't any provisions for site-tending information; in any case, it's not a socially acceptable practice even among editors." Socially acceptable practice!! Who gives you the right to decide? Ever read 'Animal Farm', that's DMOZ that is. Your social commitment should be to the WWB and all its users. Remember this: “We Give Back to the Web Community”. However, it appears that you actively discriminate against most by defining ‘The Web Community’ as ‘The Web Community in accordance with DMOZ and Netscape’ and what you really mean is “We give back to those that we choose to.”

I have also been told:

“The submittal policy is really the best guide as to how to submit a site and when to do it - regardless of any other circumstances. That's how you know what to do.” But it doesn’t deal with “when to do it” and it completely ignores ‘what happens next’. It says “Once your site is listed in the ODP” but the policy fails to go on and give the reader any idea of timescale like “but this could take more than 2 years.”

I have also judged the following from most of the DMOZ replies: The primary reason behind the policy decision to drop any communications regarding the progress and/or rejection of sites submitted by people like me is simply because it’s just too much effort. Not only that, but those terrible people out there then have the nerve to come back to us, us at DMOZ, with more questions, more issues, and we have to deal with that. WELL YES, its something most of us accept as a part of any democratic process. DMOZ provides a service to others and should therefore be totally open and transparent to all and if you can’t accept that basic principle then you should pack up and go home, to be replaced by someone or something that is.

But all of this is pointless argument. The bottom line is: It is totally unacceptable for any credible organisation to reject justifiable questions and refuse to reply.

Footnote: To those at DMOZ, please don’t try to impose your own definition of “justifiable”. It simply means any non-abusive question that is relevant to the person who is asking.

>> WELL YES, its something most of us accept as a part of any democratic process. <<

Wherever did you get the idea that the ODP is a democratic process? I'll let Hutcheson describe how far off base that comment is.


>> DMOZ provides a service to others <<

Yes. We provide a service to surfers. That service currently has nearly five and a half million listings, in over 650 000 categories. There is no other service that the ODP strives to provide.


>> and should therefore be totally open and transparent to all <<

Why? Just why should it? The ODP builds a directory. It has volunteers who build the bits they are interested in, at the speed they feel like, using the sites that they deem listable. What else is there to explain?


>> and if you can’t accept that basic principle then you should pack up and go home, to be replaced by someone or something that is. <<

Whatever the ODP does, or does not do, there is nothing to stop you replacing it with something else.... but the fact remains that no-one has yet done a better job at building a direectory, than the ODP has already done....

Mr Porky said:

DMOZ provides a service to others and should therefore be totally open and transparent to all and if you can’t accept that basic principle then you should pack up and go home, to be replaced by someone or something that is.

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Yes, DMOZ provides a service to others.
And yes, we are totaly open to the people we provide a service to.
But webmaster / websiteowners are and never will be the people we provide the service they want us to deliver to them. We don't provide a service to them at all. :secret: We are NOT a listingservice.
If you can't accept that basic principle you should pack and go to an other directory that deliveres this service.

In case of confusion, I'll repeat the basic submittal policy:

Submit once, whenever you like, to the one most appropriate category.

Submit once again, after a suitably long interval, if the site has not been listed. (I'd suggest six months or so.)

Don't submit again.

This is regardless of any conceivable information about submittal status.

Andy_S wrote: Hi Motsa...

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That was a bit of a confusing post to be named in, Andy. Did you really mean to address your post to me? Think you might have misread something if you think I'm concerned about getting a site listed. I'm one of the evil Meta editors, you see -- I'm just on vacation for a few months, sipping margaritas on a virtual beach somewhere.

Mr Porky wrote: So far, I have been told by a moderator (whatever that is)...

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Don't get around forums often? A moderator here is no different from a moderator at any other forum -- they help to keep the forum running smoothly and the people in it behaving as close to civilly as we can get.

The base problem most people seem to have is that they don't understand that we aren't a listing service and the fact that we give you a way to suggest your site to us if you want as a courtesy doesn't make us beholden to you in any way. It's a simple concept. Arguing that it shouldn't be that way isn't going to change it. I seriously don't understand why people persist in banging their heads against the wall like that. My head hurts just watching you.

Oops, I’ve touched a nerve and I'm not the first to do so (so it seems). I maintain that:

But all of this is pointless argument. The bottom line is: It is totally unacceptable for any credible organisation to reject justifiable questions and refuse to reply.

Footnote: To those at DMOZ, please don’t try to impose your own definition of “justifiable”. It simply means any non-abusive question that is relevant to the person who is asking.

I am sure if I phoned George Bush up and asked him why he took a week to send help out to his own countrymen he would grace with me with a personal reply... oh, right, yeah, you said "credible orgnisation".

>> It is totally unacceptable for any credible organisation to reject justifiable questions and refuse to reply. <<

What is it that you so desperately want an answer to anyway?