Help with editor for niche category?

Hello and thank you for taking a moment to read this thread. I have attempted to submit a site to a niche directory tree in dmoz: Shopping -> Health -> Reproduction and Sexuality -> Aphrodisiacs -> Pheromones.

This is a small, niche market with a limited number of listings, so understandably there does not appear to be an editor for this category. Would it be possible for an editor of another category to view the queue?

The site which was submitted to the queue was a content-rich site which has thousands of hours of work put into it. It is rich with information about the latest science and technology of human pheromones, and greatly benefits the community therefore. please help?

Thanks for your suggestion.

Whilst no editor may be listed for a category, there are several hundred editors who can edit there. One of these will eventually review your site - we cannot say when - it could be tomorrow, it could be a few years. Editors are volunteers and edit when they have time and in areas they are interested in.

Having suggested your site, the best advice is to carry on promoting your site elsewhere. If your site is listable, eventually it will be listed, if not it won't.

regards

I understand that DMOZ is non-profit organization, but I cannot understand why the option of expedited review is an impossibility. I cannot see an expedited review at a small cost hurting the credibility of the directory. Contrariwise, the income generated could be used to improve upon the infrastructure of the directory, helping to ensure its long term survival and viability.

As long as the editors are not paid, and therefore unbiased, google would not frown upon this. Such an option would greatly benefit the directory as a whole as well as eliminate the frustrations among the consortium of web-site owners who are desperate to be reviewed - a win-win situation for all parties.

Think of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a non-profit government agency. With a new drug application, it can take as long as 10 years to get reviewed and approved. However they offer the option of an expedited review at a cost. Paying the FDA extra does not give the company any more or less chance of being approved, but rather just expedites the process making it more efficient for all involved.

I think that you are viewing ODP as a listing service. That's a common misconception. We're building a directory from a variety of sources. Site suggestions are only one source, and for some categories, a very poor source. There are also a number of things that an editor can do in a particular category which will improve the category but don't involve adding a site.

I joined because it was volunteer and liked the concept. I am far from the only one. If a fee ever becomes involved paid to me or to AOL, I'm gone and I know that there would be an exodus of editors.

There are plenty of directories which provide an expedited listing for a fee. Please don't try to make us into one of them.

Thank you for suggesting your site. At sometime an editor will take a look at it, but we don't know when that will be. A listing in ODP is not a magical source to promote a site. A number of site owners have come here and verified that. If you want to promote your site, there are much better investments for your time than trying to change ODP.

I don't envision dmoz as a listing service. It is not the purpose of DMOZ to serve the better interest of web-site owners.

I'm not asking for dmoz to accept a fee to list a website, but rather to offer the option of moving a website review up the queue for a fee. There is nothing unfair or biased about that. The money wouldn't go to AOL or to moderators or to editors, but to programmers which can improve the infrastructure of the directory and modernize it - no one person would profit from this except the dmoz community as a whole. Volunteers could use their time more effectively, all while improving the public opinion of dmoz and giving website owners a fair chance to be reviewed.

Please at least consider it. There is a strong, negative public opinion of dmoz because of how frustrating it can be to be reviewed. That doesn't have to be so. Dmoz is a great idea, but it can be so much better.

Your proposal is not something that we COULD consider.

That kind of decision is made by the sponsor (originally an independent organization, now a division of AOL). This forum is a voice of the editing community; AOL managers and employees apparently don't visit here often (or visit silently).

But, for the record, their most likely response to this, the first time it came up, was: "We remember LookSmart."

Looksmart went your route. We got some of their volunteers when, shortly thereafter, they soared into the sunset like a very thick brick.

There is one other thing that you may not have considered. The infamous "consortium of website owners" is 90% composed of pure affiliate spammers, and in my experience, the purer the spammer, the greater the frustration--it's an extremely strong correlation. So a proposal like yours cannot address more than a tiny fraction of the frustrated folk--and in fact, it would address the least frustrated of them. The Grand Consortium of No-Content Marketing-Website Owners would hardly be touched.

I'm not asking for dmoz to accept a fee to list a website, but rather to offer the option of moving a website review up the queue for a fee.

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That is impossible, not only for the reasons that hutcheson gave, but for the fact that we don't have a queue. It is probably best described as a pool of sites which can be sorted several different ways by editors.

I also agree with hutcheson about the "consortium of website owners" who complain about ODP. At least the ones that I've seen here. An amazing of those who come here to complain about their site not being listed have been spamming very low content sites to multiple categories. Some who say that they've submitted a few times are telling the truth, some count much differently than I do because they submitted 50 to 100 times just in the past few months.

And before you bring up transparency, we tried it on this forum. We confirmed that a site was awaiting review, we told people why their site hadn't been listed, etc. It gave spammers way too much information - we were helping them to refine their tactics.