How long - Please

hi, i suggested a site over 6 months back now for review and i have not heard any feedback for it yet, i have spent litterally months on making my site the best fonejacker site ever, and the forums are booming, i have a page rank 3 and everything is perfect, yet i am still to see my hard work and deditction rewarded with a spot in the ODP. can someone please tell me if i have been reviewed and if i have been declined could they tell me for what reason. i am not the kind of person to go shouting the odds or flaming someone for criticising my work, so please feel free to help me out.
the url for the suggestion is not allowed to be posted here but it is in my profile as my homepage.

help would be fantastic.

We don´t do status checks here. There is no fixed timeframe for reviews and it is impossible to say when suggestions will be reviewed or what the outcome of that review will be.

informator said:

We don´t do status checks here. There is no fixed timeframe for reviews and it is impossible to say when suggestions will be reviewed or what the outcome of that review will be.

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dont take this the wrong way but its the "slam the door shut" attitude that your displaying that makes people hate dmoz, perhaps if editors were a bit more upfront and gave site owners a specific fault so that it can be fixed, dmoz would benifit, because if things continue to spiral out of control that green bar at the top of the dmoz homepage will dissapear.

perfectly good sites are being rejected all the time while site that are indexed in dmoz have been changed to spam sites or affiliate pages.

whats the world comming to?

its the "slam the door shut" attitude that your displaying that makes people hate dmoz

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We used to offer status reports here a while ago. But we found it wasn't productive. In 99% of cases, either the site was waiting to be reviewed, had been listed by the submitter hadn't noticed, or had been correctly rejected for an obvious violation of our publicly available site selection criteria. In all these cases, the status information was of no real use to the site owner (the lack of listability tended to be a fundamental issue that couldn't be fixed by a minor tweak). Since it the status threads often degenerated into an argument, and didn't provide any benefit to the quality of the directory, we decided to stop offering that service.

In any case, the ODP isn't a listing service for webmasters. We're trying to build a useful directory for web surfers. We seem to get quite enough public suggestions to help us do that (and indeed quite a few that we'd rather not be getting). So just for the point of supply and demand, there's no reason for us to provide any additional services to those suggesting sites.

perfectly good sites are being rejected all the time

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I'm not sure where you got this idea from, and I would hope that it's not the case. If you have any evidence of sites that are listable according to our guidelines and you know have been rejected by editors, please help us by filing a report at http://report-abuse.dmoz.org/. However, please don't confuse sites waiting to be reviewed with sites that have actually been rejected. We get a lot of suggestions, and only have a finite number of editors who've volunteered to help the directory. As a result the time it takes to reviews suggested sites can be quite long in many cases.

site that are indexed in dmoz have been changed to spam sites or affiliate pages.

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Again you can help us with this. We have several million sites listed and only a few thousand editors -- too few to keep an eye on every corner of the directory at any one time. There's a special thread in the Quality Control forum here at RZ where you can report any particularly problematic listings. I think you'll find they get dealt with rather quickly when reported. You can also use the "update listing" links you'll find near the top right of the category pages to let us know about problems. It's all very well complaining, but if no-one lets us know about specific problems that we haven't noticed, we can't do anything to fix them. ;-)

Yeah, I understand but it´s not so much we can tell site-owners about how to make listable sites other than what is said in the Guidelines.

ODP needs enthusiastic, altruistic volunteers to spend a lot of their spare time to build the Directory. They can wait for sites being suggested or search for listable sites on their own. Most volunteers choose the latter approach.

I would say that more sites are only waiting to be reviewed (because lack of editors interested in that specific category) than are rejected.

It´s also true that a lot of the editors time are being spent on re-checking existing listed sites and thus limiting the time left for review of new suggested sites.

i feel what your saying, but really you should understand that a simple code attached to the reject button that editors click could easily send a email to notify the user of your decision. its not rocket science.
its the simple fact of not knowing anythin at alkl that causes this flustration, which inturn leads to annomisity. i am all for open source and i know that webmasters try to abuse the odp, but it should not mean that innocent site makers should suffer by being left out of the community.

i am not after a site review, i just want to know where my site stands regarding acceptence or still in que. is it too much to ask?

its not rocket science.

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Doing what you suggest would actually be a little more complicated than you think. For example, many sites are found be editors and have never been suggested at all. Before generating email, we'd need to verify the email addresses used in the suggestion process. What happens when two copies of the same site end up in the unreviewed pile? One needs to be removed, but it's not really a 'reject'. How do we deal with the (common) situation of a URL being corrected, or changed from a mirror to the main company URL? What happens when more than one person has suggested the same site?

i just want to know where my site stands regarding acceptence or still in que.

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That would be a status check. We tried doing that here a while ago, but we found that it didn't really help those suggesting sites, and didn't really help improve the quality of the directory either.

But, if you are prepared to do a bit of reading and can be objective, you can find out for yourself if your site would be accepted or rejected when it's reviewed. Just have a read of our guidelines, and in particular the Site Selection Criteria. That's the very document that the editors themselves use to make decisions.

I'm not sure where you got this idea from, and I would hope that it's not the case. If you have any evidence of sites that are listable according to our guidelines and you know have been rejected by editors, please help us by filing a report at http://report-abuse.dmoz.org/. However, please don't confuse sites waiting to be reviewed with sites that have actually been rejected. We get a lot of suggestions, and only have a finite number of editors who've volunteered to help the directory. As a result the time it takes to reviews suggested sites can be quite long in many cases.

if you tell me if my site has atleast been reviewed i could add one to the list for sure,

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/9785/ - prank calls - does not belong in this catagory
http://www.theradiotrip.com/ - prank calls - does not belong in this catagory
http://ineedattention.com/ - prank calls - does not belong in this catagory
http://www.geocities.com/riley_mon/ - prank calls - does not belong in this catagory

ok, i done a quick review of my catagory, i checked the first 10 results from 33 and here you go, my site is in my profile, take a look at it and tell me in your OPINION does it merit a plage in this catagory.

chaos127 said:

Doing what you suggest would actually be a little more complicated than you think. For example, many sites are found be editors and have never been suggested at all. Before generating email, we'd need to verify the email addresses used in the suggestion process. What happens when two copies of the same site end up in the unreviewed pile? One needs to be removed, but it's not really a 'reject'. How do we deal with the (common) situation of a URL being corrected, or changed from a mirror to the main company URL? What happens when more than one person has suggested the same site?


That would be a status check. We tried doing that here a while ago, but we found that it didn't really help those suggesting sites, and didn't really help improve the quality of the directory either.

But, if you are prepared to do a bit of reading and can be objective, you can find out for yourself if your site would be accepted or rejected when it's reviewed. Just have a read of our guidelines, and in particular the Site Selection Criteria. That's the very document that the editors themselves use to make decisions.

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status updates would not be needed if the site was found by a editor. this process i am suggesting would only be required for people who suggest a site, and then you can confirm their email address as part of the suggestion process. am i right?

1 more valid point, i know for a fact that my catagory has a active editor because i applied for a editor position and was accepted but asked to choose a different catagory because the one i applied to edit was already represented, then on my second application i was turned down. ??

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if you tell me if my site has atleast been reviewed i could add one to the list for sure,

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my site is in my profile, take a look at it and tell me in your OPINION does it merit a plage in this catagory.

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Let's be perfectly clear here:

We are not going to do what you are asking, no matter how you rephrase the question. I cannot be any clearer than that.

Getting a site considered for a listing requires three actions by the site owner/webmaster.

1. Determine the best possible single category.

2. Review our guidelines to determine (on your own) if the site would qulaify for a listing when an editor reviews it.

3. Write a title and description that is, at a minimum, consistent with our guidelines; ideally one that is compliant with our guidelines.

Once you have done all three things, you wait.

Open source has nothing to do with it.

Other sites that are listed have nothing to do with it.

We have a thread in another part of this forum to note sites that are inappropraitely listed or broken. I've passed along the four sites you mentioned and an editor will look at them shortly. We appreciate those reports, but I must caution you there is no relationship between reporting bad/broken links and getting your site reviewed.

hey im not looking for brownie points, i am simply asking for the opinion of a editor. i was asked to point out what i was reffering to and i have, i would appreciate it if someone could look at my site and "metaphorically speaking" tell me their OPINION. forget the updates, just your opinion to ease my mind. is it too much to ask?

i have reviewed the guidelines and my site is %100 safe. i am boggled

sweetlou said:

1 more valid point, i know for a fact that my catagory has a active editor because i applied for a editor position and was accepted but asked to choose a different catagory because the one i applied to edit was already represented, then on my second application i was turned down. ??

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That´s probably a common misunderstanding of the letter. It actually says (bolding mine):

Although we would like you to join us as a volunteer editor, you have
chosen a category that is already well represented, or is broader than
we typically assign to a new editor. We would encourage you to re-apply
for a category that has fewer editors or is smaller in scope, in order
to increase your chances of being accepted.

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So you were essentially being asked to apply for a smaller category to start out in.

informator said:

That´s probably a common misunderstanding of the letter. It actually says (bolding mine):

So you were essentially being asked to apply for a smaller category to start out in.

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thats neither hear or there, the fact still remains that my catagory is well represented and therefore should not take about 6 months to hear nothing.

lets start off again, i understand that you cant give me a status request.

but you can give me your opinion of my site and compare it to the 4 urls above.

No we can't. That's not a service that we offer here.

jim, i thought that you might represent the voice of wisdom, surely you can understand where i am coming from. not to insult your integrity, have you read the whole thread. i was just wanting to know why such crumby sites are in the prank call catagory if it is so well edited, surely there is someone who aint editing to the best of their ability?

the fact still remains that my category is well represented

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I don't think we've established that at all. There was an "or" in that rejection letter, and as has been pointed out, it's usually the other reason that applies. You should not take the reply you got to mean that the category is well-edited.

and therefore should not take about 6 months to hear nothing.

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And this doesn't follow anyway. Perhaps the "well-represented" (if it did apply) refers to listed sites not number of editors, or perhaps the site doesn't belong where you suggested it, and so has been moved to the unreviewed pile of another category (which doesn't receive much editorial attention).

chaos127 said:

I don't think we've established that at all. There was an "or" in that rejection letter, and as has been pointed out, it's usually the other reason that applies.


And this doesn't follow anyway. Perhaps the "well-represented" (if it did apply) refers to listed sites not number of editors, or perhaps the site doesn't belong where you suggested it, and so has been moved to the unreviewed pile of another category (which doesn't receive much editorial attention).

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chaos127, from one person to another, IN YOUR (NOT THE ODP) OPINION, DOES MY SITE MERIT A SPOT IN THERE?

Also, did you take a look at the 4 garbage sites i posted?

DOES MY SITE MERIT A SPOT IN THERE?

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I don't know which site is yours, or which category we're talking about. But since it's against this forums terms of service to discuss specific sites that's a good thing. And I don't think my views of merit really matter. I'd be more concerned with whether the category in its current state (presumably without your site) is still a useful resource for users. If it is, then we're doing our job. If not, we'd like to improve it.

Also, did you take a look at the 4 garbage sites i posted?

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It's not my area I'm afriad, but if you actually follow the instructions I gave in my previous post, someone else will probably look at them.

Spectregunner has placed a pointer in the Report Hijacks, Dead Links, Inappropriate ODP Content, and other issues here ONLY thread to the post here. Someone will take a look at them when they have a chance.

sweetlou, please stop asking people to critique your site. We do not review sites here.