How to deal with rejection

Hello,

Let me start by saying this is not a complaint. I have quickly browsed these forums and it seems like 95% of the threads are people complaining they haven't been listed yet. Every editor response points out that it takes time to get reviewed. This is fair enough.

My question is related to what to do once you have been reviewed and not accepted. I know from our logs that an editor has reviewed our site. I also know we are not listed in the directory. We certainly meet all your submission requirements. Is there a way to get another review or appeal the first review? I am not suggesting that the editor was malicious in not including us, but people do make mistakes.

If someone could clear this up for me it would be great. I have looked high and low for this information but can not seem to find it anywhere. I do not want to file an abuse report as I don't believe we have been the victim of abuse.

Thank you for your time and keep up the good work.

Regards
Alex

I know from our logs that an editor has reviewed our site.

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I'd start be questionning that assumption if I were you.

Yes, there's a chance that the site has been reviewed, and that editor has made a mistake, but if your site is listable (as you say) there's a far greater chance that what you've seen in your logs doesn't correspond to a full review.

There are lots of reasons editors and automated tools may produce entries in your log files, and not all of them mean that the site has been reviewed and that it will immediately be either listed or rejected. An editor may be checking sites are roughly ok for a category and moving out those which don't belong, before returning to review what's left at a later date; An automated process may be checking all sites in the unreviewed pile to see if any are returning errors; I could go on...

If it's been six months or so since your initial suggestion you could perhaps suggest your site *once* more to the same category. A second submission should all but eliminate the chance of human error, or things getting lost by the system.

Thanks for clearing that up Chaos127. Perhaps what I saw was one of the things you describe.
Cheers.

chaos127 said:

I'd start be questionning that assumption if I were you.

Yes, there's a chance that the site has been reviewed, and that editor has made a mistake, but if your site is listable (as you say) there's a far greater chance that what you've seen in your logs doesn't correspond to a full review.

There are lots of reasons editors and automated tools may produce entries in your log files, and not all of them mean that the site has been reviewed and that it will immediately be either listed or rejected. An editor may be checking sites are roughly ok for a category and moving out those which don't belong, before returning to review what's left at a later date; An automated process may be checking all sites in the unreviewed pile to see if any are returning errors; I could go on...

If it's been six months or so since your initial suggestion you could perhaps suggest your site *once* more to the same category. A second submission should all but eliminate the chance of human error, or things getting lost by the system.

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Hmm... this is informative. Please excuse me for being a noob.

So that means we can re-submit a site, without getting a negative response from an Editor? And how can we know if the site that we have submitted has already been submitted before?

For example: If I'm a new webmaster of a certain newdomain.com, and I submitted the site without knowing that the site has already been submitted before. Will I get a notification from the Category Editor about it?

Thanks in advance.

No, you won't get any notification.

If I'm a new webmaster of a certain newdomain.com, and I submitted the site without knowing that the site has already been submitted before. Will I get a notification from the Category Editor about it?

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No, you usually wouldn't. And that makes sense, because lots of sites are suggested more than once. If we would take any additional action upon this happening, we would not be able to do anything else at all

So that means we can re-submit a site, without getting a negative response from an Editor?

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If resubmit does not mean "suggest a site every few weeks", and does not mean "suggest a site to categories all over the directory" then yes, of course.

One re-suggestion is OK. More than that is just wating people's time.

There is no notification from the category editor. If you resuggest to the same category then it overwrites the previous suggestion. If you suggest to a different category one of the suggestions is going to get moved to the "right" category, where it overwrites whatever was already suggested there.

Multiple suggestions... to multiple categries... Just don't.

How to deal with rejection

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If you truely feel your site has been rejected, it would be a good idea to read our Guidelines about Titles and Descriptions, Spam, and finding the right category to submit to before you resubmit.

Speaking only for myself:

Titles and Descriptions - A good title and description that follows our Guidelines will usually catch my eye quickly, if I happen to be editing in that particular area, and may cause me to take a look at it, out of appreciation.

I'm not saying it's a sure thing, but, it might increase your odds, .

Spam - 90% of the sites I reject are for this reason, it would be good to read this and see if your site qualifies for rejection:
http://dmoz.org/guidelines/include.html#redirects

Finding the Correct Category - The ODP is large, and I can understand why it might be difficult to figure out where to submit your site, but, each area of the ODP usually has a "Description" and "FAQ" up in the right hand corner that gives you a good indication of what kind of sites it accepts.

I can only speak for myself, as a Regional editor, but moving misplaced sites to the correct category is a large, and time consuming part of my work. It doubles the work of listing sites, and leaves me less time to review them.

Many times, in Regional, it's done deliberately because the submitter feels they'll get more exposure at a higher level, like State level, rather than in the Locality they belong in. I won't go into the details of why that's false, but it is.

So, submitting to the correct category, might also help in getting a site listed faster.

Please remember that these are only my own opinions and suggestions, meant to help you and others, and not a guarantee.

Certainly, a majority of suggestions made over a year ago -- and not listed -- won't be listed.

It's not a matter of "quality" -- these websites may well be doing exactly what their owner wanted done, in the most efficient manner. It's not a matter of "attractiveness" -- some of the finest cosmeticians in the world may specialize in porcine lipstick application. It's not a matter of "size" -- an efficient plagiarist can grab thousands of pages in fairly short order, and the CIA factbook, the Vstore (excuse me, "SMC") catalog, Wikipedia, the HotelNow directory, etc., are all standing ready to hand.

It's a matter of websites having nothing at all to do with the ODP mission (which is to index the sum of human knowledge on the internet).

And, with that mission in mind, you can get a lot better perspective not only on what sites are listed at all, but what sites are listed quickly. Editors are looking for bits of human knowledge not yet indexed. The places that get searched most carefully are the places where such bits are most likely to be found. The places that get a later, cursory search are the places where such bits are not so often found, or where they are likely to be buried by ... copies of the CIA Factbook, HotelNow directory, Vstore catalog, etc.

So it's not a matter of time. Most sites get reviewed and either accepted in rejected in a very short time. (Starting from when? Starting from the only time that MATTERS, that's when. Starting from when an editor notices a site that might contain some bit of knowledge relevant to his current editing activities. Nothing, NOTHING AT ALL, starts when a site is first suggested.)

It's a matter of editors thinking about what information they know of, that isn't yet indexed, and might be online, and looking for it.

You can help the editors find things: that's what suggestions do. But there's no way to tell an editor that THIS bit of human knowledge is more important than THAT bit. (That would be just an opinion anyway, and the editor has a variety of reliable sources to get fresh opinions from, if he needs them. Most of us make them up as needed, just like you do.)

OK, in this context, what would the problem be? You're working on something you think is important -- but, so far, no public-spirited volunteer has agreed with you. That's just a difference of opinion -- no harm in that, is there?

Is there?

Why doesn't the ODP have half a dozen standard emails that editors send to those who have submitted a site letting them know the status of their submission eg.
1/ Received
2/ Refused for Reason A
3/ Refused for Reason B
4/ Accepted
Surely this wouldn't take too much of the editor's time and would save on time and space spent in this forum replying to messages posted here on that subject. It would also lessen the frustration of submitters like myself.
I have been trying to get to my site
<url removed>
submitted for about two and a half years now and do not know if it has ever even been looked at by an editor never mind if or why it might have been rejected.

I am having difficulty dealing with the rejection, beacuse of the industry that I am in it is imperative to get listed in Dmoz and I am not, i have submited to a tiny little category computers and internet in Lancaster England, Idealy i would like to be in the search engine optimization firms bit under S.

1/ Received
You already get an aknowledgement on screen after you made the suggestion

2/ Refused for Reason A
3/ Refused for Reason B
What would this give you for information. Our guidelines already specify which sites we won´t list. So you could know before you suggested the site. Which ofcourse would have meant you woulnd´t suggest the site at all.

4/ Accepted
You can see yourself if it is listed

As has specified many times. Providing such a feature would have no benefit for DMOZ, our users, our editors and the honest webmasters. It would only inform the spammers that we had found one of their nonsites and they could try again.

Surely this wouldn't take too much of the editor's time and would save on time and space spent in this forum replying to messages posted here on that subject.

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Ofcourse if webmaster would read the FAQ and guidelines they wouldn´t ask these questions which would save much more time.

I'm afraid posting in this forum has no effect at all on when, or if, a suggestion is reviewed by a volunteer. More information about the process can be found in the FAQ and in the ODP Guidelnes. Thank you for suggesting your site.

<added> pvgool was faster. I've got to get quicker at this!

David, sorry, but your imperative simply isn't contagious.

Yours is a kind of concern that (1) the ODP was not set up to address, (2) the ODP can't address, (3) often runs counter to what the ODP DOES set out to do, and (4) for all these reasons, simply MUST not be given any consideration by an ethical editor.

Thanks for the replies to my suggestion. I feel I have to point out that from my point of view, which is that of a submitter who has been waiting/trying for two and a half years to be listed, I am left not knowing if my site has been rejected, or why, or whether I should resubmit or not. I dont know if my site was rejected, why it was rejected or if my details fell down the back of a filing cabinet or something.
I have to live constantly with the burden of the ever present decision as to whether or not to resubmit because a previous version my site has been rejected or to leave well alone because if my site is next on the list to be reviewed and I resubmit, then I put it back to the bottom of the queue!.
I just thought a standard rejection email would help in these circumstances and relieve a lot of the frustration that I feel and that I see a lot of other submitters writing about.
Don't really suppose my suggestion will change your policy - but I feel better now for writing it - so something positive has been achieved!!!!!!

Most of your concerns and questions are covered in the FAQ and stickied threads.
Any that remain after studying those resources will be answered in numerous other threads.

I have to live constantly with the burden of the ever present decision as to whether or not to resubmit because a previous version my site has been rejected or to leave well alone because if my site is next on the list to be reviewed and I resubmit, then I put it back to the bottom of the queue!

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previous version of a web site is kind of irrelevant unless the changes mean the site should be in a different category to what it was suggested to originally. In that case, suggesting it again to the new category is a good idea, rather than waiting for it to be moved from the incorrect category, then reviewed.

However resuggesting it to the same category is pretty much pointless as it will reset the suggestion date (which may or may not matter) and will overwrite the existing suggestion (suggestions do not expire - they wait until they are reviewed).

If you have cause to believe your site may have been declined (unlikely events such as weeks of downtime where the site was reviewed and found not working, or it was originally suggested before it was complete - may have been reviewed soon after suggestion and declined <and seriously this does happen fairly often>) suggesting it again will not cause any editor angst.

But in general, there is just no "next on the list", except in the mind of any given editor at any given moment - even that doesn't always work out, I used to have a 10 hour hard limit on my dial up and the connection would drop while I was editing. The site I had 'next' that minute may not be the one that becomes 'next' when I log in the next day - after all there are several hundred thousand suggestions waiting for me (or someone else) to get to.

One other time when resuggesting a site might make a difference: if the qualitative nature of the site has changed substantially, and it's been at least, say, three months since the site was suggested, then there's probably no harm and conceivably some help in resubmitting. (That is, the site may not have been listable before, and the new type of content added might make it listable. But caveat: adding more advertisements and promotions for someone else's goods and services is a degradation, not an improvement -- don't resubmit no matter how many times you do that.)

As for your constant worrying ... if you can't live with that, then don't suggest sites. Dealing with other volunteers means accepting their priorities rule their work. (And yes, I've dealt with lots more volunteers than you have, and I know the feeling! I'm watching three sites right now, waiting ... waiting for someone else to take the next processing step for significant work I did.)

All any of us can do is (1) get a life and (2) let the other volunteers run their lives the way they think best -- or learn to do without their help.

And, my experience is, if I'm busy enough doing what I can do, then I don't have time left to wonder what someone else is doing.

As an editor, if I build a site of my own, and submit it as a site suggestion to a category I don't edit in, L66, it goes right in with all of the other site suggestions, and gets no preferential treatment.

It would be morally and ethically wrong for me to contact an editor in that area and ask him/her to review my site, and probably would be grounds to dismiss me as an editor.

My point is that editors have to follow the same guidelines, and patiently wait for either approval or disapproval of their own personal site suggestions, the same as any other person.

The notion that one's site MUST be listed in order to rate/rank in Google is a stretch to say the least.

I submitted all three of my sites over two years ago, long before I became an editor.

To date, only one of the three is listed yet all three appear quite nicely in Google. For my top keywords/phrases, all three site come up in the top 5 and nearly all my keywords/phrases bring me up on the first page. The one site that is listed does no better than the other two.

Submit your site to ODP and forget it. Do your SEO and keep at it. The results will come to those that work for them instead of looking for the "Magic Listing."