How to deal with site submission fraud

Several months ago I submitted a website of mine for inclusion in one of the categories. Recently I have learned that my submission was denied because my site was submitted on multiple occassions. I am a very detailed oriented person and very well understand the value of being included in a dmoz category. Prior to submitting my site, I reviewed the submission guidelines on multiple occassions and made sure that I was very familiar with all of the rules. I understood beyond a shadow of a doubt, that multiple submissions of the same site are not allowed. I can at this point categorically deny submitting my site on more than one occassion. In my line of business, competition is fierce, and I feel that there is a high likelyhood that a certain group of individuals may have submitted my site on multiple occassions knowing that it would get my site banned from consideration. In fact these same individuals have caused numerous problems for me with customers, vendors and even to the point that I had to ban their IP address from accessing my server.

Ignoring the whole conspiracy theory issue, what steps can I take to have my site reevaluated? I have high quality site that when compared to my competitors should more than likely be listed in the dmoz or atleast be given a fair opportunity to be evaluated. Is there a process or specific medium in which I can present my case? Does the DMOZ record the date, and more importantly the IP address of the computer from which a submission was made?

Recently I have learned that my submission was denied because my site was submitted on multiple occassions.

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How do you know this is true?

Recently I have learned that my submission was denied because my site was submitted on multiple occassions.

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That is an extreme unction that is rarely undertaken except in cases of extreme abuse. We'd also like to think that we are smart enough to tell when this is done by a submitter out of ignorance/malice, or by a competitor <ve haff vays of making you talk>

Best bet: formally request a status check. While we would normally want you to go to a separate forum, just provide (in this thread) the URL and a link to the category where you last submitted. We'll then look at the edit history and we will all be on the same page and able to meaningfully discuss your situation. Otherwise, it is all uninformed speculation.

Is that fair?

>I feel that there is a high likelyhood that a certain group of individuals may have submitted my site on multiple occassions knowing that it would get my site banned from consideration.

No, not unless you've made far more enemies than most people ... this is something rare enough that most editors with stats in the high five to low six digits have simply never seen it. I could probably count ALL the cases we've run across without taking off my socks. Only an extraordinarily stupid and vicious person would even try a stunt like that. It could backfire too easily for any sane person!

>Recently I have learned that my submission was denied because my site was submitted on multiple occassions.

This is possible, although also pretty unlikely. Assuming the site had been abusively submitted, we're still down in the sub-single-digit probability.

More likely would be a simple editor mistake. We do make those, probably dozens of times daily.

More likely, FAR more likely, orders of magnitude more likely, is what we see hundreds of times daily: sites worse than worthless to the whole earth (except to their culpable party) aggressively and abusively submitted.

But probability is no guide to single cases. Someone wins the lottery, despite the overwhelming chances against any single person doing it. Someone else gets struck by lightning. So: we treat this just like any other submittal check.

I'm in the same boat. When I found out my site was rejected it was because my site was submitted to an inproper category. When the dmoz editor told me this, I was a bit surprised, but then I questioned myself because the submission was a while back and I couldn't remember. Days later, I found a Post It note that stated the date/time/category of the submission. So I knew at this point someone was messing with my domain. Then a few days later I found out through a co-workers friend who actually knows the person I'm suspicious of and she's seen the person I suspect on ocassion submit competitor ads to close, but improper categories to dmoz. This guys a real jerk. He knows how to hurt my plans. People like this hurt good causes like dmoz. I'll probably never get in... Oh well. Good Luck to you.

Not to worry! In fact, submitting sites to "close, but improper categories" is what I wish the vast majority of our submitters would learn to do! We could simply move the suggestions to the closest better category, and go on. That would be SUCH a help, and save us so much work -- most people don't get close to the right category!

And even if an editor made a mistake (and yes, that happens, whether the category is correct, close, or totally bogus), the mistake can easily be rectified as a result of a simple status check in the forums here. It happens several times a month, as you can easily see by reading these forums for a couple of weeks.

No there's really no way this can hurt dmoz. But I thank you for your concern.

Just to clarify pstar - no one in this forum ever said your site has been rejected - so I don't know why you are making that statement. It's incorrect.

That's also why I asked casurfer13 in post #2 where he got the information that his submission was denied because of multiple submissions. At this point, no answer was given therefore I assume it's not true.

Just to clarify pstar - no one in this forum ever said your site has been rejected

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Actually I said it had been rejected - from an inappropriate category to do with roommates. And pstar's reaction suggests he knew all about that one. But since he admitted submitting 3 times there are obviously copies still in the system awaiting review. In fact one copy is waiting for review in http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Business_and_Economy/Classifieds/ so it appears an editor has found and moved one of them to the closest fit category.

But by posting in this thread, he implies that his site has been rejected totally, banned, blacklisted, never to be listed, and that is not the case.

Yes, he admits he himself violated the multiple submission policy outlined in http://www.dmoz.org/add.html, but attempts to blame some other unknown submitter for wrecking his chances for getting a listing.

All we have said that the submission by someone to a totally inappropriate category has resulted in the site not being listed in that categroy - not that we refuse to list his site.

Quite correct! (I anticipated being quoted and got in first)

spectregunner and bobrat

A friend of mine checked with an editor he knows regarding the status of my site. The editor told him that in checking the case history my site had been submitted multiple times and had therefore been thrown out of the que. The editor that he had spoken with had not run into this situation before and wasn't sure how to handle it. He recommended that I post here.


My site: Tritonhealth.com

My office IP address, the only place that I would have posted from, is
192.168.2.2

thanks in advance

I can't see the full picture, but it seems highly doubtfull. There is no record of any editor tagging multiple submissions. Just one duplicate was removed. I suspect the message is from a new editor who does not know how to interpret history logs. But maybe a Shopping editor will find something else.

casurfer13 - This is a misunderstanding. It is quite common for submitters to submit twice to the same category, perhaps because they fear that the first submission didn't go through properly.

The software is set up so that the second submission should overwrite the first, but sometimes that doesn't happen, leaving two submissions in the same waiting list. So a quick way to shorten waiting lists (to make them faster to load) is to go through and remove any duplicate submissions. That still leaves one submission of each site waiting for review.

That is what happened in this case. The site has not been rejected. It is awaiting review.

So the outcome of all of that is that no-one has been rejected, no evidence has been found of mass spammings and secret malicious submissions, a few erroneous duplicates clogging up the system have been removed, our systems worked, all's well with the world.

Thanks for the information.

Just a minor FYI:

192.168.2.2 is a private IP address for use on an internal LAN and is non-routeable and would not appear across the internet.