How to get listed

Hello, I am writing to ask if maybe I am doing something wrong. I have submitted my site to the dmoz. It has been a while ago, but I still do not see it listed. I have around 1000 unique pages, A strong pagerank3 with google. Today's Alexa rankings put us at 56,904. So we are in the top 100,000. My site follows your guidlines and does not break any of the rules. So I was wondering if there is anything else that I need to get my site included here?

No, there's not.

Number of pages isn't an issue. One page which is a good Scientific-American (pre-sellout) article by a reputable expert would be happily listed. Yet another 50,000-page pseudonymous Vstore/SMC/whatever catalog would be cursed, together with the webmaster and all his legitimate descendents (if any) and ancestors (insofar as known) to the tenth generation.

I have never heard of any ODP editor even KNOWING the Alexa rating of a reviewed site. There may be something on earth more irrelevant.

As for asseverations that a site "follows the guidelines", you MUST permit the editor to be the judge of that. We've been lied to, too many times (in fact, almost every time, at least on that subject.)

There is nothing, ever, you can do to get a site listed. That's what the submittal policy says: no sites are guaranteed a listing regardless of what you do.

But sites are listed (millions of them!) How did it happen? There are these hurdles:

(1) An editor must be working on the relevant topic. (This is not something you have any control over. We're amateurs and volunteers.)
(2) An editor must find the site at that time. (That's what "suggest a site" is for, and you've done that.
(3) The site must not have been viciously, maliciously, or deceptively promoted. (This rule is to protect the editors from spam and other habitual practices of the habitual spammer -- bribery, threats, harassment, etc.) Avoiding this is pretty simple -- assume the editors are people, treat them like you dream about the way a used-car salesman would treat you, and you won't run afoul of this rule. In other words, don't ever ever EVER do anything that might look like "trying to get listed" to a blind man a mile away, at midnight during a solar eclipse. And you'll have no trouble here.)
(4) The editor has to pick a site, from all the possibilities, to review first. (Here a good description will help. "Good" in this context doesn't mean grabbing the editor by the lapels and shouting "review me next!" into his left nostril. It means "objectively descriptive, brief, relevant, showing signs of having been written by someone with a clue." Sites that don't pass this test will tend to languish until their more professionally-presented competition are taken care of, but will -- we think -- eventually get reviewed.
(5) In the review, the site must obviously have significant unique informational content. (Obviously this is altogether under your control.)

This is why neither you nor we can predict when a site will be reviewed. It depends on who's editing where, and how they look for what.

Number of pages isn't an issue. One page which is a good Scientific-American (pre-sellout) article by a reputable expert would be happily listed. Yet another 50,000-page pseudonymous Vstore/SMC/whatever catalog would be cursed, together with the webmaster and all his legitimate descendents (if any) and ancestors (insofar as known) to the tenth generation.

Click to expand...

That is what I was asking... my site is not a store... we do not sell anything, it is a paranormal site with information from members etc. That is what I meant by having a bunch of pages. With quality info from our members.

I have never heard of any ODP editor even KNOWING the Alexa rating of a reviewed site. There may be something on earth more irrelevant.

Click to expand...

The reason I thought it may be relevant, is because if this many people are interested in the site and reading the stories and experiences, there must be some quality there. I thought you may want to know.

As for asseverations that a site "follows the guidelines", you MUST permit the editor to be the judge of that. We've been lied to, too many times (in fact, almost every time, at least on that subject.)

Click to expand...

I am assuming it hasn't been reviewed yet. I guess that would be more my question. How to get a site reviewed?

I can tell from your tone that you are upset with me for asking a question, and this is not at all what I was trying to do.

For this I am sorry.
Brad

bradballinger said:

I am assuming it hasn't been reviewed yet. I guess that would be more my question. How to get a site reviewed?

I can tell from your tone that you are upset with me for asking a question, and this is not at all what I was trying to do.

Click to expand...

The only thing we might be upset over is that people do not read the FAQ. We have hopes that people will read it and do not ask the same questions over and over again. :sad:

No. Hutcheson isn't upset with you - he just presented the facts.

>> How to get a site reviewed? <<

As Hutcheson explained, there is no way "to get a site reviewed". That would imply that you could ask an editor to review your site right now and it would be done, but then if 10 000 people, or even 100, all asked for that then it would not be possible to comply. So we never let submission of a site dictate what the editors, even any one editor, do next.

All you can do; indeed, all you have done, is to simply suggest a site to the one best category, and when an editor feels it important to work in that category, then maybe your suggestion might be one that is looked at to see if could help with the editors task: and that task is simply to build that category with sites they have found to be useful (where they are found is not stated, implied, or limited in any way).

OK, I understand.

P.S. I think I figured out why it may not have been reviewed yet. There is no editor listed for the catagory that I submitted to.

Thanks again,
Brad

Um... no.

If you read the masses of answers to that question in other threads in the forum, you will find that this makes no real difference.

Editors are usually only named where they have a particular interest in a category (or limited to edit in a few categories). There are many editors that can and do edit in thousands of categories and as a result each category has many editors.

Its just a question of whether an editor will choose to visit a particular category or not and if they do visit, what work they do when they get there.

The best advice is submit and forget about it.

There is no editor listed for the catagory that I submitted to.

Click to expand...

I thought you were going to read the FAQs!

There are 200 editors that can edit anywhere (but that means 550 000 categories) and anyone higher up the tree from "the category with no named editor" can edit there too.

So, the next time that one of the 300+ people that can edit in a category visits the category, maybe something will happen. Who that will be, or when, cannot be told in advance by other editors, and not even by the editor that it will be!

Check out the FAQ, for longer answers to the questions you asked. People ask those questions every day, so we already put all the answers in the FAQ.

Posting quickly and not going into detail... What I meant is that there is no named editor, so an editor from higher up in the tree will have to be the one to review it. I.E. There is not a specific person for the catagory... meaning they will have a larger amount to cover and thus taking longer to review.

Sorry for being unclear.
Brad

P.S. thanks for the quick replies and patience.

That isn't the way it works ... posting quickly ... categories with named editors can take longer to be updated because an editor with higher rights might leave sites to the named editor. It it unpredictable.

It really is totally unpredicatable, you cannot outguess how an editor decides to edit. Even another editor with experience will have no idea.

In one category I edit, you can assume I edit all the sub-categories with equal odds, although some sub-categories ther have editors, most of them are fairly inactive. However, in sub-categories that have a new editor, I might [if I remember] try to avoid editing there, to give the person a chance to do some work. In one area of those sub-categories, I'm not much interested, and there is an editor there who does edit fairly frequently, so I will tend to skip those sub-categories.

But on some days, everything I just said will be ignored by me, depending on my mood.

bradballinger said:

... What I meant is that there is no named editor, so an editor from higher up in the tree will have to be the one to review it. I.E. There is not a specific person for the catagory... meaning they will have a larger amount to cover and thus taking longer to review.

Click to expand...

We think the quickest way is to follow the guidelines and choose the best category, whether or not there is an editor named. I recently checked my logs and discovered I've worked in over 10600 different categories over the years. Of these I'm named editor in 12.

Maybe that means you're better off submitting to a category with no named editor. Maybe it means that trying to figure out the best way to submit a site based on guessing what an editor will feel like doing sometime in the future is a waste of time. Maybe we're being honest when we say it truly doesn't matter if no editor is listed.

No, the point is not at all that you are evil (or even rude!) for asking -- that's what the forum is for.

It is: that form of the question often masks hidden assumptions (up to and including "who do I pay to get listed, and how much?" -- a question that must not be asked!)

Some of the assumptions are frustrating -- isn't someone monitoring editors to make sure all categories are worked equally hard? (no.) isn't someone keeping a list of all submittals by age, so that we can always give the oldest (or youngest, depending on who's asking) the highest priority. (no.) isn't someone watching over category editors, to see that they visit at least every 49 hours (or 49 days, or whatever) (no.) how do I get in touch with these someones and tell them how to do their job better, with regard to my site? (but since they don't exist, that's a tough one.)

So the whole process is laid out, to show you what you can predict, and what you can't.

It doesn't work to guess who's going to edit what when, by the names on the categories. But a lot of people go off thinking WE misled them, because of the nonsense they deduced from the presence or absence of a name.

So: don't guess, really. The named editor could have been inactive for a year; or an unnamed editor could be visiting the category weekly, cleaning out hundreds of bad submittals; or a zealous new editor may be about to be approved. You really can't tell.

hutcheson said:

"who do I pay to get listed, and how much?" -- a question that must not be asked!

Click to expand...

Well now - people can ask. And it is better that they do it here, where they will get good advice. Listing in the ODP is free. Those who want to pay for a rapid directory listing have a wide choice of many commercial directories.

hutcheson said:

don't ever ever EVER do anything that might look like "trying to get listed" to a blind man a mile away, at midnight during a solar eclipse. And you'll have no trouble here.)

Click to expand...

May I request that this statement MUST be added to the faq about site submission. Just lovely.