How to reach a meta editor?

Hi guys,
I'm having a little problem with an editor. I wrote him already 3 very friendly and polite emails but still no answer - I know, they are busy so I waited more than 2 months - still nothing - not even a message like "...I'm busy... bla bla...". Now I want to ask the meta editor my question. My site was listed in dmoz for 3 years - within this 3 years I made just minor changes - no spam, no nothing - suddenly my listing is deleted and I really would appreciate if someone could tell me why. After 3 years listing - I really don't understand.
Actually I had 2 listings because my site is in English and in German, the German version was listed in the business category, my english version in a locally category here in California - I did the second listing after I made sure it is okay if you have 2 language version in exact this forum here. Everything was just fine, second listing was accepted - now both are gone. The editor of the CA local category was nice and answered my question after 2 days but he couldn't tell me why and who deleted the entry.
I really like to know who can I talk to because I think this is not right, thanks in advance, Andreas

Pick someone labeled "Meta" in this forum and contact him/her directly.

If you should be talking about http://www.kallfass.com - it has never been listed in the ODP. (The german site http://www.kallfass.de has been and still is [Just noted it has been moved, I already told you about the ongoing reorganization last time - you can find it here now] ).

Thanks windharp, that was a quick response. No it's not about this site, it's a different one, thanks about this information, Andreas

OK, first of all, you aren't having trouble with an editor. You're having trouble with your own unrealistic expectations. The editor you wrote to, may not even be active. And even if active, they may (like most editors) prefer not to communicate with webmasters. In fact, because of bitter experience with, um, bitter webmasters, we STRONGLY encourage editors NOT to reply to mail from webmasters, and if they do reply to take extreme precautions to avoid being electronically and physically stalked and harassed. And so the editor has given exactly the response you should have expected.

Second, you don't need to contact a meta-editor. There are many reasons why a site might be removed. If you think it conforms to our current guidelines (which are significantly different from the guidelines three years ago), then simply...submit it again. Then wait a month, and (if it's not listed again) ask in these forums about the submittal. If the site is no longer considered listable, you'll usually be told why.

Hi hutcheson, thanks for your response.
I'm pretty sure there are people out there who stalk and harass editors - I'm not one of them. I wrote very polite and friendly email with a question - no yelling, no stupid comments - just a question with hope of an answer. If this is unrealistic - you are right.
I cannot see any reason to put me in this spot because I was polite in the email and I'm polite in this forum - don't you think so? I just think your response has a little lack on politeness - you may have bad experience and reasons but I'm not a person who should add to your bad experience to be this way.
You're accusing me of "unrealistic expectations" - I just asked the editor for a little comment about the reason why the site was removed - again and I know I repeat myself - I did it polite, and now I try to get some help and information in this forum, I don't want someone to move the world for me, change the ODP guidelines (just kidding) I did respect at all times.
Could you please explain to me the "unrealistic expectations" I have but please would you be so kind and don't put me in the same spot with people you don't want answer to because they're not what I am - polite, friendly and a nice guy,
thanks for your time and input, Andreas

Hi, Hutcheson never said you are such a person. What he said is that based on experiences with a lot of bad webmasters it is ODP policy to keep conversations with webmasters to an absolute minimum through email. Webmasters have the possibilty to ask questions in the fora here at resource-zone.com . We will do our best to answer all these questions.

Probably your choice for the abuse forum wasn't the best. By doing so we could think that you are acusing the editor of abuse. Why not ask the question why your site was removed in the 'Site Submission Status' forum. Don't forget to include the url of your site and the url of the category it was listed in. I'm sure one of us will take a look and tell you why it was removed.

Just to emphasize that last--I don't believe that all webmasters are psychotic jerks, I have e-mailed dozens of them, and even responded to a few e-mails from them. In fact, it is really a very small minority -- certainly under 1%, and probably under 0.1% -- that cause problems for them all. (Of course, the ones that send e-mail are far more likely to be troublesome -- maybe 1% of them are psycho.

But...what does that mean in practice? Lots of jerks are polite until they think politeness won't get their demands met fast enough, so we really can't tell by that, which are the dangerous ones. We know that every time we respond to ANY e-mail, we're playing Russian Roulette with our e-mail address, and if we respond to as many as a few dozen notes, chances are one of them will crash and burn on our doorstep next day. The only way to be safe is...not ever to play Russian Roulette. That's what we tell editors, and it is not a personal judgment on you or on 99% of the people out there.

What we do instead is send people (like you) to forums like this, where submitters can play the lottery -- 99.9% of all editors won't respond, but hey, the one-in-a-thousand editor who will respond can see your question; but editors don't have to play Russian roulette with their e-mail boxes.
So, you're here, and you've got a question, and we don't (yet) know (and won't even assume) that in secret you are a paranoid maniac who likes to torture furry housepets. So some editor will probably answer your question (if you asked politely, which FTR so far you have). If it's about the status of a site submittal, ask in that forum. If it's about the status of a site that's not listed (for whatever reason), submit it. THEN ask about the submittal.

We don't have a mechanism about asking about sites that were removed. I'm not sure we need one. We don't care about history, we care about what we need to do today to make today's directory more comprehensive. If a site should be listed, we don't care why it isn't listed: we just list it (or, more likely, put it in the queue for review, if it doesn't belong in the category we're working on.)

There is one caveat: if we feel a site has been abusively submitted, we will be very careful about giving any information about it. (There are many reasons for a site being removed from the ODP, and this is one of the least common ones, so I have no reason to think it applies for your site.)

Hi pvgool,
thanks for the input. You might be right the abuse forum was maybe a bad choice and I didn't intend to accuse the editor of abuse - if this looks like it - I apologize sincerely.
I'm fine with opposite opinions, I can handle that. What I'm trying to say is people make mistakes, bad choices (see at the top ;-) and to get any information is not an unrealistic expectation and I'm a little bit offended about that. The second thing is ODP editors are not free of mistakes - they are people like you and me who may misjudge things - that's what people do everyday. I have no offense at all in my mind, I'm not pointing out - I'm just saying.
Anyway, thanks for your comment and have a wonderful day, Andreas

You are right - editors are not perfect. One of the reasons we encourage you to ask about it in the Submission Status forum is so that someone can take a look at the history of it. We may not be able to give all the specifics of why it was deleted, but believe me, when we take a look at them, we usually see whether it was a mistake or not. If you read around in that forum, you will see quite a few instances of this happening.

You are also right - it is not an unrealistic expectation to get some sort of feedback as to why it was deleted. However, resource zone is the way to do it. Expecting to email an editor and get a reply isn't, for the reasons stated previously in this thread.

So I would encourage you to post the URL and the category to the above-mentioned forum, so that we can take a look at it for you, and give you some feedback.

Without a URL we can't do too much <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

I wanted to add to hutcheson's comments about editors not returning submittors email. I am one of the many who has been "burned" and as a result either doesn't reply or sends them here to RZ. Submittors are, as mentioned above, usually very polite until they are told something they do not want to hear. Actually, many are polite the entire time. In my case, I was threatened on several occasions just because I told someone that ODP doesn't list affiliate sites. Those are the rules, I can't change them, but the emails coming into my inbox were absolutely brutal. If we answer, the submittor has our email address and it just doesn't always turn out well. As hutcheson mentioned, it is rare...I've had only a few bad experiences and I used to answer everyone's email as honestly as I could. The problem is that the bad ones tend to stand out. <img src="/images/icons/crazy.gif" alt="" /> . For that reason, it is important to not take it personally if we do not answer.

Alucard has given some great advice, post in the status category and find out why the site was deleted.

Good luck <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />
Lin

Believe it or not, tony and I have been exchanging emails about this topic today. So, don't worry that he hasn't had someone answer questions about his site.