http://paris.villa-vacation.com

I have submitted this site twice and been rejected twice.

I sent an email the category editor to possibly get a reason but have had no reply. Could someone else give me some comments?

Top: Regional: Europe: France: Regions: Ile-de-France: Paris: Travel and Tourism: Lodging: Vacation Rentals

Actually, your site hasn't been rejected, it's still waiting. Please be patient - that area of the directory is in need of editors.

Thanks for the quick reply. It probably appears to be waiting as I resubmitted it.

I am not impatient as I appreciate the workload you probably have but my logs show that an editor form a French Isp has accessed and (presumably) rejected the site on the previous 2 submissions. Hence my query in this area.

The category appears to have a French editor (who coincidentally owns the first listing) who I tried to contact to no avail.

You have not been rejected under that URL. You are still waiting. If you have submitted two or more times than you are sitting in the unreviewed que 2 or more times.

Quite happy with that.

Could you explain however why a dmoz editor would check the submission? Is it typical to do that then leave it as unreviewed?

The only reason I am pursuing the question is because the site does actually appear to have been reviewed from my server logs.


As an aside (and I am sure you have been asked this before) have you considered setting up a status system.

E.G.
Per URL
The category last reviewed date.
Number of edits in queue.
Status (U-nseen, S-een and undecided, R-jected)
(I appreciate that that is a very simplistic model)

This would probably save you a lot of wasted time on queries though undoubtedly it would generate more elsewhere.

Yours is indeed a sysiphian task.

I cannot speak for any dmoz editor other than myself. As for a submission status system - there is this forum.

The status system was just an aside.

Have you any comments on the other questions.

As I said there are entries in my logs showing access by a dmoz editor shortly after each submission.

I have a concern that as the editor has his own site he might see me as a competitor and thus faces a potential conflict of interest.

Otherwise I would not be pursuing this.

I am sorry but there is no record of your site being rejected under the url that you gave. The records indicate that your site submission was very recent - so please give it approximately one month before you follow up on the matter. That is all the information I can give you at this time.

OK. I will give it a month.

However I am disappointed that you could not answer my specific queries as the conclusions I made seem reasonable on the facts I have to hand.

Yes, there are many reasons why an editor would go to a site from the "unreviewed" queue, and then neither list nor reject the site. I do it quite often. Some possible reasons:

-- it needs to be sent elsewhere (possibly a category in a language I don't speak), so send it there (still unreviewed)
-- it looks like a great site, that will need to be reviewed thoroughly and then sent to 2 or 3 other categories (possibly in other languages) sites for listing.
-- it looks like an affiliate site, but needs more investigation
-- oops, my boss just walked in and wants to talk about remunerative work.
-- oops, my wife/child/... just walked in and needs the telephone NOW.
-- oops, I need this browser window to do more research on a site I'm reviewing in ANOTHER browser window.
-- oops, this site (or the site in that other window) crashed my browser. (Bill Gates and All His Demons are Alive and Well on Planet Earth.)
-- oops, the site doesn't crash my browser, but it does demand plugins or extentions that I don't have.
-- the site abuses its visitors with popups/graphics/interminable download times/excessive banner ads or any of 50 gazillion forms of REALLY REALLY bad web design.
-- Aargh! I can't stand another second of this! I need to see living things: birds, flowers, grass, trees, fungi; I can't stand the lint buildup in my navel a second more; dinner is long overdue, etc.

There really is no way of second-guessing the editor. But if I had to bet -- and I could bet without the danger of ever finding out whether I was right or wrong -- my first guess, for a site in a Regional/Europe/France category that had been quickly and briefly visited twice but not listed, would be ...

"The site is in French, or primarily in French, and was therefore quickly sent to Test/Misplaced/World/Francais, for sorting out by someone who knows French."

It's worth repeating this, not because I want to know about this site, but because this is a very common submittal mistake, and one that causes both maximum site delays AND maximum editor effort. First we have to figure out what language it's in -- often not obvious to, say, American editors; then the editors in the right language have to find the right category in that language -- which may be no easier than for an English-speaking "Arts" editor to find the right "Computers" category (or vice versa).

edited - no need for this post since Hutcheson posted

I don't know exactly what you posted, thehelper, but it would have been good to leave it. If it agreed with me, people could see that it's not just a god-complex, I really do have my own prophets; if you disagreed, then people can see it's just hutcheson spleen-venting again (and discount as necessary).

And in either case, a more concise, or a more detailed reply, might have its own inherent virtue.

I agree with you Hutcheson 100% but could never had said it so eloquently (even if I knew how to spell it).

Essentially though, my post was a closure post - thanks for waiting sorry I could not help you further which did not make sense with a meta editor adding valuable information directly before it. It was not anything like you posted and trust me, editing it did not remove anything valuable from the conversation, imho.

But since I am posting anyway thanks to the submitter for agreeing to be patient and sorry I could not help more.

I've looked at the site itself. I believe that you do not need to worry about being reviewed by a competitor: if reviewed by any guidelines-respecting editor, it would be rejected -- read the submittal guidelines to find several sufficient reasons.

http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=villa-vacation.com

Probably says it all