I really wish ODP provided some feedback

I have submitted maybe two dozen sites. Some are in now in ODP at some later date either because of my contribution or maybe someone elses. The majority are not afer weeks, months maybe years who know. It feels like submitting a site is just like sending it into a black hole. I have no idea if people are looking at it, if it is getting rejected or why. I think ODP would get a lot better contributions if there was some sort of feedback loop to let people know if their contributions are being looked at and if they are getting rejected why. I for one would submit a lot more if I didn't think the effort was entirely wasted. I also think that if people are submitting sites incorrectly letting them know what they did wrong would be useful. Instead people are submitting sites blindly which I think benefits no one. The editors get a ton of garbage and good submitters get frustrated.

so obviously this has been debated

We see no benefit to the directory and several downsides:

1. We have very limited programming resources and we prefer to focus them on improving the directory itself and the tools that our editors use.
2. We have finite server capacity. This would be adversely affected by automated status enquiries from anxious site owners.
3. Some areas of the directory suffer from a deluge of websites that don't satisfy our listing requirements. An automated status reporting system would make the resubmittal of declined websites more efficient. This is hardly constructive.

1. This is a dumb reason. With any user contributed resource the most important thing should be education of the user. If the complaint is that users are contributing to the wrong category why would you not let them know? Quickly with this information users will start submitting to the correct category improving the directory greatly. Also if people contributed sites and provided a poor title or description feedback would very quickly educate them on how to do it correctly the next time. This would save an enourmous amount of time since editors will not have to constantly edit contributions.

2. Again dumb. Having people resubmit their site over and over not knowing if it is in queue or has been rejected much consume way more resources than people viewing the currect status.

3. Again. If categories are getting deluged why wouldn't you inform the people violating the ODP's guidelines. Once they realize it is a wasted effort they will quickly stop. However since it is a black hole there is no reason not to. Hope springs eternal.

ok this is my last post about this

Obviously from reading the posts here there is a major pent up demand for people to know the status and why their contributions are not accepted. Tons of the posts are, "What's going on? Why wasn't my site listed?"

Apparently it wasn't your last post on the subject since you went and made 4 more posts about it in other peoples' threads. I've deleted those posts and I'm going to be closing this thread. Please note that this IS NOT an invitation to make any more posts about the subject of site suggestion feedback.

As you've already noted, we've considered the subject of providing feedback and at this time it isn't something being entertained. Starting up new discussions about it isn't going to help.