Irresponsible Editors?

What can we do about irresponsible editors? I have a high quality site that has been ignored by the editor in the category I submitted to (I followed the guidelines carefully). The only explanation I can think of is:
A: The editor is a competitor in my category
B: The editor is not carefully reviewing sites, and/or is not including sites responsibly.

I've read that some editors don't even view submissions, is this true?

I have a legitimate American Small Business, and given the weight of an ODP listing, I feel that my exclusion is irresponsible.

I'm open to suggestions (I've applied to become an editor with no response as well).

>> The only explanation I can think of is: <<

Editors can think of quite a few more, and they are listed in the FAQ.

I've applied to become an editor with no response as well

Click to expand...

You should have got a confirmation email which might have got caught in your spam filter. I believe the editor application process had a hiccup sometime back that meant it lost some applications (search the Becoming an Editor thread).

From the FAQ and General Advice About Becoming an Editor

After the application is submitted, you will get a confirmation email which you need to reply to. If you don't get this email, try again using another email address.

Click to expand...

regards

A: The editor is a competitor in my category
B: The editor is not carefully reviewing sites, and/or is not including sites responsibly.

Click to expand...

The most probable case (judging from a largeish number of cases where I investigated similar allegations) is

C: No ODP editor has got around to reviewing your site yet

A bit less frequently it is

D: Your site is not listable for some reason (affiliate site, MLM, no content yet (e.g. a business directory with no businesses listed))

Still less frequent reasons:

E: Your site was down when we tried reviewing it
F: Your site does not contain some piece of information that we need (e.g. the site is of a small business the business of which is of a very local scope, but the site does not contain your address so we cannot determine under which locality to list)

If you have concrete reason (other than pure supposition) to suspect abuse on behalf of an editor, please use the "Report abuse/spam" link that's on the top of every content page to file a report of suspected abuse. Please include as much information as possible - most critically the URL of the site in question - you wouldn't believe how many complaints on the lines of "my site has been deleted/not included - must have been an evil competitor" we get with the complainant forgetting to mention what "my site" refers to

By the way one frequent mistake by submitters is to submit their site again and again in hopes of somehow speeding up the review process. It will very often have the opposite effect.

(by the way, your post carries an automatic note to the effect that I edited it. That was a mistake on my part, sorry - I mistakenly edited your post instead of posting my reply post. I have restored the text of your original post as it was.)

according to what editor claims, there is no 'right' or 'wrong' for the decline, its all about the luck.

The editor is not carefully reviewing sites, and/or is not including sites responsibly.

Click to expand...

This is quite the interesting concept.

Whenever I see a posting along these lines I have to wonder, how does one define 'resonsible" editing?

If an editor goes to a category and adds one or more guidelines-compliant sites, is that responsible editing?

If an editor goes to a category and removes one or more sites that is no longer guidelines-compliant, is that responsible editing?

If an editor goes to a category and searches for good content-rich, guidelines-compliant sites to add, while ignoring the pool of suggestions, is that resonsible editing?

If an editor blindly adds sites, simply because they were suggested, is that responsible editing?

Or, does it really come down to this:

If an editor adds sites, but does not add the poster's site, is that the perfect definition of irresponsible editing?

mc19 said:

according to what editor claims, there is no 'right' or 'wrong' for the decline, its all about the luck.

Click to expand...

That's actually not true. There are definitely "wrong" reasons to decline a listing, that is, to remove the suggested site from the category altogether. That is not the same thing as deciding not to list it and leaving it for somebody else to look at, mind you.