Is it possible there are no editors for my catagory?

I have submitted my site 3 times in the past 1 1/2 years, waiting about 6 month in between. The catagory I suggested to was this catagory.

I have been patiently waiting for 18 months but have not received so much as an email, and still no listing.

We are a family oriented community site, the site got 11 million page hits this past year and we are a completely legitimate site with quite a bit of content.

I am not seeing an editor listed for my catagory and don't know if DMOZ even shows that, but... Is it possible that this is such a small niche and there is no editor for my catagory?

patiently waiting in Dodge City, Kansas

edited post

oops sorry for posting a link....I caught up on reading while waiting for a reply and found we are not supposed to do that.... Came back to edit the post and someone has already edited for me. My bad! Originally thought it may help to give you information necessary to form a better reply as to why I am having difficulties.

Anyway, been reading more and I guess some others have asked the same question. I haven't seen too many that have waited 18 months, but see a lot of people that are complaining about waiting a couple of months.

Is there something I am doing wrong? I have read over the submission guidelines and followed them to the letter.

Anyway, thanks in advance to you volunteers. I tried to apply to become an editor but both times I have tried the site was having difficulties.

I have been patiently waiting for 18 months

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You are doing exactly the right thing; there is nothing else you can or should do.

I have been patiently waiting for 18 months

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One could wait for infinity and one would not receive any type of notification -- we don't send out any type of noticiation -- for better or worse.

Well thanks for the reply... I appreciate all you guys/gals do.

The thing that confuses me is that ODP says only to submit once, but then they say only 31% of submissions are approved-the rest being thrown out due to improper cotagory and such... There is no real way for webmasters to know if they are just far down on the list or if their site submission was just thrown out. So if they do grow and become a great site, should they resubmit or forget about DMOZ?


It's obvoius that DMOZ needs help, as that is what makes up the community, and I am willing to do my part, but both times I have tried to apply to be an editor the site was broken. Any news when it is going to be fixed, or is that kinda like a "when will my site be listed question".:icon_ques Just curious if they are telling you mods/editors something that we don't know.

dodgeboard.com said:

Well thanks for the reply... I appreciate all you guys/gals do.

The thing that confuses me is that ODP says only to submit once, but then they say only 31% of submissions are approved-the rest being thrown out due to improper cotagory and such...

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Who says? Suggestions are not thrown out when suggested to the wrong category. The editor just simply sends it to a more appropriate one. It may cause a little more work for editors, and it might take longer for it to get reviewed, but sites are only discarded if they do not meet the guidelines for a listing.

dogbows said:

Who says?.

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DMOZ says, right here: http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

"Sites submitted to inappropriate or unrelated categories may be rejected or removed."

The point of my question remains the same....

okay, so back to my original question...

if a site may be rejected based on well, whatever...how do we know if we should resubmit? <---this question directed at the Editors, Moderators, or Admin's please

How do you know if you should resubmit?

Follow the submittal policy.

Just like it says, suggest the site -- to the one most appropriate category. (Current editing practice says a suggestion shouldn't be dropped just because it's to the wrong category; it should be sent on its way to the right category. But we occasionally make mistakes.)

The submittal policy also allows for a second submittal if the first doesn't have an effect. The second doesn't have to be the same category: if, on the second time around, upon careful analysis you think you've found a category that it better fits, then ... thank you.

The second submittal is because sometimes we make mistakes. Six months is certainly a reasonable interval.

After that, the submittal policy says nothing. And for "nearly all" sites, that is what should be done.

But what about the tiny fraction that isn't included in that "nearly all"?

If there were practical way of finding them, we'd already be looking. If we knew about them, they'd already be fixed.

None of us can do anything about those, other than double-check sites that have been rejected only once for some dubious reason. But there is no way you can help with that. And when you can't help, the best rule (always, everywhere!) is "keep still and stay out of the way!"

they say only 31% of submissions are approved-the rest being thrown out due to improper cotagory and such

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I'm interested to know where that information comes from? It's not in http://www.dmoz.org/add.html and I have never seen or heard of any such statistics. It is possible that, given the amounts of phentermine and Get Rich Quick! spam the directory is hit with every day, (not to mention the people who suggest 200 deeplinks of their online shop to 200 different categories in Shoping/ ) only 31% of all suggestions are actually listable, but I really don't think the number is that low. In some categories, sure, the number of listable suggestions is probably more like 5% -- but in other categories it's closer to 100%.

It would make the review process immensely shorter if everybody only suggested their site once -- or twice if applicable. That would also make the already very small risk of a site suggestion being removed through human error, even smaller. But this isn't a perfect world, and all we can do is ask those people who actually bother enough to ask about it, to follow the guidelines.

By the way, we do appreciate it when people bother enough to ask. We're not thrilled when people ask about the guidelines to be able to break them in ingenious ways -- which is why responses about exactly how we measure spam or check for spam or enforce guidelines are often a bit vague. But people who really want to help the directory, and make genuine errors because they misunderstand how the directory works, are not punished for that. That would be not only mean and petty, but also counter productive to what we are trying to do.

I understand. Thank you both immensly for the very informative and helpful replies. I will do my part in the DMOZ project and continue to wait patiently.

You guys ROCK for the time you volunteer to the project. My hat is off to all of you.