Is this legal?

A site getting listed in multiple directories?

Please look at these sites
http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=fullhyderabad
http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=samachar.com (ignore 3rd url)
http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=rediff ( Oh My God)

I found this, while i was researching websites from my city.

Please let us know?
Here we are facing problems to get listed once and it is frustrating, to see some sites getting the privillege of multiple listings.

No offence. Just a complain.

From our standpoint, there's no way, no way at all, to "GET" ANY site listed. It says so right in the submittal policy. I regret that you did not simply believe that: it would have saved you the trouble of whatever you were doing that you thought would "get" a listing. And it would have saved you the frustration of having your unrealistic expectations not met. I repeat, I regret that you did not read and believe; but I don't know what else we could have done to make the truth available to you.

As to the question. It is legal for "exceptional" sites to have multiple listings -- it is no secret; it says so right in the editors' guidelines, which are available to everyone at http://dmoz.org/guidelines/ .

It is NOT legal to submit a site to multiple categories -- the SUBMITTAL policy (at http://dmoz.org/add.html ) says to submit to the ONE most appropriate category.(*See below)

It should be obvious that submitters violating the submittal policy (people "trying" to "get" a listing, in short) are the single biggest problem impacting listings for eligible sites. (The problem with ineligible sites is, of course, the editors, whose duty is to not list them.)

*Footnote: there is a well-known exception: sites with content in multiple languages are allowed (no, ENCOURAGED) to be submitted once to the best category in EACH language. (The application of this to the cases you mention is left as an exercist to the reader.) Also, certain sites (the kind of sites should be obvious by looking at the categories involved) are listed once in Regional and again in some Topical category -- if a site has both universal interest and topical focus, it is not unreasonable to submit it twice.

But, and this is the very very important point, editors expected to use good judgment listing sites multiple times; submitters are expected to not multiply submit sites. There is a difference there. What you see in the ODP is what some editor did (which may not even be what he should have done.) What you are allowed to do is what is in the submittal policy.

That submittal policy would help everyone, editors and submitters, if it were followed more often. It does not help any honest person to not follow it.

Just a thought - rediff looks a lot like the Indian version of Yahoo or AOL: news, features, search engine, web hosting, mail accounts, etc.

If so, the sites that are listed could easily be someone's personal/professional website and not necessarily any more irrelevant or 'spammy' than websites hosted on Yahoo, or MSN, or Earthlink, or AOL, which are listed all over the directory.

Again, just a thought. (I didn't look at the other searches.)

hutcheson said:

From our standpoint, there's no way, no way at all, to "GET" ANY site listed. It says so right in the submittal policy. I regret that you did not simply believe that: it would have saved you the trouble of whatever you were doing that you thought would "get" a listing. And it would have saved you the frustration of having your unrealistic expectations not met. I repeat, I regret that you did not read and believe; but I don't know what else we could have done to make the truth available to you.

Click to expand...

Hutcheson,
I never said that there is a way to get site listed. I am not sure how and why you got that impression from my postings.

Please look at this link
http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/sear...h=fullhyderabad

and tell me, if this fits for multiple listings?

Thanks

"... facing problems to get listed"

This forum may not be used for expedited site review. Just submit the site once. That will make the editors aware of it. They can then add it to whatever categories are appropriate.

hutcheson said:

"... facing problems to get listed"

This forum may not be used for expedited site review. Just submit the site once. That will make the editors aware of it. They can then add it to whatever categories are appropriate.

Click to expand...

I think, you highlighted part of my sentence out of context.

In any case. I will leave the rest of the decision making on my listing or anybody's listing to the Editors judgement.
thanks.

I regret your confusion: I did not mean to contribute to it. I thought the excerpt unambiguously indicated your implication, even though grammatical elements of the clause were not present, since there was only one post in the thread containing those words. Here's the fully loaded clause, although I confess even grammatically I don't see a great deal of scope for divergent interpretation between the two snippets:

>Here we are facing problems to get listed once ...

OK, what does it mean to "have a problem getting listed" other than to "do something which you thought would get you listed, and have it not work?" And there are two grammatical indications that this represented multiple actions on your part: the plural of "problems" and the present progressive tense of the verb.

If no actions on your part had been taken, if you were just waiting for someone else to do something, I'd have expected a completely different grammatical form: something simple and factual and objective like "the site has not been listed" would have served the purpose nicely. That might be something you (but not of course I) would consider "A" problem, but where are the other problems? The "problems" speak to your state of mind, certainly, not actual events or my opinion: and perhaps I could have interpreted them as "multiple concerns in your mind" rather than as "multiple actions on your part." Also "GET listed" literally has causative force, but perhaps you simply were using it in a colloquial passive sense -- a usage I disrecommend, as it is prone to unpleasant misunderstanding.

Hutcheson,

Thanks for your detailed clarification.
I have failed to give proper wordings/sentences to what i wanted to say.
Next time, when i want to highlight any issue, i will try my best to be more clear and precise.

As an ending note to this thread...
Iam not trying to draw the attention of Editors to my listing.
Iam not trying to find any shortcut to get listed.
I know that, i have to work with this system and follow the rules to get listed.

Thanks again
sri

Maybe someone should post for public use a list of the phrases that all-too-often betray a, um, misunderstanding of the ODP -- and a misunderstanding that is not-seldom deliberate.

[Aside: you have the same phenomenon WITHIN the community -- for instance, an editor is well-advised not to say "MY category", as the bystanders tend to chirp "NOBODY owns a category!" Well, and sometimes that just means "the category I'm editing rat now" -- and sometimes it betrays a proprietary feeling that is at odds with community ethics and with community standards. We don't really know which way it goes, until the smoke clears. Either way, the thread of the conversation gets lost.]

Especially in forums, there are a lot of passive-aggressive jerks who try to slip their ulterior assumptions in under ambiguous, possibly-innocent phrases. It keeps the air cleaner (and frustrates the jerks no end) if we keep a zero-tolerance policy. I think it's absolutely unacceptable, for instance, to allow a submitter to characterize the editors (whose duty and delight is to can his spam) as "problems" with his "getting" his desire. (well, here, anyway: in the spammeister forums, the moderators might have a different take. Different cultures, different values.)