japantoday.com

I have two questions.the first is about the a particular classification and the second is about our site's placement due to expansion. I have already asked the editors of the relevant section, who have referred me here.

Originally Japan Today, http://www.japantoday.com was an online news source only and it was placed under

Regional > Asia > Japan > News and Media > Online Media

even though we felt it would have been better under

Regional > Asia > Japan > News and Media

Since we originally placed our listing in DMOZ our site has expanded hugely and will becoem a true portal site for Japan. The site now incorporates Metropolis magazine http://metropolis.japantoday.com (Japan's No 1 English magazine), which has Tokyo's best classifieds and entertainment guide. We have also added a business directory, a hotel finder and visitor's guide. Japan Today is now the No 1 information source about Japan in English worldwide according to alexa.com. Our ranking is higher than either The Japan Times or japan-guide.com. We will be adding a Yahoo-like search engine in the next few weeks.

Because we now cover almost all of the subsections, we belive that we should now be in the top level section.

Regional > Asia > Japan

or at worst we should be put in

Regional > Asia > Japan > News and Media

Also, I wonder if there a need for an "online media" category for news in Japan as this appears to cause confusion in classification. There are many online-only media also in the "News and Media" Section (AsiaDragons, NewsonJapan. JapanNewsStand, JapanNewsNet). I noticed that there is no "online media" category in the China news category. I looked at the U.S. section of the directory and did not see an "Online Media" section under "news" either. In any case, Metropolis magazine, which is a part of japantoday.com, is not even an online media, having 30,000 copies delivered every week.

At the moment I think that people looking for Japan news will not dig down to the Online Media section. I believe that if our site is placed in a higher level section that it will increase the user experience of those using DMOZ to search for Japan-related information.

I appreciate you comments and advice.

(PS: This input box is very small <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />)

(PS: This input box is very small )

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I do agree with you crisscross, that the input box for messages is too small. A good sentence length is about two dozen words, more or less, and an input box for general text should allow for six or seven-sentence paragraphs.

Being a fairly large fellow myself, with a tendency to bump my head, shins and elbows, I appreciate more commodious surroundings. It has always been a complete mystery to me why programmers so artificially constrict the text area.

I suspect that sometimes, they'd really rather not hear from us at all. <img src="/images/icons/mad.gif" alt="" /> I have taken to composing prose in a decent text editor and cutting and pasting it into those tiny boxes. This allows such things as dictionary and thesaurus services and a decent sized input screen, so that I can review what I've said in previous paragraphs. It certainly helps your train of thought. Down with those mean-spirited, parsimonious programmers of the tiny text boxes!! <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

Hopefully, someone who edits in Japan will come along to answer your question. For myself, I think it is highly unlikely your site will be listed at Regional/Asia/Japan level. Sites that try to be everything, to everybody are very difficult to classify - is it a portal (Regional/Asia/Japan/Business_and_Economy/Internet/Search_Engines/) or a general news organization? (Regional/Asia/Japan/News_and_Media/) .

You may use the &lt;Update URL&gt; function to request a change of description and category placement - but , don't be overly hopefull, as editors are busy people and generally, the laws of physics apply: objects at rest, tend to stay at rest. (Humour <img src="/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" /> )

(PS: This input box is very small )

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If you are talking about this forum, you can simply change it in the Display preferences section. They feature "Text area width" and "text area height". Feel free to increase the size.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, soooooo nice. Picture about two metres of artson, luxuriating in his new found, capacious text editing area. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

You don't know where I can get a bathtub with the same characteristics?

Thank you for you help. Could you give me your opinion about the "Online Media" category?

Ah - learned something new today; my text box is biiiig now. So let's post...

I agree with Mark (crisscross) that there are inequalities in these cats, i.e. Asiadragons (with two listings) or Japan News are in category Regional/Asia/Japan/News_and_Media, whereas Japantoday is one level lower. We will have to address and correct this.

Basically the subcats are very clear: Magazines, Newspapers, Publishers, Radio, Television are places where online versions of magazines, newspapers, etc are listed. Business News and Weather are just links to categories in other sections.

Online Media is the cat that lists online media and portals. Japantoday is a portal site and belongs into that cat. (Yes, other portals from higher up should and will be moved in there as well.)

Anything else that doesn't fit in any of the subcats remains (for now) in News_and_Media. The Foreign Correspondents' Club is such a listing.

I also acknowledge that Japantoday is the only one of these listings in Online_Media that actually has a printed magazine (Metropolis). The magazin's website however is correctly listed in Regional/Asia/Japan/News_and_Media/Magazines, Regional/Asia/Japan/Business_and_Economy/Classifieds, and Regional/Asia/Japan/Prefectures/Tokyo/Guides_and_Directories. This is a pretty good exposure, IMHO.

I finally agree that Japantoday has more and better content than most other listings in the Online_Media cat. This is why the editors in Regional/Asia/Japan have decided to "cool" the site and move it to the top.

I would welcome comments from editors that edit in News_and_Media cats in other regions. Mark's comments are of course welcome as well.

Pat

Thank you for your explanation of the directory logic and for placing the Japan Today link higher on the "Online Media" section.

I believe the "Online Media" classification confuses the searcher. If I was looking for news I would either go to the News and Media category and the Newspaper sub-category. Not the Online Media category. Online Media is just not appealing as a searcher so I think people are missing the sites in that section, and our site.

To make it easier for the reader it may be helpful to rename the category to "Online News" and create another category for other media.

But then if you are online surely you will be looking for online media first, so perhaps the online media, or online news, category should be the higher category.

Better still, IMHO, drop the online media category and put all news sites, online or otherwise, in the "News and Media" main category.

I am also interested to know how other Regions deal with this problem. I checked China and the U.S, and neither seems to have an Online Media category.

With regards to the OP's original message, there appears to be some misconceptions that need to be clarified. Sites are not classified and categorized by stature or status, and the placing of a site in an upper category by no means indicates that it is more popular or more official. It is also a fallacy that a net user is going to only look at what's at the top - s/he'll dig for whatever topic is sought after, or looks interesting. Many search engines use ODP data, and there are numerous sites that get tons of hits regardless of what category or subcategory they are in.

A submitter's aims and claims for a site, and its popularity, status, number of hits a day, etc. have absolutely no bearing on what category it is placed in.
The content of the site is the most important factor.
And in the forum guidelines it states quite clearly that the ODP isn't a search engine, and doesn't rank or optimize websites.

I concur with pwillener that the site noted above is properly placed in Online Media. Plus, it is now cooled
in that category and its affiliate is also listed in three
other categories. That, comparitively speaking in the ODP,
is quite generous indeed.