modifying a entry

Someone in our company submitted an entry for our company Ballotpoint that is wrong. I have been trying to get it corrected for over a year now with no success.

How, in the world, can I get someone to either change it or delete it. It's causing us real grief.

Well, let's run through the possibilities.

If you have not already done so, go to the category where the site is listed and complete an update listing request. These are usually handled on a fairly high priority basis. If you have done that, and have not seen any results or changes in the listing, consider the following:

• Editing is not a collaborative effort. If the description, in the eyes of an editor, accurately portrays the content of the website, then there wil be a natural reluctance to change an otherwise acceptable listing.
• Editors rely heavily upon the content of the website. If you say your site is about "X" but in reality it is about "Y" then the description is not likely to be changed.
• Keywords don't count. We don't care about them, we don't want them, and we try to delete them on sight.
• There is always the possibility that an editor has not had a chance to review the update request.
• If your request does not meet the editing guidelines, it will not be considered.
• Wrong is relative. If wrong means it is demonstrably inaccurate, then we will listen. If wrong means you just don't like it, we proably won't pay a lot of attention.

If there is a factual error in the description, use the update listing feature from the category in which it is listed.

If you are just trying to change it because you don't like the way it is written, or because it doesn't contain all the marketing terms you want, it is unlikely to be changed.

I have tried and update last year and have just now tried again. The change is the deletion of a sentence about the Department of Labor (the Feds) endorsing [Removed URL]. The DOL endorses no one and this statement has caused problems. If you check our site it says nothing about a DOL endorsement. We would just like the offending sentence deleted.

Thanks

gimmster said:

If there is a factual error in the description, use the update listing feature from the category in which it is listed.

If you are just trying to change it because you don't like the way it is written, or because it doesn't contain all the marketing terms you want, it is unlikely to be changed.

Click to expand...

The sentence " Endorsed by the US Department of Labor" Is a FACTUAL error for <url removed>. We would appreciate it removed as soon as possible

jbachofner said:

The sentence " Endorsed by the US Department of Labor" Is a FACTUAL error for <url removed>. We would appreciate it removed as soon as possible

Click to expand...

As far as I can tell, it's been removed before your last post.

I noticed that the description for Ballotpoint has been corrected so thanks to whoever is responsible. My post of April 23 was missing a word and should have read "someone NOT is our company submitted an entry" which begs the question of how these descriptions get created and get into DMOZ and the rest of the web. If you could, please educate us.

jbachofner said:

I noticed that the description for Ballotpoint has been corrected so thanks to whoever is responsible. My post of April 23 was missing a word and should have read "someone NOT is our company submitted an entry" which begs the question of how these descriptions get created and get into DMOZ and the rest of the web. If you could, please educate us.

Click to expand...

Gladly!

Thank you for asking.

The pool of suggestions is but a single source of ideas for possible listings. Many -- perhaps most -- of our experienced editors prefer to seek out sites whose content compliments different categories.

We find URLs in newspapers and magazines, in the sides of buses, on the roofs of taxicabs, on matchbooks, on license plate frames and almost every other imaginable location.

My wife of 29 years has finally stopped complaining when we are out and I stop what I am doing to jot down a URL. Due to the price of gas I have had to slightly curtail driving around the block to make sure that I got the URL from a storefront correct.

It is really not an issue when someone else suggest a site -- there is no restriction on doing so -- since every site suggestion has to be reviewed by an editor prior to getting listed, and very, very, few suggested descriptions get through unedited. So we don't just take a site suggestion and "stick it in there." Thus, the nightmare that some competitor suggested a site and used a less-than-optimal description to hurt the site owner, is little more than a pipe dream.

Hope this helped.

Thanks for your response. Sorry, that is not exactly my question. We did not submit our URL to you and we don't think a competitor did, or that anyone was out to attribute incorrect information to us. My question was a more general one. Be that what it may, I think I now understand. Tell me if my understanding is correct. Someone may submit a URL or you may find it on your own. Either way, based on information from a variety of places, you determine the description that you feel best fits with that URL. The descriptions do not come from meta tags, keywords, or the like. Is that correct?

Pretty well correct - but we write the website's description based upon the website itself. We rarely seek info about it from elsewhere.