Multiple "sites" at one address

If you had multiple "information centers" at the one web address (i.e. different directories / subdomains) can they each be listed in the correct catagory?

Example:

A site about news, but with seperate selfcontained subsites on "News papers", "Blogs", "Media Bias", "Media Companies"... etc.

Not the best example (sorry).

The point is that it makes more sense to have multiple listings (one per subsite) in the right place where people can find them, than to suggest the entire (uncohesive) whole at a higher level - IMHO that is!

We prefer to have one site suggested to the higher level.

We prefer

Click to expand...

Well actually, we insist. See http://dmoz.org/add.html .

What about in cases where there isn't a higher level?

What I mean is, if rather than the example I gave, it was one where the proper catagories don't share an ancestor. I'd be willing to be there are a lot of duplicate links the ODP for exactly this reason.

CNN is listed 1000 times for example... see:
http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=CNN&all=no&cat=&t=s

Google is listed about 250

Ok, they are simply HUGE sites, so maybe a bad example... so I went through the directory randomly and picked a few sites and checked how many times they are listed:

Northern County Psychiatric Associates
"ncpamd.com" is listed 56 times

All Recipes is listed 390 times
http://allrecipes.com

student press is listed 4 times
studentpress.org

abcnewspapers.com listed twice
News: Newspapers: Regional: United States: Minnesota
and
Regional: North America: United States: Minnesota: Counties: Anoka: News and Media: Newspapers

I actually think this last one makes a lot of sense. Some of the others do as well, some don't. In all cases they appear to break policy.

adobe.com is listed 145 times
adobe.com/education is listed 3 times

I stress that I picked things totally randomly to do this check. In randomly checking I came across 5 sites that were only listed once... i.e. less than half.

a) Is the policy just not applied?
b) Is it up to section editors to decide if the submission is relevent enough to inlcude (regardless of where else it is)
c) Do many editors just not check?
d) Is there some level of judgement that something "belongs" that over rides the rules? (I suppose this is b phrased differently)

CNN do look a little over listed, but in general I can see the point of multiple listings in these cases. For comparison (with other media):
abc.go.com (ABC America) is listed only 59 times
ABC.net.au (Australian ABC) is only listed 289
bbc.co.uk is listed 5256 times

Sites may be listed by editors more than once, this is always and only a decission of the editors.
Sites may be suggested
1) once to a topical category (not for all type of sites)
and
2) once to a regional category (not for all type of sites)
if the site is in more than one language it may be suggested to all those languages

We require site owners to suggest their websites just the once. If they have locally specific relevance, they can also be suggested to their localities. If a website is available in several different languages (not machine translated) it can also be suggested to each World language that it supports.

That is it. Do not make further listing suggestions than that. To do so is to risk gaining the sort of reputation around here that you probably don't want.

Sometimes, editors decide to give a website additional listings. I stress that this will not happen very often in commercial categories.

There are multiple issues that can cause sites to be listed multiple times. There's really no point in discussing, them, though, and it's not just because most of them CANNOT conceivably apply to a personal site. (Although, if you had wanted a fair comparison, you would picked ten PERSONAL sites--ideally, from Google or Yahoo--and then asked how many times each one was listed.)

The biggest reason is that NONE OF THE ISSUES ABOUT MULTIPLE LISTINGS EVER APPLY TO SITE SUGGESTIONS! The rule for SITE SUGGESTIONS is: take all related sites, roll them up in a ball, and submit ONE URL from among them to ONE category. And, according to the submittal policies, violating that rule incurs the most severe response that the ODP can give: exclusion of ALL related sites--even those that were NOT submitted!

There is obviously no way you can tell whether the submittal policies have been violated, because you don't see site suggestions.

EDITORS, based on the CURRENT version of THEIR guidelines (which are more permissive), should consider what pages of what sites should be listed, and where they should be listed.

It should be obvious that nobody sits down saying, "this is a 3200-page website from an organization with 578 employees: multiply, take square root and divide by 75, so we should give this site 36.8 listings."

Each "deeplink" should be considered based on editing guidelines, category guidelines and best practice, as well as the link's importance to the category, the optical characteristics of the website, and the location of the website's main listing--all of which gets sufficiently complex that editors have a forum to discuss the fine points.

If you see obvious abuses of the system, then you can report them. However, if a site is listed more than 50 times it's safe to assume it's been noticed already -- so the issue is not with the site but with your understanding of the guidelines.

Dear both,

Ok, thanks for the clarification.

jimnoble, I wasn't actually thinking of commercial sites, more non commercial information sites that cover various topics.

I think there is an element of doing what is sensible, and assuming those submitting and editors agree it should all just work. (Or assuming it is the editor adding sites that are not their own but make sense even if they are duplicates.)

I think this may have drifted from a question of submissions to a more general one about how the ODP works.

Thank you both for your time though

Hutchenson, thank you for the info, but was the attitude needed?

I was asking general question about how things work, and the other two managed to answer it quite well without shouting etc. Your post did included added useful information but the tone does not encourage cooperation or respect for the project or volenteers. Again the responses from the others do create an appreciation of their efforts both here and in the directory.

As you rightly point out, you can't draw any conclusions from submissions policy to over all policy for improving the directory. The obvious solution is to volenteer as an editor and then use the approriate dicussion forums to improve areas where multiple listings might be useful to the project. I'll volenteer when it come sonline again... but not if any question I ask gets my head bitten off like this. I'm sorry but while I want to help, I don't have the time for that.

For the record, I intentionally avoided mentioning specific sites as I was after info on how it works, not a debate on a specific inclusion / exclusion. I think all my questions have been answered... but this was not a pleasant exchange and that disappoints me.