Observations

Hi-

I am a little confused....while I am patiently waiting for my site to be added, I noticed a couple things.

First I have run into multiple URLS's for one website being listed in DMOZ. Each one was obviously a different page, with different content. But I thought we could only submit our website as a whole just once. Not individual pages of our site. What's the scoop?

Also, what is the star on some of the websites mean? Editor's choice? Seems a bit biased to me. To allow a site to be at the top of the list and promoted with a star? Not sure I agree about that one. What about neutral, unbiased listings? Fair for all...

Thanks,
Robert

Robert,

You are correct in your assumption that we ask people to suggest a site once to a single best category.

It is, however, editor's discretion on where to list a site, and how many times to list it. There are no hard-and-fast rules, and often any candidates for multiple listings get put up for informal "peer reviews" in our editor's forums.

So it is entirely possible that a submitter suggests a site once, and then reviewing editors take a look around and find other places they think it would also fit very well.

I'd like to refer you to this part of our editor guidelines which talks about this: http://dmoz.org/guidelines/site-specific.html#multiple

[Added later:]One exception to this is where a site has regional significance too. Typically this is for sites where a business office is shown on the site. In that case, it is acceptable to make a suggestion of the URL to a category in the "Regional" tree, and to one in another non-regional tree in the directory. In this case, though, the exact same URL should be submitted to both places.[end add]

Hope that clarifies.

The "star" feature that you mention is called "Cooling", and it is documented here: http://dmoz.org/guidelines/describing.html#cool

It is another feature which draws much peer-scrutiny and debate in the editor forums.

Hope this helps.

Ok, I see now...

Thanks for the reply.

As an additive thought to the "cooling" feature, I read the editorial guidelines and they want neutral editors, with descriptions of sites that are not opinionated. So it was surprising to see the star, with certain sites listed as more 'cool' than others.

It would seem for non-commercial sites based purely on information with no monetary gain, the cooling star could be appropriate.

But for shopping or product sites, where there is a measurable gain (financial) the star would seem to be less than fair when comparing to other products in the category. Just a thought...

Actually, I am a little bummed out at this point, because I realize I submitted to the wrong category and should have submitted to a certain shopping category, where the uniqueness of my site would be more readily apparent. Live and learn.

Thanks for clarifying the multiple listings mystery.

Robert

Cooling is rarely done in commercial categories - Where it is done it is generally used to signify an official site.

E.g. IBM's main resource in:
Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Mainframe/IBM

Microsoft's in:
Computers/Internet/Proxying_and_Filtering/Products_and_Tools/Software/Server/Microsoft_ISA_Server

If you find a commercial category where you think a site has been inappropriately cooled - please feel free to report it in the abuse reporting forum here and it will be looked at.

Actually, I am a little bummed out at this point, because I realize I submitted to the wrong category and should have submitted to a certain shopping category, where the uniqueness of my site would be more readily apparent. Live and learn.

Click to expand...

That's why we call them suggestions. A reviewing editor always has teh opportunity to send a site to a more approprite category.