Original Creative Works

I submitted my site to the ODP for review early this year and, having read the editor guidelines beforehand, was somewhat confident of an eventual listing.

In the waiting, however, I have wondered if the content of my site, while unique as far as I can tell, qualifies as "knowledge" - in the established sense of having been published, or at least having had some other exposure prior to its being introduced online.

Are creative works, originally (and solely) expressed on the web, listable?

Possibly. "Who are you, and what have you done now?" is a legitimate question for a listable website to answer.

A thousand pages of carefully crafted original marketroid hype might be called "creative work" by some marketroids -- we've run into some that think their website is "original" because they tweaked the themes of the vstore template to look pretty to them. That wouldn't be listable.

But we do have (large) categories for original fiction, poetry, graphics, music, etc. So it is certainly possible for a site consisting entirely of such things, to be listable.

Thank you for the quick response.

Since the original content of my site is neither marketroid nor fitting for any traditional art category (I submitted to the category based not on what it is, but what it is for), I guess prospects for a listing could go either way with regard to the creative works criteria.

With regard to author information, I can see that this is a legitimate question for listability. Is it also necessary? If so, would a short bio paragraph in the context of the site introduction suffice?

Anonymity is not reasonable for a business. In some civilized companies an anonymous BUSINESS site is even illegal. But it is reasonable for an author. So identification or bio is absolutely not necessary for a creative-works site!

But I mentioned the question "who are you" because it is still relevant. And here's why. if you created, say, one anonymous poetry site with a half-dozen or two original poems, we'd be happy to list it. If you submitted two anonymous websites each with a half-dozen of your original poems, we'd have good reason to be disgusted with you: the single website gives more information than the two "fraternal mirror" sites. But the only additional information it gives is ... a better answer to the question "who are you?" (The answer is: "My name, race, sex, age, and occupation, are perhaps all irrelevant. But I am also the author of all these other poems." Breaking the website into two disconnected chunks deprives us of some of that information.

My site is not totally anonymous as my name is with the copyright at the bottm of each page and mentioned in a few places elsewhere. Because the site is the creative work and is not about me, I am inclined to remain in the distance - accessible enough to respond to feedback.

But I appreciate your last post because while my site is absolutely not a business site, it was submitted to a category with business listings and it possibly has some potential to have business aspects in the future (if it ever becomes popular). If it comes to that, I will come back to this forum for the minimal requirements regarding personal information.

Thank you, hutcheson, for taking the time to address my concerns.

>> If it comes to that, I will come back to this forum for the minimal requirements regarding personal information. <<

Try this instead: design your website with the visitor in mind. Write your content with the visitor in mind. What do they want to see? What do they want to know? Why are they here? Answer those questions on your site, in your content.