Picking categories for an online shop and a blog, did I do OK?

Hi there guys, first post!

My wife and I have an online shop selling T-shirt kids can colour-in. We design and screenprint by hand ourselves. I initially posted it in the category Kids and Teens: Sports and Hobbies: Drawing and Coloring thinking that colouring-in would qualify. That was about a year ago but never got listed. I eventually realised that my site, though selling our terrific and seemingly relevant product, did not actually offer rich content for free in the way the "Kids and Teens" guidelines suggested. I never actually got a rejection message but decided that until we had rich and free content to offer the best category would be Shopping: Clothing: Casual: T-Shirts: Children's

So I submited to that about a month ago.

I also realised that multilingual blogs can exist in more than one category so I listed the bilingual, english/greek, design blog my wife and I write in two categories: Arts: Design: Weblogs under which other relevant blogs exist and World: Greek: Νέα(news): Περιοδικά(magazines) On Line under which several blogs I know in Greece exist.

I think I am OK now on both sites.

Time will tell but what do you think? Did I think about it the right way?

Thanks!

Probably but, as you said, time will tell .

Generally, a listable website suggested to the wrong category is moved to the correct one for further evaluation.

For general reference (ie not directed at the original poster), online shops are usually not listed in Kids and Teens.
To quote from the Kids and Teens site selection guidelines:

If a site's primary purpose is to sell products and services, it should be considered a commerce site, and not be added to the Kids and Teens ODP, even if the targeted audience is the under 18 age group. Sites that are informational or entertainment-oriented, but contain a shopping component (like an online store) may be acceptable as long as the shopping component is not the principal component of the web site. Additionally, if a visitor must purchase something to make the site worth visiting, it should not be included in the directory.

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But as jimnoble says, editors are very used to finding the correct category for misplaced sites.

Yep. Eventually I realised the "Kids and Teens" category effectivelly excludes commerce which is fine since there are others which are perfectly suitable.

Operating from Greece I get a little paranoid about any body that is not exactly transparent and seemingly beaurocratic but my paranoia was alleviated significantly when you guys said that ODP editors routinely move sites to appropriate categories for inclusion, horray for the eds!

I hope the new category I have chosen is not too busy and my site will be accepted soon.

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With pages and pages and pages of public information about the directory, how it works, what editors do, etc etc, I think DMOZ does better than most large organisations in being transparent.

Of course the problem is that most people don't actually read the information before complaining that there is none.

I totaly agree with you. All the information on the types of sites for each category is there and RTFM syndrom applies to most people complaining. Took me so long to work out my own category for example.

On the other hand, a line in a soup kitchen is more transparent than ANY directory service available, costs as much as a listing in ODP and the people serving get paid as much as ODP editors. Go figure.

mmm...soup

Thank you for understanding.

On the other hand, the people in the line for soup understand that a soup kitchen is there to provide them with soup, and the people working in the kitchen know that their sole purpose is to provide soup to the people in the line. So there is no confusion about roles and expectations.

With ODP, however, volunteers are here to build the directory in all sorts of ways, only one of which involves reviewing site suggestions.
But webmasters persist in seeing themselves as being in a "queue" for a service (prompt review and listing of their site) that is simply not what the directory offers, so they will always be disappointed until they are willing to understand what the ODP is.

I am glad you appreciated my humour. I do not want to take up too much more of the forum's time and mind space but I found what you said was quite interesting:

volunteers are here to build the directory in all sorts of ways

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I read your ODP editor FAQ and shadow575's post and I am still not entirely sure what an ODP editor does. Maybe my understanding of what it means to be"reviewing site suggestions" is too narrow but I would like to understand a little more about what does it actually mean to "build", "expand" etc. the directory. In other words, what do you perceive your involvement in the ODP to be beyond sorting thousands of sites you are probably bombarded with everyday into categories? What's in an ODP editor's todo list every week?

Getting all warm and fuzzy with the anticipation of a human interest story!

>In other words, what do you perceive your involvement in the ODP to be beyond sorting thousands of sites you are probably bombarded with everyday into categories?

No. Because that presumes the "core" of "involvement" has anything at all to do with "sorting thousands of sites with which we're bombarded".

And it really doesn't. Any more than a mason "perceives his job" as "putting away rocks that are thrown at him."

A mason's _purpose_ is building walls, not consuming rocks. Consuming rocks, setting up scaffolding, and making mortar are just _activities_.

And a mason has a quarry where he can get material. He doesn't depend on people throwing the right kind and shape of rocks at him. (He might use "found" rock, but only if it's more convenient than carting his own choices from the quarry.)

A directory is built, not one SITE at a time, but one CATEGORY at a time. I want to read about, say, Grotesque Rocks National Park. I look at the Open Directory category for it (maybe there's not one, and I have to create it.) I know the national Park Service, and the national Geological Survey, both have good material on most parks--so I go directly to those sites and browse to the GRNP homepage. The major book archives probably have high-value relevant material--Project Gutenberg has the least material, but the best format; Google Books is at the other extreme, with the Internet Archive somewhere in the middle. Wikipedia is always worth checking, not only for its own sake but for its small, generally-high-quality set of external links.

I haven't even touched Google Search yet, let alone consumed any site suggestions. But someone who wants to know about GRNP already has a wealth of information under their mouseball.

(I would touch some sort of search engine, or some pool of site suggestions ... if I thought either one would help build the category I was working on. But if I didn't think they'd help, I'd leave them for someone else who thought differently.)

what do you perceive your involvement in the ODP to be beyond sorting thousands of sites you are probably bombarded with everyday into categories? What's in an ODP editor's todo list every week?

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These questions don't really apply to any editor, but I will try to answer them.

Firstly, no editor is required to look at site suggestions. Ever. They can spend years building the directory according to the guidelines without ever once looking at sites suggested by other people. For example, I have added about 25,000 sites to the directory, but probably fewer than several hundred of those were suggested by other people.

Secondly, editors have a wide range of activities to choose from, and no time constraints other than doing at least one edit every 4 months, and even then they can ask for reinstatement if their account automatically closes due to lack of activity. So no volunteer has a To-Do list other than the one he sets himself, and it certainly need not be a weekly one.

Here are some of the ways editors spend their hobby time in the directory:

• searching for unlisted sites on the internet, in magazines, newspapers, local directories, advertisements etc
• checking listed sites to be sure they are listed correctly
• correcting titles and descriptions which don't meet the current guidelines
• creating new categories
• improving the structure of the directory
• making it easier for people to find their way around the directory
• helping less experienced editors
• joining group projects
• writing documentation or creating tools to assist fellow volunteers
• discussing directory matters on the internal forums
• learning more about editing and applying to increase their range of permissions
• ... and yes, if they feel like it, reviewing site suggestions.

Terrific makrhod! That was very helpfull. Describing some actual tasks, helped me form a better perception of what you guys do. Analogies always have a way of making us loose sight of the literal issue at hand.

Often, people who do things beyond a casual involvement, see things in their subject matter which others do not perceive. You do that when editing the ODP, we do that with the innovations in our product. Casual observers then look at our stuff, and unless they make a leap of understanding, they will try to understand our subject matter based on what they already know. The leap is like making a new category for us in their system of understanding and interpreting their world, "bulding" and "expanding" it.

Thanks for all the info guys! I wish some of you were passionate about T-shirts but there is so much more amazing stuff out there I can understand if no one wants to touch "Shopping: Clothing: Casual: T-Shirts: Children's" for a while!

Happy 2009!

Thanks for all the info guys! I wish some of you were passionate about T-shirts but there is so much more amazing stuff out there I can understand if no one wants to touch "Shopping: Clothing: Casual: T-Shirts: Children's" for a while!

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The difference between a company and us is that all our members (except 5 of us) are completely volunteer.
And we're open to accept new volunteers !

So if you're interested in Chilren's T-Shirts, why not become an editor ?