Please suggest a category

I am looking for help on suggesting a category for a site, or if people think a new category would have value. I own and operate two stores under a franchise of a national food chain. We are committed to community integration and have created a site to share news of community projects and forthcoming community events.

It is not a site aimed at marketing our products as we have a very well established national e-commerce site for that and have simply linked to it. It contains for example features and photographs on Charity fun days, Features and photos of our sponsorship of local sports teams etc in the form of a blog.

I will PM the URL if anybody wants more details as it does not seem appropriate to post it here.

It is my point of view that businesses should do what they can to support the local community that supports them. Hopefully sites such as the one I am looking to list will inspire other businesses to increase their social contribution.

I would suggest you submit your suggestion to the Regional section of the Directory, specifically in your locality (city), .

http://dmoz.org/Regional/

An editor will decide which sub category it best fits in and place it there, if it's accepted.

This might be helpful in writing a title and description:
http://dmoz.org/guidelines/describing.html

And this explains something about the Regional section:
http://dmoz.org/guidelines/regional/

crowbar said:

I would suggest you submit your suggestion to the Regional section of the Directory, specifically in your locality (city), .

http://dmoz.org/Regional/

An editor will decide which sub category it best fits in and place it there, if it's accepted.

This might be helpful in writing a title and description:
http://dmoz.org/guidelines/describing.html

And this explains something about the Regional section:
http://dmoz.org/guidelines/regional/

Click to expand...

Many thanks for your prompt response.

You're very welcome.

Fantastic service on DMOZ

After I posted this and read through the other threads with all of the complaints about time taken to list sites my heart sank.

But then I got a response from one editor within 13 minutes suggesting a category.

I got a PM from another editor the same day asking me to PM the link so he could take a look.

The only delay was in me responding to him, as soon as I did he listed my sites within 24 hours.

I know I have been very lucky and a system based on volunteer editors cannot consistently offer such service levels, and I dont want to falsely raise peoples expectations; but I found the service amazing.

Sincere thanks to the two editors concerned for the fantastic service!!

It wasn't me, I don't edit in that part of the Directory, and we don't do that sort of thing from this forum, but, I'm sure many other editors do read these threads (even if they don't participate here), and editors find sites on their own from a multitude of sources, this must be one of them.

The fact that it was accepted so quickly, says a lot about the unique content the site must have.

We don't list individual branches of national chains. We just list the main website at an appropriate level. The listings of the two sites referred to above have been removed.

@thompsonpg: I urge you to re-read our submission guidelines which forbid the submission of related websites and describe the penalties which can be applied should they be ignored.

As a final comment, I wonder whether the creation of those two blogspot sites was sanctioned by the head office marketeeers.

jimnoble said:

We don't list individual branches of national chains. We just list the main website at an appropriate level. The listings of the two sites referred to above have been removed.

@thompsonpg: I urge you to re-read our submission guidelines which forbid the submission of related websites and describe the penalties which can be applied should they be ignored.

As a final comment, I wonder whether the creation of those two blogspot sites was sanctioned by the head office marketeeers.

Click to expand...

So saying thank you was clearly a mistake, the only reason I posted this was simply because of the general comments about the arrogance of some editors and that my experience was different. Now I find that the general theme of criticism is spot on.

My companies are independent franchises that I own and operate. They are community websites that detail our charity work. The franchisor has a national e-commerce website.

Yes they were fuly sanctioned by the franchisor's marketing department and we won a national award for our community service, these sites were commended in that.

jimnoble said:

We don't list individual branches of national chains. We just list the main website at an appropriate level. The listings of the two sites referred to above have been removed.

@thompsonpg: I urge you to re-read our submission guidelines which forbid the submission of related websites and describe the penalties which can be applied should they be ignored.

As a final comment, I wonder whether the creation of those two blogspot sites was sanctioned by the head office marketeeers.

Click to expand...

The link you gave says page cannot be found

Meta editors are always correct, thompsonpg. It's not arrogance, it's knowledge. We only list the corporate headquarters of McDonalds or Burger King, not each individual franchise, good grief there must be hundreds of thousands of them.

Even a small city will have 2 or 3 of them, and one of the nice things about this type of organization is that no matter where it's located, you can count on each one of them having pretty much the same thing, so their sites are generally going to have the same content.

Not having seen nor previewed your site, which we don't do in this forum, my advice was general in this thread, and pertains to most brick & mortar businesses. (with a few exceptions)

Sometimes that happens when you're giving general advice, so if anyone is to blame it's myself, not jimnoble, and I apologize for your disappointment.

http://dmoz.org/add.html
the forum software inerpreted it as a relative link rather than an absolute one

gimmster said:

http://dmoz.org/add.html
the forum software inerpreted it as a relative link rather than an absolute one

Click to expand...

Thanks the link is now working.

crowbar said:

Meta editors are always correct, thompsonpg. It's not arrogance, it's knowledge. We only list the corporate headquarters of McDonalds or Burger King, not each individual franchise, good grief there must be hundreds of thousands of them.

Click to expand...

It's complicated. We do list country-specific lists of McDonalds(s), and may list associations of franchises. We may list actually list individual McDonalds if they have their own web site ....

arubin said:

It's complicated. We do list country-specific lists of McDonalds(s), and may list associations of franchises. We may list actually list individual McDonalds if they have their own web site ....

Click to expand...

This is a direct contradiction of the reasoning behind taking my listings down. The fact is that despite the above claims of infallibility this is a matter of interpretation. Jim got this wrong in my view as my sites relate to our local community service. I have now had three different views from three editors all of whom I suspect are familiar with the same rules but interpret them differently. It shows how ridiculous it is to remove my listings, refer me to the rules, and threaten sanctions against the company. If this is not arrogance I don't know what else it is.

As it happens, it does not matter a jot my sites now appear in the top listings on Google for any relevant search. This was achieved in just a few weeks by following the simple guidelines on Google’s webmaster tools. I would urge any of those people complaining about the time taken to list on DMOZ to follow Google’s guidelines instead as it is much quicker and more effective and can be achieved in a professional manner.

Whether or not we list individual franchises depends on the sites themselves and the amount of unique content they contain. If all a local McDonald's site was doing was rehashing the information that was on the main site, then there would be no point in listing the franchise -- local contact details wouldn't be enough to make it listable. But franchises offering unique content related to that particular location may be listable.

One important thing to keep in mind is that things like forums and blogs really need a reasonable amount of content in terms of activity in order to be listable, e.g. a half dozen posts is likely not going to be sufficient content.

"crowbar" said:

Meta editors are always correct, thompsonpg. It's not arrogance, it's knowledge.

Click to expand...

No one is infallible. Meta editors make mistakes just like anyone else, though hopefully fewer of them.

motsa said:

Whether or not we list individual franchises depends on the sites themselves and the amount of unique content they contain. If all a local McDonald's site was doing was rehashing the information that was on the main site, then there would be no point in listing the franchise -- local contact details wouldn't be enough to make it listable. But franchises offering unique content related to that particular location may be listable. Note: I haven't looked at your site specifically nor do I intend to. If you feel that your site was removed mistakenly, then by all means suggest it again.

No one is infallible. Meta editors make mistakes just like anyone else, though hopefully fewer of them.

Click to expand...

Thanks.

My site content is entirely unique as it relates to local fundraising activities on behalf of local charities. I thought the infallibilty claim was a bit daft but it put me off requesting a listing again.

As I said all relevant searches are bringing up my sites on the first page of Google so I am not sure what a listing would do to improve that. However if a listing will help maintain that position, as one of the main reasons for creating the site was to raise awareness of and funds for local charities, I will ask for them to be relisted.

Ah, you posted after I'd edited my post. The "One important thing to keep in mind is that things like forums and blogs really need a reasonable amount of content in terms of activity in order to be listable, e.g. a half dozen posts is likely not going to be sufficient content." part is important.