Problem with multiple categories & languages

Dear Editors,

we have launched a quite substantial site for people moving abroad which is divided into different "Country portals" that are available in different languages (i.e. Information for moving to Spain in English/German/French etc.). Thanks to the help of many volunteers, these portals include some 5000 pages of information for expatriats from different nationalities (our URL is <url removed> - feel free to remove it but it might make sense to have a look at it to understand our problem).

Now here comes the problem: Which categories should we list our site in?

As it is divided into different country portals, it would make sense to link to these directly from your expatriate sections for these countries (i.e. http://dmoz.org/Society/People/Expatriates/Dutch/United_States/ or http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/Germany/Society_and_Culture/Expatriate_Life/). Also we would have to do different links for the different languages in the ODP and link directly to the respective country/language combination).

From a point of usability for the ODP users, this would - at least in our opinion - be probably the best solution. However we are not sure whether you would consider this as spamming (which is not our intention).

Could you help us out and tell us how we should proceed???

Thanks a lot for your help,

Daniel

I've deliberately not looked at the site so I can concentrate on general answers.

In general we prefer to use the primary url of the site in all listings.
ie example.com in German, French, English language categories rather than the deeplinks example.com/de/ example.com/fr/ example.com/en/ or the deeplink by domain germanexample.com frenchexample.com engishexample.com.

In Topical (Society) One listing at the level that encompasses all the areas is most likely Society/People/Expatriates if the site covers multiple nationalities, Society/People/Expatriates/Dutch/ if only the Dutch nationality in multiple countries.

In Regional a listing might be considered if there is a lot of information about living as an expat in the country, but it would need to be exceptional content to be listed in each country. (Note that expatriate life is not related to 'moving to a country', its's about life there as an expat.)

In World listings are by language, and the root url should be suggested as appropriate (I'm not multilingual, so have no clue on the equivalents in other languages - French is World/Français/Société/Personnes/Expatriés

Editing guidelines on this http://dmoz.org/guidelines/site-specific.html (deeplinks, multiple listings, multilingual) might be your fist point of call.

Or, better yet, submit the root URL once to the single best topical cateogry and then allow the editors to make the decisions concering additional linking.

No site is guaranteed a single listing, let alone multiple listings.

If the eidtors feel there is outstanding content, they will take the necessary steps to correctly promulgate the URL to other ares of the directory.

Most of the time when site owners start submitting tomultiple arts of the directory, they often/usually/almost always over-submit and end up spamming the directory out of their own sense of self worth.

Think of it this way, you have one site. Try to get it the single best listing. Forget trying to get anything else. You'll sleep better.

First of all, thanks for your answers.

However, one of your quotes now has raised one more question: "(Note that expatriate life is not related to 'moving to a country', its's about life there as an expat.)"

This is actually a good point. Our country guides are used by expatriates, but are mainly interesting to people who want to move or have just moved. However, there is no specific category for "Moving internationally" (travel & tourism doesn't fit as this is something completely different).

So I suppose that it would probably be better to place it under Country Guides & Directories (i.e. http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/Germany/Guides_and_Directories/), where I have also found quite a few sites that offer very similar types of information as we do (i.e. "A Manual for Germany - Guide to Germany's society and culture directed primarily at immigrants, published by the Government Representative for Migration, Refugees and Integration", with whom we actually cooperate).

Sorry to be such a pain, but our site is actually quite complicated (for good reason it took us 2 years to figure it our ourselfs). Give the multidimension/multilingual structure of the ODP, you probably know what I mean.

However, there is no specific category for "Moving internationally"

Click to expand...

Home/Moving_and_Relocating/International_Relocation

I wish it was that easy ...

Allright - you got me on this one!!!!

But ..
... in this category I only find international relocation firms! Not a single useful country-specific information site!!

Now if the international relocation category
... has none of these sites in there ...
... only includes sites that have nothing to do with what we are doing ...
> how can that be the appropriate category for posting our site??

Think about it this way: I am a German and I want to move to Spain so I need information on this country (i.e. housing, jobs, work permits etc.). Would I be looking into "International relocation"? No, I would probably only look there if I was to look for relocation firms (which are in this category). If I was looking for information on Spain, I would probably search for it in Spain.

I actually started looking for the appropriate category by typing site into the search function the names and URLs of sites that have a similar information as ours (e.g. country-specific information for people moving to this country). With some variations, these sites (or subsites) are placed in similar categories in the respective countries.

By now I have probably spend half a day looking at this, and the more I look the more confused I get... No complain (as I know how difficult this is), but the ODP categories are straightforward if you have a simple site on a simple subject, but in our case this is really complicated!!!

One more problem: A world category like "International relocation" (without any localization) would actually be WRONG as our site only covers selected countries (i.e. we have no info for people moving to the US) - so it's completely uninteresting for anybody who doesn't want to move to one of the countries we cover...

One more problem: A world category like "International relocation" (without any localization) would actually be WRONG as our site only covers selected countries (i.e. we have no info for people moving to the US) - so it's completely uninteresting for anybody who doesn't want to move to one of the countries we cover...

Click to expand...

The category isn't about moving "everywhere" in the world. If a site covers relocating from one country to another, then it's appropriate. It's a Home category -- the presence of businesses in the category doesn't mean that the scope of the category is the business of International Relocation. Home categories are mostly informational in scope. If you look at the description of the parent Home/Moving_and_Relocating category, you'll see that it says "This category contains sites which provide information and advice for people in the process of moving or relocating." which is exactly what you say your site is offering. Given the broadness of your site, that would be the best place to submit the root URL rather than listing all of the specific country sections individually.