questions for the editors

There are multiple ways for editors to find good sites for inclusion into the directory, but why spend hours surfing the net when you have hundreds of submissions on your CP in queue? That is just not very efficient IMHO.

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Written by someone who doesn't know what some of those "queues" look like. In many cases, it's more efficient to go out and find sites on your own than to wade through the (mostly) junk that has been suggested to find the few relevent listings.

BTW the editors DO know how many submissions are in queue for each of their categories, and the date of each submission. The queue can be sorted by date or alphabetically, ascending or descending at the push of a button.

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No one ever said we didn't or that we couldn't. The fact that we *can* sort it however we can doesn't mean we are required to and that is the whole point that we keep restating.

An editors primary function is to add quality sites with original content and what better way to start that those already in queue on their CP every time the login?

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See my comment above.

I wont go into the number of sites I have submitted and had them rejected for the same comment unique content, which in my opinion is a cop out or you have an editor who is trying to prevent their competition or another editors competition from getting into the directory.

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We understand if you don't understand what 'unique content' means from an ODP point of view. But that doesn't mean we're not right for us. And the usual reason why a listable site suggested hasn't been accepted in a short amount of time is that no editor really feels like editing in that particular area. We're volunteers -- you can't force a volunteer to edit a section they don't feel like editing.

Sure there are other real estate sites that get listed, but I am sure none of those sites have a chance in %$#^ to get ranked on the search engines. somewhere around 80% of the sites you have listed for Las Vegas are not in the top 500 for the primary searched phrase for this city.

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A lot of so-called "top 500" sites in many topics would be considered unlistable by us. High placement in a search engine doesn't necessarily mean a site is (a) relevent, (b) listable, (c) not absolute crap. Not saying some aren't but you can't use SE placement as criteria for whether something is worth listing.

Hence this is why I believe there are those out there that may only list sites that are of no direct threat to them...please I know you are going to say that is nonsense but do the research yourself.

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Frankly, for most people, it's incredibly dull reviewing real estate agent sites and wading through the multiple mirrors and other junk that gets submitted there is very depressing.

Lets also not forget about the National Association of Realtors, who is hot on the tail of ODP for improper listings and descriptions. This comes directly from NAR.

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Hey, they're welcome to address their concerns to AOL's legal department. We just list sites according to what we find and if we have to suddenly start looking up whether someone who says they're a REALTOR is actually a REALTOR, then I envision the reviewing of real estate sites will slow down considerably.

motsa posted his reply before I did, but I think I'll leave my reply intact following this note.

VegasWayne said:

First I would like to state that I know Sitetutor and he is well respected on other forums, yet to seem to want to attack him for stating an opinion about dmoz and the handling of submissions.

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We don't mind opinions -- but a number of his posts read like personal attacks -- while our replies (in general -- there have been a few exceptions) are civil.

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An editors primary function is to add quality sites with original content and what better way to start that those already in queue on their CP every time the login?

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Because most of the sites in the "queue" aren't quality -- especially in Real Estate categories.

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So point being stop trying to defend the odp and open up your ears and listen.

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I haven't heard any credible critisism yet.

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Lets also not forget about the National Association of Realtors, who is hot on the tail of ODP for improper listings and descriptions. This comes directly from NAR.

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But they haven't told us, or AOL (the legal owner of DMOZ.) We've heard about it from NAR-affiliated sources.

Sitetutor, you're welcome to moderate your forums however you wish. But you may not moderate these.

>What better way to start that those already in queue on their CP every time the login?

Each editor chooses what he thinks is the best way. We think that's the best way overall.

We realize that means SERP perps find it much more difficult to manipulate the ODP (as a whole) than Google, let alone the other search engines. We do not see this as a disadvantage.

If you know sites that have been rejected unjustly, you can file an abuse report, and it will be investigated by meta who is NOT a Las Vegas real estate agent (because we have no metas who are!).

Just out of interest - Do you actually think a category with 17,000 real estate agents would be useful to surfers. It would take 10 minutes to load on screen with a DSL connection! I'd have thought 185 real estate agents was more than enough to choose from.

I'd say looking at Vegas Business categories, that more Oil and Gas or printing companies would be more useful than adding another real estate site. Wouldn't you agree?

A quick peek at Yellow pages site for Vegas finds 1600 businesses related to real estate in some way, of which some subset will be estate agents.. and of those some subset will have websites, and some subset of those will have submitted them to ODP. If a yellow pages phonebook that supposedly lists any business with a phone number in Vegas can only manage 1600, it is hardly fair to have a go at us for not having 17,000.

Of course as a webmaster if you are not one of those 185 sites you are going to feel hard done by. That is perfectly understandable on your part. But if you can try and see the issue from our side too, it may help put some perspective on things.

Kind Regards,

Andy

I actually list quite a few real estate sites - I quite like nosing around the listings. There are thousands of editors with real estate categories they can edit in, a mere handful of editors are real estate agents, so the concept of blocking sites is ridiculous in the extreme.

Most locality categories where real estate sites are supposed to be suggested to are not by any stretch overloaded. Having said that I rarely stumble into US real estate categories and it shocks me the amount of spam and mirrors received there. Maybe it is the way the industry is structured in the US but in other countries the company/franchise office is listed and that is it. Agents's sites are rarely submitted and generally contain no unique information, being just a sub-set of the one already listed.

There are a lot of webmasters who want DMOZ to be something it isn't and will never be - a listing service with SLAs and customer service reps and... just like Yahoo but with no fees. It ain't gonna happen, this is a volunteer project with an entirely different culture and objectives. Our idea of improvement might go along the lines of ceasing to list individual agent sites for example. If you take the time to educate yourself or listen to editors, so you fully understand the project it would cause a lot less frustration, and fewer irritable exchanges with editors about what they should be doing and how.

andysands said:

Just out of interest - Do you actually think a category with 17,000 real estate agents would be useful to surfers. It would take 10 minutes to load on screen with a DSL connection! I'd have thought 185 real estate agents was more than enough to choose from.

I'd say looking at Vegas Business categories, that more Oil and Gas or printing companies would be more useful than adding another real estate site. Wouldn't you agree?

A quick peek at Yellow pages site for Vegas finds 1600 businesses related to real estate in some way, of which some subset will be estate agents.. and of those some subset will have websites, and some subset of those will have submitted them to ODP. If a yellow pages phonebook that supposedly lists any business with a phone number in Vegas can only manage 1600, it is hardly fair to have a go at us for not having 17,000.

Of course as a webmaster if you are not one of those 185 sites you are going to feel hard done by. That is perfectly understandable on your part. But if you can try and see the issue from our side too, it may help put some perspective on things.

Kind Regards,

Andy

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Question, do you really think consumers come from dmoz to a real estate site? I can tell you I have logs that would show other wise if you believe that. We all know that most likely 80+% of the sites that want to be in dmoz are not looking to be listed for traffic, they want a listing for the help it gives them within mainly google. Come on lets be real honest here, I dont think any of us are idiots here.

I would like to say that you at least responded without being rude and for that I applaud you.

oneeye said:

I actually list quite a few real estate sites - I quite like nosing around the listings. There are thousands of editors with real estate categories they can edit in, a mere handful of editors are real estate agents, so the concept of blocking sites is ridiculous in the extreme.

Most locality categories where real estate sites are supposed to be suggested to are not by any stretch overloaded. Having said that I rarely stumble into US real estate categories and it shocks me the amount of spam and mirrors received there. Maybe it is the way the industry is structured in the US but in other countries the company/franchise office is listed and that is it. Agents's sites are rarely submitted and generally contain no unique information, being just a sub-set of the one already listed.

There are a lot of webmasters who want DMOZ to be something it isn't and will never be - a listing service with SLAs and customer service reps and... just like Yahoo but with no fees. It ain't gonna happen, this is a volunteer project with an entirely different culture and objectives. Our idea of improvement might go along the lines of ceasing to list individual agent sites for example. If you take the time to educate yourself or listen to editors, so you fully understand the project it would cause a lot less frustration, and fewer irritable exchanges with editors about what they should be doing and how.

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I would like to say that even though you and I dont agree at least you didnt get rude. The world doesnt have to agree but we all can have our opinions without bashing one another.

As stated in the last post we all know that the only reason people want in this directory is because of the added benefit with google. I have a real good case study, that I wont mention but I know that once a site lost its dmoz listing it fell from # 1 in google shortly after.

I do agree with you there are a lot of mirror sites out there in real estate, but you can only write information about a subject so many ways. As for unique content, how do you know if agent A has the corect content over agent B. I can tell you a lot of real estate agents that have websites dont take the time to research or write good content. LOL I have even had one of your agents listed in dmoz take and copy a few of my pages without even removing my links or name from the pages..lol..I also know you are not the internet police...

My point being is that we as agents who own websites only want the dmoz listing for its benefits it will supply us for google, anyone that says different is not telling the truth.

Back to the unique content, I have information about certain developments that no other site I have seen has, does this make my site or sites unique? I would hope not with just some small bit of information, but yet that seems to be what I gather from most of the statements from the editors.

Question, do you really think consumers come from dmoz to a real estate site? I can tell you I have logs that would show other wise if you believe that.

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I am well aware that many users exclusively search using search engines. I am probably not a representative example - I use directories for some stuff because I know they can be more useful - especially in areas where lots of keyword optimisation has been done by SEOs, rendering the search engine results less useful.

I moved house recently, I looked up estate agents in dmoz for the town I was moving to and checked their sites for what rented residential stuff they had available. It is much easier to find an agency focused a specific town or area of a city by looking in dmoz than it is to wade through search engine listings.

The industry in the UK (where I am from and edit most) is less complicated I suspect. A large number of our big estate agencies are subsidiaries of big banks or building societies - so they get one listing at the national or regional level - rather than each locality they have a branch.

The rest are smaller local operators with a few branches who get listed at the lowest region appropriate to their branches. We don't have hundreds of individuals operating on behalf of bigger real estate agencies. Instead, in the UK, most staff are direct employees of the agencies and work in the branches.

I haven't edited in US based real estate categories yet. I might do some day, but before I could I would have to take time to understand the real estate guidelines for the US part of the directory and get a feel for the business model you guys have.

We all know that most likely 80+% of the sites that want to be in dmoz are not looking to be listed for traffic, they want a listing for the help it gives them within mainly google. Come on lets be real honest here, I dont think any of us are idiots here.

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80% of the sites that want to be in dmoz, don't necessarily correlate to the sites that should be in dmoz though! Many of the unique sites out there have probably never heard of dmoz or SEO, and yet would add great value to the directory.

That is why we have human editors - to go and hunt them down, and a submissions system - for people to suggest them.

Alas in certain areas of the directory - the submissions system has been abused by webmasters of unlistable sites. This means we need increased checks and balances to detect these unlistable submissions, and these processes reduce the amount of time available for reviewing listable sites - and thus massively increase the review time. Worse still they put off many editors from even visiting those categories.

If I knew every site in an unreviewed queue for a category was genuinely listable per our guidelines and was waiting review in the correct category. Then I could probably write titles and descriptions for a hundred sites in just a few hours - and then list them all. If only that was ever the case :-/

Blame the spammers, not the volunteers trying to wade through their mess.

There is one way submitters can possibly (though no guarantees) expedite the listing of their site that is completely legitimate and above board. Follow the guidelines to the letter. I mean:

a) select the right category, the one the site belongs in not the one that would be best for marketing purposes. For real estate that is the locality where the base office is situated.

b) Write a title exactly according to the guidelines - there are specific real estate guidelines that explain precisely the format.

c) Write a description that is exactly compliant with the guidelines - no hype, no keyword stuffing, no unnecessary repetition, no advertising copy.

d) Submit one site only, no mirrors, no fraternal mirrors, no doorways, no nothing but the original principal site.

e) If you restrict areas of the site to registered users provide a guest login and password for the editor within the description in [square brackets]

f) Do not resubmit the site unless an editor says it is OK to do so.

When editors go to review a list of possible suggestions, those that are easy to list because they require minimal work and it is clear the submitter has taken great care to read, understand, and obey the guidelines, might, just might, gain the attention of the editor. If they find it a pleasure to add your site, if they enjoy the experience of editing in that category, who knows what productivity increases that might prompt.

Spread the word, tell the NAR to tell their members, experiment, try following the guidelines, see if it works, there is nothing to lose. Frankly I don't care why anyone wants a listing, it isn't my role to make judgements on the motivations of the submitter if they provide a good addition to our project, help us with our objectives at the same time as helping themselves with their objectives. Matching people with new homes and enabling people to move by selling their homes is not an evil profession though the activities of some are bent on proving otherwise. Play fair with us and we'll play fair with you, simple.

Oneeye, I love this post - thanks.

oneeye said:

There is one way submitters can possibly (though no guarantees) expedite the listing of their site that is completely legitimate and above board. Follow the guidelines to the letter. I mean:

a) select the right category, the one the site belongs in not the one that would be best for marketing purposes. For real estate that is the locality where the base office is situated.

b) Write a title exactly according to the guidelines - there are specific real estate guidelines that explain precisely the format.

c) Write a description that is exactly compliant with the guidelines - no hype, no keyword stuffing, no unnecessary repetition, no advertising copy.

d) Submit one site only, no mirrors, no fraternal mirrors, no doorways, no nothing but the original principal site.

e) If you restrict areas of the site to registered users provide a guest login and password for the editor within the description in [square brackets]

f) Do not resubmit the site unless an editor says it is OK to do so.

When editors go to review a list of possible suggestions, those that are easy to list because they require minimal work and it is clear the submitter has taken great care to read, understand, and obey the guidelines, might, just might, gain the attention of the editor. If they find it a pleasure to add your site, if they enjoy the experience of editing in that category, who knows what productivity increases that might prompt.

Spread the word, tell the NAR to tell their members, experiment, try following the guidelines, see if it works, there is nothing to lose. Frankly I don't care why anyone wants a listing, it isn't my role to make judgements on the motivations of the submitter if they provide a good addition to our project, help us with our objectives at the same time as helping themselves with their objectives. Matching people with new homes and enabling people to move by selling their homes is not an evil profession though the activities of some are bent on proving otherwise. Play fair with us and we'll play fair with you, simple.

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My own personal last submission was wrote by an ex editall, so I am positive it was submitted correctly, yet to this day it has not made it to the directory. Then this same person also has a site that was listed and after he came to defend my position for the submission, shortly thereafter had his site removed from the directory...you have to ask yourself why.

I am sure you all know about all the complaining about the editors here and the way it is preceived that ODP is run. I will say that one poster from another forum made a great suggestion. All those that are not happy with dmoz, dont complain to them, send this directly to AOL. Maybe if AOL gets enough emails and complains something will be done with those editors that most webmasters once again preceive as using dmoz for their own personal serps machine.

I can not state what others have intended when they submit, but I do know that every site that I have has been submitted correctly and they have unique content, yet none of them are listed...go figure.

Just as in any business you have the good and the bad. Some people when dealing with this type of income will go to all means to get the transaction closed. Just as there are good editors in dmoz, I believe there are bad editors. Same goes for Realtors, Some are good and some are bad. When however you have masses pointing fingers, something must be wrong.

VegasWayne said:

My own personal last submission was wrote by an ex editall, ....

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Perhaps there's a reason he's an ex-editall? (I don't know the person or his editor handle. But there are a few editalls and metas who were removed, rather than resigning.)

I am positive it was submitted correctly

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Obviously it wasn't. It breached our guidelines quite clearly and if you disclosed everything to a former editall, if you can't work it out, he surely can. As you know we can't discuss specifics but the reason is quite clear in the guidance actually on the Suggest an URL submission form. I've just checked and the decision was spot on; and being British with no connection with real estate except l like reviewing real estate sites, I have absolutely no possible reason to be bias one way or the other. Neither has any other editor who has formally reviewed the site as far as I know.

When however you have masses pointing fingers, something must be wrong.

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Depends on who comprises the masses pointing fingers. Think of a DMOZ rejection as all the editors pointing fingers, something must be wrong.

arubin]Perhaps there said:

-editall? (I don't know the person or his editor handle. But there are a few editalls and metas who were removed, rather than resigning.)

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Yes the reason he is an ex editall is he broke his neck in a car wreck and wasnt able to perform his duties being in the hospital and all.

oneeye said:

Obviously it wasn't. It breached our guidelines quite clearly and if you disclosed everything to a former editall, if you can't work it out, he surely can. As you know we can't discuss specifics but the reason is quite clear in the guidance actually on the Suggest an URL submission form. I've just checked and the decision was spot on; and being British with no connection with real estate except l like reviewing real estate sites, I have absolutely no possible reason to be bias one way or the other. Neither has any other editor who has formally reviewed the site as far as I know.


Depends on who comprises the masses pointing fingers. Think of a DMOZ rejection as all the editors pointing fingers, something must be wrong.

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I do believe you, however I can not see how an ex editall would make such a mistake, even though we are all human. I also consider myself somewhat intelligent about some of your rules and regs, yet I cant find anything wrong with the site in question. I would also like to say that if an editor surfs the web looking for good real estate sites to add, why has none of the other sites I have ever been added to the directory and they are easy to find.

>why has none of the other sites I have ever been added to the directory ....

Are all these sites all linked together so that the surfer can easily see their interrelationship (and the editor can easily pick out the main entry page to list)?

Or do they seem to conceal or disguise their interrelationship, so that each one convicts the others of deceptive misinformation about the real source of the content, and causes the editors to suspect that they must all be fraudulent?

On the internet, nobody knows you're not a crook. That's an advantage for some people -- but it's a disadvantage that honest people must recognize and address.

Yes the reason he is an ex editall is he broke his neck in a car wreck and wasnt able to perform his duties being in the hospital and all.

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Editors are reinstated all the time who have been away because of illness or accident, even after years away. Editors are never denied reinstatement just because they had an accident. Period.

hutcheson said:

>why has none of the other sites I have ever been added to the directory ....

Are all these sites all linked together so that the surfer can easily see their interrelationship (and the editor can easily pick out the main entry page to list)?

Or do they seem to conceal or disguise their interrelationship, so that each one convicts the others of deceptive misinformation about the real source of the content, and causes the editors to suspect that they must all be fraudulent?

On the internet, nobody knows you're not a crook. That's an advantage for some people -- but it's a disadvantage that honest people must recognize and address.

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What are you trying to say that our sites are fraudulent? I truly hope not, that is considered libel. Nothing within our sites are conceled or disguised. The real source of content is my knowledge and my buyers agents knowledge of this real estate market.

Nothing illegal about having multiple related sites with different URL's all interconnected. However, submitting them ot the ODP is against the guidelines and anyone who is doing that is beng fraudulent.

The problem is that in the drive to get sites listed site owners try to push to see what our limits are. The sad thing is that these people don't want to get listed in ODP because it's a good directory, and think most editors are corrupt. They only want to be listed because of Google - as someone once said "why else would you want to be listed in there...LOL"

I also own a dartboard but other that that I don't have a life :Omg: