It's a shame though because I can see that there are genuine sites that are being effected by the whole process of 'Not Knowing'.
In one sense, no, there really aren't. That is, owners of innocent sites can''t possibly be affected by not knowing. Because owners of sites (innocent or guilty) don't have "lobbyist credentials" -- whether the owner knows nothing about the site submittal or is an editor and knows everything--lobbying for your own site is not acceptable and not tolerated. The site MUST stand on its own, in front of DIS-interested persons, in order to be listed.
But even ignoring that important point--the number of sites that are actually listable even though their suggestion has been rejected--is extremely small. (For awhile I was reviewing a queue of duplicate suggestions, and I could get a second look at the rejected ones. The error rate was down in the 1% range. If you think about it, introducing a process with overhead of over 100%, just to address a 1% loss rate -- isn't something anyone would think wise. (Spending the same effort on reviewing twice as many unreviewed sites, (with, in my experience, 5-10% listable rate) would be a MUCH better use of volunteer time.
If there was some sort of notification or at least a set time then at least people would have something to go on.
But it wouldn't have anything to do with building the Open Directory. And that's the fundamental problem. The volunteers have volunteered to build a directory. Anything that doesn't contribute to that -- shouldn't be done under the auspices of the Open Directory Project.
By saying it could take from 2 weeks to 2 years to get your site listed and we don't inform you if it's listed or not, is really not good.
Neither of those things is true. What IS true is:
(1) A site suggestion doesn't create deadlines, priorities, timetables, or schedules. A site can be reviewed and listed before it's even suggested. Some sites were listed at least 10 YEARS BEFORE BEING SUBMITTED. And some submitted sites will NEVER BE LISTED. The time of site suggestion has nothing, nothing at all, to do with the time of site review. Since the two events are neither causally nor chronologically related, it's meaningless to talk about the time between them.
(2) We inform EVERYBODY ON THE WEB when a site is listed. How could we keep it secret from the website owner and the site suggestor(s)?
I think just as a school teacher would mark homework and explain what is wrong with it should so that the child could learn from their mistakes should be applied here. After all the editor may be corrupt and need reporting.
In your haste to handle the hypothetical case of editor abuse, you're ignoring the real experiential fact that most site suggestions are corrupt and need to be tracked without the corrupt abuser knowing about the investigation.
Editor abuse exists -- although it's not as common as editor error, which is just as bad for the webmaster (if not so bad for the directory). But we'll have to find a better way of investigating it than to give up the confidentiality of site suggestion abuse investigations.
There is nothing wrong with a bit of professionalism and manners.
Professionalism is great--for corporate drones and prostitutes. Amateurism is for idealists and lovers. Think of the ODP as a labor of love.
Manners are a complex issue. If you want to look at a real-world custom analogous to the ODP treatment of useless suggestions, look at Quaker "shunning." The solecism of wasting an editor's time on useless suggestions is responded to by ... an ever-so-polite refusal to notice the offense.
The notion that suggestions are refused because of some error in the way they were made, reveals a deep misunderstanding of the way the ODP works. Editors are looking for sites. A suggestion that has ANY useful value should be taken for whatever it's worth, and/or passed on to someone who can make something of it. There are all sorts of things that a suggestion is good for, even if the site is not listable: such as:
-- indicating that a particular subject is poorly represented in the ODP, leading to searches for other relevant sites to fill in the gap;
-- indicating a pattern of suggestor abuse, leading to quality improvements like removal of similar/related sites that should never have been mentioned;
-- indicating that a particular topic can't be easily found, leading to improved category structure and inter-category links.
Since the vast majority of honest webmasters won't ever suggest more than one (or two) sites, training those single-site suggestors for something they'll never do again, is a major waste of time.
The only exception to this would be website designers who create sites for other businesses and organizations. They ARE professionals, and (unlike amateur editors) SHOULD be held to professional standards. It is THEIR professional responsibility to know how to use the suggestion system non-abusively. If they aren't bright enough or industrious enough or polite enough to do that on their own, they don't deserve consideration or teaching or manners: they deserve to be ignored forever, if not longer. (If you ever discover such a suggestor who ISN'T being ignored, please report his sites in the Quality Feedback forum!)
