Several re-submits over several years and still nothing

I originally submitted my web hosting company, "Infuseweb", to DMOZ right before the server crash. I waited 6 months or so until the problem was supposedly resolved then submitted again at you guys' recommendation. Waited another 6 months and still nothing, so I tried a last ditch effort 2-3 months ago and again, still nothing.

I'm seriously at a loss as to why this is taking SOOO long. I've tried to be as patient and understand as I can be, but at some point you've got to scratch your head and say "what's the deal?" There's nothing on the site that should be delaying getting on DMOZ, and given 2 years someone should have gotten around to reviewing it, right? And without a feedback mechanism to know what the hold up is or view a status, who knows if every time you resubmit you're put at the bottom of the list again.

Anyway, I tried to submit my web hosting company to a specific category:

http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Hosting/I/

So what's going on? I'd appreciate some help/guidance

given 2 years someone should have gotten around to reviewing it, right?

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Sorry, but whilst ideally all suggestions would be reviewed quickly, no, 2 years is not an abnormal wait for review in some categories.

And without a feedback mechanism to know what the hold up is or view a status, who knows if every time you resubmit you're put at the bottom of the list again.

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We tried status reports, they achieved nothing for either the webmaster or the editors. Every time you resubmit to the same category your suggestion overwrites any previous ones there, so your suggestion goes into the pool of sites with the later date. Editors can sort the pool by various criteria, one of which is date, so in that case you would be at the bottom of the sorted page, but usually it isn't relevant anyway. Few editors work solely in date order. Your best chance is to submit with a non hyped title and description close to the guidelines - the editor is more likely to see that as requiring less work to process and review it in preference to the spammier suggestions.

Thanks, but I didn't submit any hype. No advertising. No gimmicks. I tried to follow the instructions to the letter.

Maybe you guys should indicate that sites won't be reviewed for years instead of saying "2 weeks". That leads one to believe that if 2 weeks go by and nothing has happened that one should resubmit. Certainly if 6 months go by, anyway.

I mean, my site is a no brainer. I submitted to the right category, have a clean site, didn't do any sort of marketing in the description. And still 2 years have gone by. Seriously, sure you guys aren't run by the US Government?

I believe it says something like "two weeks or more", so while technically correct, it does give a somewhat misleading impression of the time between a suggestion and a review. Unfortunately, the user-facing documentation is something that only AOL staff are able to change -- and that particular part is something that we suggested for improvement some time ago.

However, one thing that the site submission instructions do make very clear IMO, is that you should only suggest your site once to one category. It seems a lot of people have trouble following that particular part...

However, one thing that the site submission instructions do make very clear IMO, is that you should only suggest your site once to one category. It seems a lot of people have trouble following that particular part..

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Sure, when it takes 2 years to process a request is it any wonder? Especially when the system crashed and we had to resubmit again, and then there is nothing to indicate your status in the queue, and the fact that requests aren't even reviewed in any particular order. So when you say "resubmitting pushes your request to the list of domains further out" what does that actually mean? lol.

Why not put some sort of cross check to check the queue and if it sees the domain is already submitted then display a warning message saying "hey, we got your request and it's still processing...if you submit now, your request will be pushed to the bottom of the queue" (which isn't processed in any particular order). That would stop resubmissions pretty quickly, no?

So can anyone tell me where my request is in the "queue" and if it will ever get added?

There is no "queue". Suggestions goes into something more like a "pool", and editors may or may not use that as a source of potential URLs to list.

The process is quite random and we don´t guarantee that public suggestions will be listed.

Wow. So what I'm hearing is "good luck getting your link submitted because it may never even be looked at." That's not very encouraging

So what's the point of this "huge open directory" if it's pretty much "randomly" being updated?

Well, I guess maybe I'll check back in about 10 years Course, by then I'll probably have a different company and will have to start the process over again

So what's the point of this "huge open directory" if it's pretty much "randomly" being updated?

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I think you're coming at this from the wrong end. It's not about listing an individual site for an individual webmaster. It's about providing a collection of useful sites for a surfer who's interested in a particular topic.

All the editors are volunteers, and presumably are donating as much of their free time to help improve the directory for surfers as they feel they want to. Within those constraints, we are improving the quality and comprehensiveness of the directory as fast as we can. What more would you have us do?

I appreciate the effort. I'm sure there's a lot to take on. I'm just confused as to why such a simple request has gone on so long.

The whole "pool" thing perplexes me. That leads one to assume that sites have been in the pool for years until someone "feels" like getting to it. If you want to make the site more relevant and helpful to everyone, then I would think you'd want to be reviewing all submissions in order of submittal, which means a queued list would make sense.

Randomly reviewing sites leads one to believe there is a bias. If a reviewer "feels" like reviewing a site because it's "easy" or they're friends with the submitter, then this site is truly not adding URL's in a balanced fashion. Maybe this isn't the intent, I don't know.

Anyway, who knows where my link is now or if it will ever get reviewed. I'll just forget about it and move on.

Randomly reviewing sites leads one to believe there is a bias

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Au contraire.

Why would a website that was suggested over a couple of years ago take priority over one that was never suggested at all? Is it more valuable or worthy just because the owner says so? Of course it isn't.

Evaluating suggested sites in date order and ignoring those that were never suggested - now that would be showing bias.

So you guys are reviewing sites that aren't suggested here as well? If that's the case, then it sounds like you've bitten off more than you can chew. That would be virtually impossible given the sheer number of sites constantly being added and removed daily. My understanding, and maybe this is my ignorance, was that you had to submit your site to get reviewed and added. This would make sense.

But the mere fact a site was submitted SHOULD give priority because someone took the extra effort to get it listed. If I remember, this is how the old search engines used to do things. If you submitted a URL it would be reviewed more quickly than it would take the spiders to get to it. And to me, this would make sense since the site is probably fairly current and still active (hence why it was most likely submitted) versus one that might have been sitting stagnant on the open Internet for some time that no one has paid attention to. And logically, I would think this would mean the site would be easier to review because it's more current and relevant.

My 2 cents. IMHO Regardless, you guys are going to do things how you've been doing them and what I say is probably going to have little bearing on your actions or my site being reviewed. So, this would seem a pointless discussion.

So you guys are reviewing sites that aren't suggested here as well? If that's the case, then it sounds like you've bitten off more than you can chew.

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You are correct in your statement that we add sites that aren't suggested. In fact that is where we get most of our sites. I have probably added about 10000 sites in my short time at ODP and I would guess that less than a third of them have been suggested ones. By your method there would be about 6000 less sites added by me. Do you think that is good just to satisfy webmasters?

You seem to think that the ODP was set up and run for the benefit of webmasters. This is not the case. It is a project to list websites for the benefit of users. IMO the ability for people to offer suggestions is a courtesy and just one VERY small resource for editors. I have managed to find over 6000 sites by myself for the categories I work in. That IMO is to the benefit of the categories I have edited.

But the mere fact a site was submitted SHOULD give priority because someone took the extra effort to get it listed.

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I totally and utterly disagree for the exact same reason as above. Listing your suggestion is not my priority. Being part of a human edited directory is, and your suggestion is part of that but certainly not a priority.

The problem you have is that you want your site listed and are not worried or concerned about anybody else. We want all unique websites listed and our priority is to all and the users. You have blinkers on unfortunately and a total misconception about this project. You are nether a priority or being ignored. Just like everyone else.

I think it would actually sort everything out if we stopped accepting suggestions. Would that help you? No I suggest.

So, this would seem a pointless discussion.

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Unless you actually start to understand what this project is about, it probably is.

Our focus is on building categories to be good resources on various topics. In a category for web hosts, the likelihood for web site owners to be aware of the ODP is fairly high. In a category about folk dancing, or about kiddie floorball, or about some location in the Åland Islands, the likelihood is much lower. But there are editors who are interested in building informational resources about folk dancing, and about floorball, and about locations all over the world (not to mention in over 80 languages). It would make no sense whatsoever that a site had to be suggested for it to be listed in such categories.

To be sure, there are categories where site suggestions wait for a long time, because there are not enough editors there. But in other categories, suggested sites are snatched up immediately and reviewed, listed or rejected - and sites that haven't been suggested are also reviewed, listed or rejected. We don't force editors to work in categories they aren't interested in because this is a hobby which we do for fun and for the love of it, but we do get new editors with different interests every day, in different categories all over the directory.

LOL, you guys crack me up. It's been TWO years and still you're justifying that I don't have any reason to be even slightly annoyed that it has taken this long. Good thing my business doesn't depend on getting listed with DMOZ. I would have been out of business a LONG time ago.

You know, DMOZ is starting to remind me more and more of the SPEWS blacklist service, where they felt they were doing the "community" a service by blacklisting IP's that were "once upon a time" used as a spam IP, then offered no recourse to those poor souls who later got the IP through no fault of their own. Hence why everyone stopped using them

Anyway, thanks for setting me straight on how DMOZ works.

We've never claimed to be a listing service. So getting upset with us because we aren't one doesn't make much sense.

gloria, when I worked in a public library in my teens, from time to time there'd be parents who were upset because we didn't provide child care services. This place keeps reminding me of those people

LOL, you guys crack me up.

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Glad we can be of service.

It's been TWO years and still you're justifying that I don't have any reason to be even slightly annoyed that it has taken this long.

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I take it you are assuming that the site wasn't reviewed and not included of course it must be a super dooper site it yours

Good thing my business doesn't depend on getting listed with DMOZ. I would have been out of business a LONG time ago.

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Exactly so why are you banging on !!

Thanks to all 7 or 8 of the moderators here who took the time out of their busy review schedules for setting me straight. Sorry to be a bother.

2- 3 months is not long

I one of my workers posted my site in 2002. Apparently he posted to the wrong directory some how. We have resubmitted and have gotten no where.


We ahve a good site - it is ranked high in the Search Engines but we cant get in DMOZ.


Where can we communicate with someone to find out the problem and correct it?

Does DMOZ have the right to refuse a site forever?

I one of my workers posted my site in 2002. Apparently he posted to the wrong directory some how. We have resubmitted and have gotten no where.

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The wrong category is not a problem since the majority of the sites suggested but unreviewed were lost in the server crash at the end of 2006.

Go ahead and suggest it again to the correct category, and try to use a guidelines-compliant title and description.