Site removed from DMOZ

Hi,
Our site has been removed from http://dmoz.org/Games/Gambling/Bingo/Online/ category.

Can someone please state reasons for removal? The site in question is one of the top 3 biggest UK bingo sites and it seems unusual for it to be removed for not fitting the category or not fulfilling DMOZ quality requirements. More surprising is that similar sites (running the same bingo software) are listed in the category.

We don't discuss individual websites here and I don't know (and please don't tell me) your site's URL anyway.

In general, there are lots of reasons why a website might be temporarily or permanently removed from our directory.

It might be broken.
It might be in transit to a better category.
It might not have sufficient unique content.
It might be found to be one of a group of related websites. We don't list those.
It might be an editor error.
It might be the correction of an editor error.

If you are convinced that your website is functional and conforms with our requirements, by all means re-suggest it - just the once - to the single most appropriate category. Some editor will evaluate it in due course but we can't predict when that might be.

Thank you for a quick response.

The site has been removed over last few days, don't you have a log of changes? Cannot you inform us what was the actual reason for removal?

I see that the category has no editor, who does the changes in this case?

In extremely rare cases, an editor might contact the site owner to let them know that a site is being removed from the directory. In my five years as an editor I've done it once or maybe twice, when I've found that a site with excellent potential was broken because of bad HTML which was easily fixed (and I didn't mention being a dmoz editor, I just contacted them as a user, which indeed I was, to let them know. The HTML was fixed and I added the site again. I think it may have happened twice.)

But in almost every case there is really nothing to tell the owner. If the site doesn't have unique content or is part of a group of sites, s/he presumably knows. If the site is removed from sight because it's being moved to another category there is no point in wasting time by emailing the site's owner about it.

Regardless of whether there is a named editor or not, there are a couple of hundred editors who can edit in a category: all editors who are named higher up in the category tree, plus about 230 people with editing rights in the entire directory.

Your best bet is to follow Jim's advice.

You presumably didn't notice the first part of my response above.

We don't discuss individual websites here

Nea, thanks for answering.

Jimnoble, I have noticed the first part of your response, I simply found it puzzling that an established site, with thousands of members, with well known brand, perfectly fitting the category has been removed from the DMOZ, yet (no disrespect) sites providing much less value for money are happily listed there. Which raises the question of criteria you use to evaluate sites.

Moreover, I think that one of our competitors, the site that epitomise "bingo" in the UK, has been removed, too. I cannot be sure of that though, but I think I remember seeing them listed there too.

I wouldn't really bother if we were not listed in the first place, I have learned not to rely on my submissions to DMOZ at all. I was then pleasantly surprised to find us listed after all. But I honestly cannot understand the reason for removal - it definitely doesn't improve the quality of your directory not to list our site (or our competitors for that matter).

It makes me wonder. That's it.

I haven't looked at the category, nor at your site (and do not intend to), but one of the things you said intrigued me:

More surprising is that similar sites (running the same bingo software) are listed in the category

Click to expand...

If you are running the same bingo software, how can you claim to have unique content?

And, if you are running the same software, how would it really benefit our customers (the surfers!) to list yet another bingo site?

spectregunner said:

I haven't looked at the category, nor at your site (and do not intend to), but one of the things you said intrigued me:



If you are running the same bingo software, how can you claim to have unique content?

And, if you are running the same software, how would it really benefit our
customers (the surfers!) to list yet another bingo site?

Click to expand...

Its very easy to explain. It's what you do with that software makes the difference. The software is what runs the game, yet each site can have it designed and modified to its liking, including additional options, functionality and content that other sites, running the same software, do not have. If only for that reason, our site has much more value than the others, as it has enormous amount of additional content comparing to the sites you list there.

Even more important is the fact that the sites in question are largely community based sites, and the users themselves create the value. Its like forums, they may be running on the same software, yet you cannot classify them as a duplicate content if one of them has more members, more heated and more insightful discussion than the other. From the players perspective the quality of our site cannot be really compared to some of those listed. And do not get me wrong, its not only about our site (we are doing all right and are not desperate about DMOZ listing) - there are other great bingo sites that are missing in your category, and as I mentioned above, I think they were removed as well...