Site was submitted twice by mistake!

After waiting over a year for my original DMOZ submission to no avail, I spent the time to create a quality link and carefully selected the category before submitting it to the directory. I was hoping that maybe it would be reviewed this time and, if so it might be approved.

Anyway, one of my employees is tasked with trying to get links for our website in their down time and I just found out they re-submitted to DMOZ and I expect it was not done carefully or to the right category. I realize that double submission is a major problem, especially when it is a hap-hazard one like this guy probably did.

Is there any way I can recover from this? What should I do? I suspect getting into DMOZ is a lost cause, but this certainly won't help my chances....

Submitting a site twice isn't a big problem, people spam the directory much worse than that. Actually, I wouldn't even classify 2 submissions as close to spam. This should not hurt your chances of being listed at all.

The problem is that my employee probably submitted the link in a way that wouldn't be acceptable to the DMOZ guidelines. In other words, he used one of our standard SEO taglines we use when we do link building campaigns.

Does a submission automatically overwrite the previous submission, or do both sit there until DMOZ finds an editor to review them independently?

A new submittal to the SAME category (usually) overwrites a prior one. A new submittal to a different category doesn't. But two submittals aren't going to bring the spam patrol down on you -- eventually the editors figure out there are two of them, and either delete one "pro forma", or reroute it to Regional (if it's possibly appropriate for a second listing).

We expect to rewrite the description -- at least 99% of the time, we do. Not a problem! We take what help we get, and don't complain that someone MIGHT have helped more.

On a somewhat related topic. Is there any way to tell if an editor even exists for a given category? I have a reputable ecommerce website: HitchSource.com

If I check the other listings in my category, I find a lot of sites that are significantly more "content challenged" than mine. That gives me hope that someday I'll be one of the lucky ones. However, I've waited almost 1.5 years since the original submission and still no cigar. I'm about to give up all together.

Any words of encouragement?

Yes, the words of encouragement are in our FAQ, which specifically addresses this issue.