Status of www.parkcityrealestateforsale.com

YOU EDITORS ARE JUST NOT DOING YOUR JOB

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If you think the editors job is to list your site, than you are totally correct.

But no, the editors job is to follow the guidelines of ODP, and the unrewarding job of editors in real estate is to follow the real estate guidelines to the letter.

http://dmoz.org/guidelines/regional/realestate.html

These guidelines were implemented to deal with the extremly aggressive [as proved by your post] tactics of real estates agents trying to get their [in many case multiple] sites listed.

So they have to decide whether to list http://www.internetproperties.com/b...IVATE_FRAMES/AGENTS/Park+City/1091737958.html or http://www.parkcityrealestateforsale.com/ or figure out whether you have other sites - multiply that by thousands of these submissions.

And as for customer service - I'm not sure why you believe you are one of our customers - but since you are not, there is no lack of customer service involved.

You may thing ODP operates like the local bakery, you walk in the door, you expect to be served in order,you expect to be served in a timely manner. If you don't get served the way you want, you complain to the manager, if the manasger does not help, you complain to the owner. If there is mold on the bread, you complain to the food regulatory authorities.

It's more like a store where people arrive carrying their home made deserts, and we decide whether or not to have them in our store, but we prefer to have only one desert from each person. There is no line up, but there are thousands and thousands of people standing outside the store, calling out to us. We look and see what's out there and pick and choose, sometimes we see someone who we think has tried to give us two cakes already, sometimes we see someone who had moldy cake last time round, so we jump to someone else. A lot of the cakes look the same as everyone else's cake, so there is no rush to put them on the shelf.

[And don't worry that I took the time to write this, I don't edit real estate sites, and I don't edit in Utah]

i am a web master with many clients, at this stage odp gets an "f" for customer service and efficiency and a very unhappy customer

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You are not a customer, we don't have customers. We are engaged in a big project to catalog websites into a directory, we invite suggestions from the public, you've suggested a site, we haven't got around to it yet. You haven't entered into any kind of business transaction with us, you haven't paid any money for someone to look at your suggestion, you have no grounds for complaint as far as I can see.

YOU EDITORS ARE JUST NOT DOING YOUR JOB.

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We don't have a job with DMOZ, we are unpaid volunteers who edit as and when we can. Tell you what, I'll go look at your website when you've completed 2000 hours of work on a voluntary project - just email me with the evidence.

i should not be saying this for fear of you blackballing my listing

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Sites aren't "blackballed" for you misunderstanding the situation. When someone gets to your site it will be accepted or rejected based only on our guidelines for listing.

See you in July, if you want a further update.

parkcityrealestateforsale

thank you for your quick reply but your excuses are not acceptable " haven't gotten around to it yet" "nobody has felt like listing your web site" "your not a customer" "i will look at my site after you complete 2000 hours of work" are your answers to me. I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHAT CORPORATE ODP THINKS OF THESE ANSWERS. its only been a year. this is not a irate diatribe, its only the facts of one person trying to submit their site. i have read your submission guidelines and nowhere does it say it takes over a year for review. "it may take several weeks or more before your submission is reviewed". i believe that your real estate editors do have self interests and are discriminating against me and other real estate companies that want to be listed. please provide me with contact information to "customer service/relations" (or whatever you want to call user help dept.) at odp corporate offices.ps. being a volunteer does not mean i don't have to do my job. if you cannot handle the work move over for someone who will handle it properly, efficently and in a reasonable time.

please provide me with contact information to "customer service/relations" (or whatever you want to call user help dept.) at odp corporate offices

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ODP isn't a corporation, but a project hosted and administrated by Netscape Communication Corporation. Netscape is owned by AOL/Time Warner, which means they also own the ODP. I believe you can find contact information for TW here, but please make sure you have read all the pertinent documents about the ODP such as the General Information, the Social Contract and the submission policies linked from the Social Contract.

being a volunteer does not mean i don't have to do my job. if you cannot handle the work move over for someone who will handle it properly, efficently and in a reasonable time.

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Again, an editor's job is not anywhere defined as "reviewing sites suggested by the public". And if an editor who makes one good edit a month in a category with 1200 sites waiting to be reviewed was to be removed, that would mean twelve fewer edits in that category over a year. How would that benefit the directory or its users - the web surfers? Or even the web masters, who are not our customers or target users, but who have an interest in the directory all the same?

You can report suspected editorial abuse here.
http://report-abuse.dmoz.org/
Personally however, even though you have waited an obscene amount of time for a listing (review), it is not worth getting this worked up over.

As a web master with many clients, you should realize you are doing this client a disservice by acting this way on their behalf.

p.s. I don't 'work' for the ODP. In many cases I see site owners or webmasters having a difficult time here and add them to a directory where I do edit. I wouldn't in this case.

Corporate ODP, in the person of the last member of staff who expressed an opinion on this subject, thought that editors even answering questions like this was counterproductive, because it fostered the delusion that the project served webmasters in any way, form or fashion.

There is, I perceive, some merit in this opinion.

As for contacting "corporate" ODP: this forum is the public voice of "community" ODP. You are also welcome to write directly to "staff [at] dmoz.org" (you know where to put the @ symbol). I would recommend first informing yourself using the vast amount of material publicly available about the actual mission and process of the ODP. I'd also suggest toning down the arrogance.

As for standing aside for someone else: there is no need. We already aren't doing the job you envision (as you have noticed): and we've even promised (see the social contract!) NEVER to do that job!

So you (and anyone else) is free to start in on it any time now. We won't impede; we won't compete; we won't contemn. (If you produce something worth using, we'll probably use it to make our process even more efficient!)

We can't conceivably stand aside any further than that.

You are asking for answers to invalid questions, which is why they do not seem like valid answers to you. Somewhere along the line you have fundamentally misunderstood the entire DMOZ concept.

Imagine that in your spare time you offered and provided your time and skills to people entirely free of charge. Your idea is to help people to find things on the Internet, they are the ones you intend to help, not webmasters. Though your basic concept is to pick what you think will help people find things on the Internet yourself, members of the public are allowed to make suggestions too. As a result you receive a lot of those requests from webmasters to give them your free time and skills, to assist in their marketing efforts. You are happy to consider all reasonable requests but you have a limited amount of time for this in your spare time - you have to earn a living after all. So you prioritize - you do the things you personally think are the most important first. If you have time you might get down into other priorities, like people who would like to make money out of your free time and skills. That's reasonable isn't it?

Now someone complains. They want you taken to task, even taken off the job, because you are costing them money by not dealing with their request for your free service, a service you have never claimed or intended to provide and that you do in your spare time, fast enough. They want someone else to do those tasks free of charge in their spare time, faster, with greater efficiency, and treat those who want something for nothing as if they were paying customers. And it is grossly unfair because you have given one of their competitors some of your time, it is outrageous you should choose to spend your spare time how you choose.

What is your response? They are not your customer, they have only suggested you provide them with something for nothing, yet they harrass you, complain about you, insult you. They don't understand that if as a result you throw in the towel there simply isn't anyone else mad enough to give their services for free so they can get something for nothing. Though there is no shortage of people happy to work for a few hours when they can on something that interests them.

Well, that is basically our model. We give our time freely for a project we believe in, we will consider suggestions when we have the time, and spend our time in whatever areas of the project we personally are most interested in. You can huff, and you can puff, and you can contact Netscape/AOL, it will not change the basic principles of DMOZ - they were the ones who nurtured it and defined the principles!

There are plenty of other directories that operate on commercial business lines. That is their concept. They will take your money, review your site according to their service level agreements, provide you with a customer care hotline, and bow and scrape and call you sir. That isn't us, never will be us, so it is a waste of time trying to deal with us as if we are the least bit interested in operating in that way. If it is a customer you want to be, go find someone who wants your custom. In the meantime your suggestion is awaiting consideration, it may be dealt with tomorrow, next year, the year after, who knows. You can ask again in 6 months as to its status. Politely, or I fear the volunteers here will exercise their right to spend time on other people here who appreciate the DMOZ concepts and what editors actually do as opposed to what you would like them to do.

This thread has gone on long enough.

You were given a status update on December 30 and, per our forum guidelines (which you can read yourself), you are next eligible to get a status check anytime after June 30, 2005. We are not picking on you or telling you anything that we don't tell everyone else who comes here to get the status of their suggestion.

You've also been given contact information for "corporate ODP" and information about submitting an abuse report. Feel free to make use of that information. Any other discussion here of your site suggestion or your perception of abuse in relation to it is inappropriate and contrary to our forum guidelines.

This thread is being closed. You may come back to this forum in 6 months if the site hasn't been listed by then and we'll reopen the thread at that time.