Status Request HometownUSA.com

Please let me know the status of http://www.hometownusa.com/al/Abbeville.html, submitted to
http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Alabama/Localities/A/Abbeville/

Last Submission 10/14/2004
Thank You

Matt Hunt

Reviewed and declined.

Hello,

May I ask why it was declined and what I must do to correct the problem?

Matt Hunt

Our forum's rules prevent such discussions. Please see our submission guidelines and the answer will lie within.

Hi,
My apologies, I did just review the quidelines and nothing stands out as to what I may have done incorrectly. May I send you a personal message to discuss this?

You may not ask why it was declined. The reason is nearly always the same: inadequate unique content (but see below)

The only "problem" to "correct" is that of your abuse of the submittal policy, which does not allow submitting deeplinks. And all that you must do is just stop it.

[For the record, the editors are allowed by their guidelines to list deeplinks "in exceptional cases", a bar bar high enough that this site could leap under it without risking concussion]. But that's not really relevant anyway.

However, the site itself has also been submitted variously, and is currently waiting review in Regional/North_America/United_States/Society_and_Culture/Chats_and_Forums . You're welcome to check on its status in six months.

I'm sorry, when I read the guidelines they seemed to indicate that submitting deeplinks was not against the guidelines but that it was up to the editors descretion.

I honestly don't remember submitting to the Regional/North_America/United_States/Society_and_Culture/Chats_and_Forums category. But I will wait to check status again for 6 months.

Since you seem to indicate that deeplinking guidelines have "a bar bar high enough that this site could leap under it without risking concussion", am I correct in assuming that it is alright for me to submit deeplinks as long as they have more "adequate content"?

Matt

Read the submittal policies. They do not allow you to submit ANY deeplinks.

EDITORS (NOT submitters) are allowed by THEIR guidelines to exercise THEIR judgment, and (if it mattered) ADEQUATE content is not the bar. EXCEPTIONAL is the bar.

There are also some categories where deeplinks are customary, but as a rule directories are almost never considered for deeplinks -- after all, you don't see 400,000 Yahoo links in the ODP, do you? And Yahoo is by any measure the obvious first directory to deeplink.

No I haven't seen yahoo deeplinks, but I have seen topix and mapquest.

Here is a quote from the guidelines, the only mention of deeplinks and it doesn't say that it is not allowed, only that it is by editors descretion: Now I can except that the page may not have been exceptional enough, but please don't say it isn't allowed when it is allowed.

"Please recognize that making the ODP a useful resource requires us to exercise broad editorial discretion in determining the content and structure of the directory. That discretion extends (but is not limited) to what sites to include, where in the directory sites are placed, whether and when to include more than one link to a site, when deep linking is appropriate, and the content of the title and description of the site."

Matt