Subject: Balloon Sculpting, Magic and Clowning cat

On my website (http://www.funwithballoons.com) I offer free instructions to make a balloon dog and sell instructions to make 9 other balloon animals.

A few months ago I submitted to
http://dmoz.org/Arts/Crafts/Balloon_Sculpting/

About 6 weeks later I emailed the category editor to check the status of my submission. Since I haven’t received a response or been added to the directory, I did some more research to be sure I selected the right category. That’s when I found the shopping category:

http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Crafts/Supplies/Balloon_Sculpting/
description: This category lists websites that offer supplies for balloon sculpting such as: balloons, pumps, instruction materials.

Unfortunately, there is no editor, so I submitted my application. That was denied, but the reviewer kindly told me the reason was the sample site I submitted didn’t belong in the category (the other site I used was already listed elsewhere in dmoz.org…oops!).

So I went back to have a closer look at the sites currently in the category and found that, in my humble opinion, most of the listings probably belong in different categories:

http://www.kcbassociates.com/catalog/index.html
is a balloon supplier…better category would be:
http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Entertainment/Party_Supplies/Balloons

http://www.balloonworksusa.com/
is a balloon decorator… better category would be:
http://dmoz.org/Arts/Crafts/Balloon_Sculpting/Balloon_Artists/

http://www.chazairjazz.com/
sells balloon sculpting supplies…listed in correct category

http://www.chazpro.com/balloons/Balloons.html
link goes to balloon page, however company mainly sells magic supplies… better category would be:
http://dmoz.org/Arts/Performing_Arts/Magic/Vendors/

http://www.larocksmagic.com/
sells clown and magic supplies… better category would be one of these:
http://dmoz.org/Arts/Performing_Arts/Circus/Equipment_and_Supplies/
http://dmoz.org/Arts/Performing_Arts/Magic/Vendors/

http://www.tmyers.com/
sells clown and magic supplies…better category would be same as listed above for La Rocks.

I’m at a loss as to what I should do now. It’s unlikely that I can become an editor because all the sites I know about relating to balloon sculpting are either magic vendors, clown vendors or balloon vendors and those all have their own categories.

I considered submitting my site to either the clown or magic categories, but I don’t want to get into trouble for multiple category submissions. Also, neither of those categories have editors.

If anyone can offer a suggestion as to what I should do, I would be grateful.

Thank you.

Frank

Re: Subject: Balloon Sculpting, Magic and Clowning

hi- I'm just a plain old editor, not a meta, but I wanted to point out two things you may not know:

1. Six weeks is not a long time, unfortunately. And you did the right thing by posting here after trying the editor feedback. Someone else (not me) should be able to check whether it's in the queue or what.

2. Don't worry about submitting sites to some categories just because they "don't have an editor." If there's no editor specifically attached to that category, submissions get reviewed by the editor(s) of the next higher-level category and so on. They may be pretty busy, but then again there's no guarantee that an editor with just one category will process submissions promptly, either.

3. You're unlikely to be stomped on for multiple-category submissions if you submit to just two or three related categories. That's really common, especially when the distinctions are rather subtle as they seem to be here. Usually what will happen there is that the editor of one of those categories decides to list the site, and when the other editors see that it's already listed, they'll just discard the other submissions. People get labelled as spammers if they submit to many more categories with no rhyme or reason. But if you're still nervous, you can include an apologetic note in the site description -- we edit every description (or are supposed to) before listing anything.

4. As far as I know, there's no prohibition on including a site in your application to edit category X just because it already appears in category Y... if you think it really belongs in category X, and can explain why (in the section on the application where you describe your interest in & knowledge of the category). Metas don't just glance at the URLs to see if they're already listed, they read the whole application -- I think. The whole point is to demonstrate that you understand what the category is about, and one way to do that is by pointing out things that may currently be mis-listed. (By the way, that doesn't mean you are rudely second-guessing other editors; ODP guidelines and site contents have changed over time, so some previously OK listings are now less OK. And also, we make mistakes.)

[hmm... by "two things," I meant four things.]