Actuallly, one of the other editors came up with a great line that I have stolen:
Site reviews can take from a few hours to infinity.
I know that is scary, but it reflects where we have our focus. While many webmasters think we are a listing service -- and they grow impatient and then nasty when we don't meet their expectations -- we are actually directory builders.
Certainly, there are some editors who focus of handling submissions (greens, in ODP-speak) and dead links (reds) or even updates (purples) and in fact, those three colors are the staple for many new editors.
The real value that experienced editors add is in category building. That is, the ability to look at an existing category structure, used their knowledge, training and experience to identify shortcomings, inefficiencies, redundancies, and the like, then lead a concensus-building effort to address these issues, rectify them, and then go off an find a critical mass of sites to populate the new directory structure.
In the process, a given editor will probably handle a lot of red, greens and purples, and may very well add sites to the directory that are patiently waiting elsewhere witout ever knowing they are waiting.
But addressing your
real issue: you want additional visibility to gain some additional critical mass for your company. To that end I can offer two things:
1. The understanding that the ODP, while a really nifty directory, cannot make or break anyone's business. If it did, all old links we haven't look at would be dead by now, and every directory listing would last forever.
2. The understanding that the first point, while interesting to me, may not have been measureably helpful to you, so here is a
link to a resource that lists directories and search engines that accept submissions.
Hope that helps.
