Submission verification...

Every action has a reason for it.

How is it that in this day and age of advanced technology, that it is possible to submit the same site multiple times, when a simple script can reveal that the domain is already awaiting review on dmoz?

Considering how long it takes these days to get listed on dmoz, it's possible to simply not remember a particular domain has already been submitted. The other case is that your competitor could sabotage you by submitting your site regularly.

It is not a technology issue, it is a matter of policy that we do not provide updates. We do not provide updates and have no plans to do so.

It is an often heard, but baseless, assumption that a competitor can somehow destroy someone's chances of being listed by oversumitting the competitor's site. It is rarely attempted on a scale that matters, and we are not easily fooled.

You're welcome to take whatever technological means you feel appropriate, for whatever records you feel you need. Don't feel constrained by the idea that whatever isn't done on the dmoz.org site won't get done!

I see, basically, three kinds of submitters.

(1) Our intended user: surfers who find a good site, and add it to the category from which it's missing -- then go on about their business. Obviously they aren't going to be a problem with the current program.

(2) Webmasters submitting their own one-and-only site. They don't have a problem remembering whether they submitted it: it only takes a single neuron.

(3) Professional SERP perps. I'd expect them to have their own tools, encompassing not only the ODP but all the other possible directories. They won't be depending on dmoz.org tracking. The first day they get a client, they'll suggest it, once, according to the rules. After that, no more problems.

(4) Spammers (anyone that doesn't fit the first three categories, as well as anyone in the first three categories that suggests affiliate/doorway/drop-ship/lead-generating/ad-banner-farm type sites.) I think the "silent alarm" approach works fine for these. But my concern is that, while the first three groups obviously can get no practical use whatsoever out of the feature you describe, THIS group would find the feature of inestimable value: the deeper you penetrate into the enemy camp, the longer you go undetected, the better your disguise is. I'd MUCH prefer spammers not know how ineffective their techniques are!

If it takes 18 months for a site to be approved, it's possible to forget.

How about a situation where a webmaster quits his job, and somebody else takes over. The new guy has no idea the site was submitted to dmoz 18 months ago, and goes ahead and submits again. Now the site goes back to the back of the queue.

All I'm asking is a way to find out if a site has already been submitted, and awaiting approval. Why is that so difficult to do? Furthermore, I don't see any disadvantage to it.

>How about a situation where....

Not a problem. There's no "queue", so there's no back of it. And one resubmittal after 12 or 18 months isn't going to raise any eyebrows anyway.

This really isn't the place to get into algorithmic analysis. (And if you haven't worked on a system that has multi-million-record databases and transaction rates thousands of records per second, you may not be qualified to understand the answer anyway. I'm not sure I am, and I DO have years of experience in optimizing both code and database systems.)

This is not the place to speak of the disadvantages in detail either. (I probably would not have noticed some of the security issues, either, if I hadn't read some ACM papers on security issues.)

What I don't see is: what difference does it make to an honest submitter? I've asked this question numerous times: few people have tried to answer, and the only answers I've ever gotten are logically equivalent to "I want to be able to spam the ODP more efficiently." And we tried giving that status, here in this forum, for a couple of years. All that has only confirmed my conviction that (as I think I said before) it provides no advantage to an honest submitter. It's very important to spammers, I know that: they get very emotionally distraught over it.

But what we need to hear is: what difference does it make for the honest submitters? Why should the developers waste time (a great deal more time than you'd suspect, because the ODP back end is coded for efficiency, not flexibility) on this at all?

If it takes 18 months for a site to be approved, it's possible to forget.

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It does not take 18 months it takes even years depends on the working editors timetable. And they don't forget its how sharp they are.

How about a situation where a webmaster quits his job, and somebody else takes over. The new guy has no idea the site was submitted to dmoz 18 months ago, and goes ahead and submits again. Now the site goes back to the back of the queue.

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The answer was already provided by spectregunner

It is not a technology issue, it is a matter of policy that we do not provide updates. We do not provide updates and have no plans to do so.

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All I'm asking is a way to find out if a site has already been submitted, and awaiting approval. Why is that so difficult to do? Furthermore, I don't see any disadvantage to it.

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If the site was submitted then all you have to do is forget and go on with your site improvement. And if you have not submitted the site please do so.
http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

Maybe this would be a better way of putting it:

When we see a problem, we ask our developers to do something about it.

But there's no problem here.

What would be a problem?

Well, something like: suppose we saw tens of thousands of submittals that, when we looked at them, we thought, "you know, this submittal wouldn't have been here if the submitter had known what we know."

And you know, we just don't see that.

Perhaps we don't see that because our developers have already solved the problem; perhaps we don't see it because it's such an insignificant problem. It doesn't matter. Where it counts, the only place it counts, there is no visible problem.

What would be "not a problem"?

A population consisting mostly (or altogether--who knows) of spammers whining about the inefficiency of their efforts to spam the ODP, and saying how much more efficiently they could do their thing if they had this information.

I think anyone should suspect from that alone that suggestion status checks have some serious potential for disadvantages (to us, that is, not to the spammers!)

monayuki said:

It does not take 18 months it takes even years depends on the working editors timetable. And they don't forget its how sharp they are.

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I hope you don't mind me partially correcting you there, monayuki - only to make sure there are no misunderstandings.

It CAN take several years for a site suggestion to be reviewed. But in many categories, and category trees, new suggestions are spotted within days, and if the site is good and suggested to the right place, it can easily be listed within a week. (Of course, wildly mis-submitted sites are also spotted very quickly in these categories, but that doesn't mean those sites are reviewed and listed - often they would simply be sent to a more suitable category for review.)

And I assure you that few editors will remember the site suggestions they saw a year ago. We're just people like everybody else

(except, it's Christmas and I'm posting here. So maybe I should say "people like everybody else but sometimes rather nerdy )

I don't understand some things.

If you want to verify if dmoz reviewed your site, just search for http://editors.dmoz.org/editors/editcat-unrev.cgi?cat=.... in your log files.

Not very difficult I think.

This will only shows that someone has visited your site with this as the referer. It doesn't tell you if the site is reviewed or not. An editor can look at your site for many reasons. And he can also review your site without dmoz showing as a referer. There is only one way you can be sure a site is reviewed: it is inlcuded in the directory. All other can be nothing more than speculations.

Site posted over 18 months in correct category.

I understand the vast amount of submissions that are waiting for review and the limited amount of editors that have to examine them. My questions and is probably not the first you have heard it, is that when a submission is over 18 months and in my case it will be two years this coming March. I have submitted my site under the correct category following all the submission rules and check every month to see if my site has been added. Once a site is added, is there an email verification or just check to see if it has been added by search? My site is <URL removed> and was submitted the first time in March of 2004 under the category of Dog Breeders Directory and again in early 2005 under the category of Dog Breeders. Both categories that the site was submitted under have followed all the guidelines of the Open Directory.

Should I re-submit the site again after the two year mark or can I find out if it is still pending review?

Thank you for your time, any information would be greatly appreciated.

Once a site is added, is there an email verification or just check to see if it has been added by search?

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No, there is no automatic email verification for anything. Occasionly an editor may choose to email you, but that is very doubtful.

Should I re-submit the site again after the two year mark or can I find out if it is still pending review?

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There is absolutely no need for you to submit again, continuing submissons may be regarded as spam.