Submitting selected pages.

AFAIK we can not submit individual pages so according to that statement I never did. However, a couple of years ago someone submitted a URL linking to one of my pages and as a result its presence is widespread and very succesfull. In fact at the time the guy/gal submitted the URL there were no pages in Internet related to that particular topic. During a couple of years I asked myself why that particular page was so popular until I discovered that it was listed in DMOZ.

The question is, may I submit, say, a page related to particular sport in a given country if the already listed site is historical?

We need to know the URL before we can give an opinion.

Jim,
Please clarify this matter. What's the procedure to ask for applicability.

Thanks

a couple of years ago someone submitted a URL linking to one of my pages

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It seems more likely that an editor listed the page. Editors often find links for themselves. We don't have to rely on submissions.

jeanmanco said:

It seems more likely that an editor listed the page.

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I hope DMOZ knows when an editor links a page for I don't wish someone say I'm spamming.

We know what we need to know to know a spammer.

Your question here is vague. Are you asking if you are able to submit a different page for a site that already has a page listed without looking like a spammer? Or are you asking if you can submit the same page to a different category? Or are you asking something else entirely? As jimnoble said, it's difficult for us to give you an answer without knowing the site in question. As it is, the only real answer we can give to the vague question is "Maybe".

motsa said:

Your question here is vague.

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My site (www.site.com) is already listed in its right historical category. What I wish to know is how to submit some particular pages, for instance (www.site.com/centuryXIX/customs.html) to a customs category. What's the procedure to ask for applicability?

The procedure is quite clearly laid out in the submittal policies. It's "Just don't."

If you don't have a specific website for someone to look at, then that's the only answer we can give.

If you do have a specific website, then we can look at it, and (most of the time) tell you that the general answer applies, and (very very occasionally, in "exceptional" circumstances, as our editors' guidelines say) suggest that a site might be appropriately deeplinked.

But: the fact is, that there is a very strong negative correlation between websites that the webmasters want to promote individual pages of, and websites that surfers want to be directed to individual pages of. It is (in pragmatic terms) almost a perfect disqualification (for deeplinking) for the webmaster to care whether the site is deeplinked or not.

It is (in pragmatic terms) almost a perfect disqualification (for deeplinking) for the webmaster to care whether the site is deeplinked or not.

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Hmmm... That seems like an odd statement to me. Any webmaster who is passionate about the content of his/her site (and isn't that the kind of website that is more likely to be of interest to the directory?) is likely to care about how people find information contained within. I don't have a problem with ODP's policies around multiple listings, but I can certainly see plenty of cases, especially for non-commercial sites, where the site content is disjointed enough that it can't be readily captured in any one ODP category.
Just my 2c
Rob

But since you won't tell us which site you are talking about, this thread becomes very surrealistic.

Sorry to cause confusion here. I just stepped into this thread with a comment - I'm not the original asker of the question, and am not asking questions relating to my site (although some of my comments apply, somewhat, to my site as well) - I'll be happy when my site as a whole floats to the top of the review pile, let alone deeplinks
Cheers
Rob

Look, all I know I learned from looking at 70,000 websites. That may not be enough to be a valid sample: and if you've done more surfing, or surfed in less commercial areas than I have, you may have seen a different kind of site.

But your generalities really have no relevance at all anyway. We review each site individually, and we don't have a psychological profile of the webmaster handy when we do it. And as for your own website, here's how to put your own self-estimation in a social context. If you can take it to Simon and Schuster, and convince them to print two hardcopy books on different subjects from the material contained within, please feel free to submit the main page and a deeplink to us. Otherwise, I know at least 5,000 UNSUBMITTED deeplinks that (for the good of the surfers) ought to be reviewed and added before we consider yours -- and I'm only one editor!

Although I'm probably extending this conversation beyond its useful range, let me just chime in with one last reply. Hutcheson, your last post stated well enough why not many sites deserve more than one topical listing in OPD. My original post was more one of surprise at your assertion (I'm admittedly reversing it, but I think statistical theory allows me to do so ) that sites worth having deeplinks added are those for which the webmaster doesn't care about being found through OPD.
Anyway, I don't mean to be argumentative - just probing a little deeper into what struck me as a counterintuitive statement.
All the best,
Rob

hutcheson said:

If you do have a specific website, then we can look at it, and (most of the time) tell you that the general answer applies, and (very very occasionally, in "exceptional" circumstances, as our editors' guidelines say) suggest that a site might be appropriately deeplinked.

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The magic word is 'deeplink' and took 8 posts to show up. That means that some sort of subjectivism exists among editors. I only wish to suggest that DMOZ review the deeplink policy not because it helps webmasters but in a wider sense.

Thank you.

Actually, ODPs policy towards deeplinks has evolved quite a bit over the last several years. When the directory was young, and we were still trying to find content that would help us flesh out the structure, deeplinks were viewed as a good way of doing so.

Over time, deeplinks have proven to be less and less useful. Where we once embraced deeplinks, we now shy away from them. We are particularly gunshy when it somes to webmasters who are suggesting their own sites for deeplinks. A very high percentage of those suggestions are worthless because what is hugely different to webmasters (brown shoes versus black shoes) is all the same to us.

"But you don't understand," they cry, "brown shoes are not at all the same thing as black shoes." To which we reply (via the delete button) "we do understand, for our purposes they are all shoes. Shoes and airplane propellers are what we usually think of as different."

Indeed, some of the best current sources of deeplinks are from places where the webmaster doesn't think about links, or SERP or page rank or any of those types of things. That means places like Geocities, and Tripod, and The Government of France, and The Red Cross. Those are places where the focus is on getting out great information, not on web page rankings or cost of sales.

So when Acme Tool and Die submits deeplinks for www.acmetoolanddie.com/metric
www.acmetoolanddie.com/SAE

It takes us about 1/10th of a second to bounce one or both, especially if we know that www.acmetoolanddie.com/ is aready appropriately listed.

Similarly when www.hotelreservationsareourlife.biz decides to submit
www.hotelreservationsareourlife.biz/Alabama
www.hotelreservationsareourlife.biz/Arizona
www.hotelreservationsareourlife.biz/Arkansas and so on, we end up with 50 or so different editors all independently coming to the same decision -- the deep links end up getting rejected.

My original post was more one of surprise at your assertion ... that sites worth having deeplinks added are those for which the webmaster doesn't care about being found through OPD.

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Historically in the ODP, many of the producers of excellent content worth deeplinking seemed to be the least savvy about (or interested in) website design and promotion. Often unique content was found (not submitted) in the form of a 30 page research paper tossed up on a Department's University page or someone's hobby data added as a subpage to a business site. We tend to deeplink this content when the topic is unrelated to the topic of the main site. Also, I've sometimes deeplinked the only unique content on a site where the rest of it was non-unique (for example, I've deeplinked a recipe page of local recipes on a portal site that was just a conglomeration of yellow pages dumps and local info copied from the government site.)

Currently, as many of the producers of good unique content are becoming more aware of good website design, they are creating websites that are more concise about a topic. These don't end up being deeplinked - they just get listed higher in the directory structure. In other words, the better that webmasters organized their own data, the less we have to do.

Lissa,
You make good points. But a little disjointedness in website arrangements still persists, especially in non-business websites. Taking my site as an example: a garden(ing) website where I spend a lot of time trying to provide information to my fellow gardeners. Obviously belongs somewhere in the home-garden structure (though, to be honest, I haven't quite figured out yet where). But I also built a tool for viewing my weblog, and, for lack of a better place to put it, I make it available from that same website. Not a particularly good example, because in this case the one page for the tool doesn't have sufficient critical mass to warrant a listing in the ODP - but I'm sure there are many webmasters out there who have a more significant subfocus.
Spectregunner, your examples of disinterested webmasters (government of france, red cross) helped me understand where the original comment was coming from. Thanks for that. I also completely agree on the commercial-site subdivisions; I was thinking of cases where the ODP user couldn't possibly find subpage information unrelated to the homepage main topic. I also understand that ODP can't hope to list all such deeplinks, so I can see why ODP is prioritizing on root URLs.
Thanks for enlightening me. I don't quite know why, but I find these forums more interesting than perhaps I should
Rob