The submission process

Having recently submitted a URL to DMOZ I have become an interested reader of these forums. Unlike some posters, I would love to get my site list but it is not the end of the world if it doesn't happen. There is one thing I do find ironic about the whole submission process ...

Being a fan of the World Wide Web I am constantly amazed at the impact is has had on my daily life. One of the most fascinating aspects of the Web is that I can obtain updated status information with relative ease. If I look at my bank account online I will see a debit card transaction from a purchase I made 10 minutes before I got home. When I recently ordered a computer online I was able to track its production status from the time I entered the order until it has shipped and then was able to track its shipment location over the week it took to arrive.

So here we have DMOZ, playing a rather admirable and important role for those who create web sites and those who want to find web sites on this amazing World Wide Web, and yet absolutely none of the technology which makes the web great is applied to the site submission process.

It wouldn't be all that difficult to provide a URL submitter with a reference number and then provide "tracking" information during the review process. This would eliminate the "submitted into a black hole" feeling that currently persists among those submit a site and never get it listed. An immediate benefit to DMOZ would be to instantly eliminate those annoying duplicate URL submissions which could be caught as soon as they are submitted.

If you're someone suggesting a site, and I see why you might like to have information about the status of your suggestion. However, from the point of view of the ODP, providing such information would not significantly help us acheive our goal of providing a useful directory for web surfers. Moreover the technical aspects are far more difficult than your post would suggest -- largly because the editing system wasn't set up with providing this information in mind. If would therefore require significant technical resources to set up, and we'd rather apply what little resources we have on dealing with what are, from the editors point of view, issues that will help us make a better directory.

Since we're not here to be a listing service, and there doesn't seem to be a shortage of people suggesting sites, there doesn't really seem to be a need to provide status information just to keep those suggesting sites a bit happier. Moreover, I would suggest that status information is not actually that useful to those suggesting sites. How would knowing whether your site has been reviewed or what the outcome was affect legitimate webmasters? Surely you already make your site to be useful as possible to surfers, and those are the types of sites we want to list. For spammers on the other hand, the information would be very useful, letting them know which of their latest tricks we're now wise to.

I'm not sure the logic behind you claim about eliminating duplicate suggestions, but it seems to me that preventing such suggestions is pretty much independent of a status mechanism. Spammers will go on suggesting the same sites over and over again regardless of what their status is, so the any block would have to be on our end, rather than relying on people to look at the status. (Also you don't have to be the site owner to suggest a site, so a second suggestion wouldn't necessarily come from the same person.) Duplicate suggestions of legitimate sites aren't really a problem in the grand scheme of things.

I'm sure if you read around these forums you'll find that automated status checks have been suggestted on many occaisions, and many reasons why they're not likely to be implemented have been posted by editors. Yes it would make some of those suggesting sites a little happier, yes it might be good for PR, but there are also very good reasons why it would not be worthwhile. I'm sorry, but it's just not likely to happen any time soon.

So here we have DMOZ, playing a rather admirable and important role for those who create web sites and those who want to find web sites on this amazing World Wide Web, and yet absolutely none of the technology which makes the web great is applied to the site submission process.

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The biggest difference between the types of sites you're talking about and the ODP is that we aren't offering you a service. We allow you to suggest your site to us in order to help us do what we do but we aren't a listing service.

Great answers, just to lend my support to them, .