Time limits on submission

Hi

I had submitted my site almost a year to http://www.dmoz.org/Shopping/Crafts/Supplies/Beading/ and it has not been listed as of today.

Does it mean that I have to re-submitt to the same category or to a different category? Since the above category does not have an editor, does it mean my site will never get reviewed?

Thanks

http://www.melworks.com.au

Hi malalay,

Once a submission is received it never expires - it will stay there until reviewed by an editor. For your own peace of mind, though, if you feel that there might have been a problem with the submission, since you have waited several months, you may make one more submission to the same category. This severely reduces the odds that the site got missed. After this there is nothing more you can do to expedite a review.

As for your second question, this is one that gets asked a lot - check out our FAQ for the answer here

I hope this answers your questions.

If, however, your site is reviewed and seems be down it will be removed from review. Most editors will try accessing the site several times. I have reviewed sites three times over a period of two weeks, and removed them as being non-functional. Then I'm surprised several months later, when the site gets resubmitted and appears to be working again.

I am in a similar situation and I thought maybe the site was reviewed but rejected, how does the owner know that his site was indeed reviewed in time?

All sites are reviewed in time, since any time is in time.

The owner doesn't need or have to know when his site was reviewed, and there is nearly never anything he can or should do differently one way or another based on that knowledge. This is true whether or not a site was submitted by the owner or by someone else or even never submitted at all.

hutcheson said:

...any time is in time

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He he he, I got that.

But how about rejected sites? is the owner notified some how about the rejection and reasons? Or he can wait until end of time without knowing anything? (sorry if these are stupid questions and you herd them a thousand times before).

No, there is no notification.

Here is the logic in terms of why this shouldn't change what you do.

The ODP lists sites containing quality information. To stand the best chance of getting in the ODP you should pack that site with as much quality information as possible. Co-incidentally (we hope) this also servers the needs of the people who vitis your site the best too.

So, assuming you have done that, if the ODP decides not to list that site, what do you do? You can't make the site better - you have already made it as good as you can.

What we are trying to avoid is the idea is that people need to do "enough" to get into the ODP, and that is good enough.

So, here is the process you can go through -
Build your site.
Get others to look at it and give you feedback.
If you want, make those people aware of the ODP definition of a "good site" (which we hope will correspond with the end-user's idea (but probably not a professional webmaster's idea)) and get them to critique it based on those principles.
Submit a suggestion of the URL to the ODP.
Continue working on your site to make it the best site possible.

If the site does not get listed because it isn't the type of site we list, then knowing that won't change anything.

Do you see how the thinking goes? It's quite different to most other directories, and we tend to think that this is what differentiates us from all the others out there.

No, there's no notice of rejection. The reason is basically always the same: insufficient unique relevant content in the form of information. (Well, very occasionally the reason is massive abuse, but no way are we going to contact anyone to say THAT!)

There's no benefit to the ODP to communicate with people who are generating websites of no interest to us. And they have the right to generate whatever websites they want (whether or not they advance the ODP goals), so there's no call for us to tell them what to do instead.

It is exceedingly rare for an editor to see a site and think, (1) This site isn't listable, but (2) With a small change or two, it would be listable. That situation just doesn't occur. Now, spammeisters indeed think in those terms: the editor spotted my spam, but with a small change I could disguise it so the next editor might not see it. But that's not an attitude editors feel any sympathy with; frankly, it would be betrayal of one's fellow editors to help such people.

hutcheson said:

It is exceedingly rare for an editor to see a site and think, (1) This site isn't listable, but (2) With a small change or two, it would be listable.

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I can actually think of one example which occurs moderately often which is contrary to this...

Say you are have a little business which sells something out of your brick-and-mortar store. You have all the information about the shop - phone number, email, store hours, even the fact that it's located on High Street right next to the Bull and Bear Pub. Unfortunately, you have completely forgotten to put the name of the town or city where your business is located!

You would be surprised how many of those (or variations thereof) I have seen. It makes the site unlistable - because no-one knows where you are!

It is for that reason that I suggested that you have someone else look over your site - to see obvious stuff that you may have missed. But this doesn't take an ODP editor to do - ask your friends - ask on other forums that will allow you to - don't ask whether the site is acceptable for an ODP listing - just ask what information you may have missed which might be obvious.

To me, that is just plain good practice for web design, and has nothing to do with the ODP.

ok, thanks… I understood a few aspects like “insufficient unique relevant content in the form of information”, which is a pretty good policy. On the other hand I don’t understand why all multiple submitters are considered and treated as spammers.

hutcheson said:

There's no benefit to the ODP to communicate with people who are generating websites of no interest to us.

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At lest start communicating with people who generates sites of interest to you.

To stay on topic, what happens with the rejected sites? They are like banned for any possible resubmissions or remain on queue, for a later re-review, in case the site got improved?

vrabatz said:

On the other hand I don’t understand why all multiple submitters are considered and treated as spammers.

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Spammers for DMOZ are: all site suggested against our guidelines.
Look at http://dmoz.org/add.html and http://dmoz.org/guidelines/include.html for the guidelines

vrabatz said:

At lest start communicating with people who generates sites of interest to you.

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They get their sites listed. Isn't that enough. But most of these people have never suggested their site.

vrabatz said:

To stay on topic, what happens with the rejected sites? They are like banned for any possible resubmissions or remain on queue, for a later re-review, in case the site got improved?

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We just delete rejected sites. Why bother with them anymore. As explained by other editors above. There is almost never a possibility to improve a site that is not listable. In the few occasions where this is possible we might contact the website owner.

pvgool said:

We just delete rejected sites. Why bother with them anymore.

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So theoretically if a site owner “assumes”, like after 6 months or a year or whatever, that his site was rejected (and his assumption turns out to be correct), he can resubmit with no penalty at all or danger of being tagged as spammer. And his site is again on the queue for a brand new review.

Yes, and most probably the site will be deleted again.
But if he assumes it is rejected he could know why it is or will be rejected and by so he has become a spammer.

>They are like banned for any possible resubmissions or remain on queue, for a later re-review, in case the site got improved?

No, neither.

There's no reason to do the latter. With millions of sites yet to be reviewed once, there are no sites on earth LESS likely to be worth reviewing than those which have been reviewed and rejected already. So if we're going to systematically collect sites for later review, these would be the least likely possibilities.

An editor CAN keep a site for re-review on those very rare occasions that it makes sense to him. And there are a few such occasions, so we definitely don't want to do the former.

Think of it like this: it's not a matter of a million rules that the robot submittal-processors have to follow. Suggestions are a tool that the editors can use to keep track of potentially listable sites -- and that ANYONE can use to suggest potentially listable sites. Once the suggestion is made, the editors make the best use of it that they can, whatever that use is.

Move it to another category? Delete it? Save it for later? Leave a note to help other editors? Make a copy of it? Change it to some other URL? Whatever might help build a directory of useful sites, or keep track of useless suggestions. Whatever.

pvgool said:

Yes, and most probably the site will be deleted again.
But if he assumes it is rejected he could know why it is or will be rejected and by so he has become a spammer.

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Sorry pvgool, but I didn't understood your explanation, I guess you wanted to say if he is wrong about his assumption then he becomes a spammer.

No, just the opposite.
If his assumption (that the site is rejected) is correct he can know why it is rejected and should never suggest the site again.
If the site was not rejected it is still waiting review. Suggesting the site again once to the same category wont mark him as a spammer. The only thing that could happen is that he just made the time before review longer as it was before the site was suggested a second time. But as we can't predict when a suggestion will be reviewed we can not prove this to be true.

Conclusion.
Suggesting a site several times is never a good thing to do. Either the site was still waiting review and you didn't accomplish anything or it was already rejected and you just came one step nearer to be marked as a spammer.

deleted by jjwill

Let's look at this from a practical point of view.

Pretend you submit a site and I make hte decision that it is not listable.

What do I tell you?

Sorry, your site is not litable.

If I do that, then the immidate and obvious reaction you will have is to send back an e-mail saying: Why?

OK, so I tell you that it had too many broken links.

So you fix the broken links and immediately send me an e-mail insisting that I immediately re-review it. I tell you to resubmit, you get mad because you have already waited a year and don't want to wait again.

OK, you resubmit and some time passes and I happen to look at your site again. Now I discover that there is something else wrong, so I decline to list it and send an e-mail.

You get mad and ask why didn't I tell you that the first time? The answer is that I didn't get that far. Once I hit a spot that makes a site unlistable, I stop reviewing. After all, I am not in the site refiewing business, I am trying to judge the suitability of a given URL for our directory. You don't care about any of that, you just want your sitge listed.

This same thing could playout two or three more times, and you site could, potentially never get listed, and come away feeling like we have been jerking you around.

------------------OR--------------------------

If you are a spammer hoping to suck the life out of the ODP, the minute you get the notice from me it tells you several things: how long it took me to get to attempt #17. That the technique used in attempt #17 did not work that it is now time to try attemet #25 which is a variation on the technique used in attempt #17.

The submittal policy addresses all these questions adequately, precisely, comprehensively, optimally.

(1) Get your site finished and working before you suggest it.
(2) Don't resuggest (well, except once maybe, months after the initial suggestion.

Nothing we can tell you, nothing we know, nothing you know, nothing you could possibly know, would enable you to come up with a more effective way of suggesting your site.