trouble deciding on a single category

hello,

I submitted our site about 10 minutes ago into a pretty specific category because I couldn’t find a more ‘general’ category to submit to. I did find other categories that were almost equally appropriate, but they were just as specific and/or limiting. As it stands, I think I will just wait and see if the site gets in, because the submission is in progress, but my friend pointed this forum out to me, so I thought I would ask your advice because I felt like maybe I did it wrong. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Rob

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Title: Online Loan Calculator
Description: offers mortgage, financial, and auto loan calculators
url: http://www.online-loan-calculator.com
Submission Date: 5/28/02
Category: http://dmoz.org/Business/Financial_Services/Mortgages/Calculators/

Basically, the site has about 20 calculators (listed on the index page by category) that solve a few different types of loan oriented calculations....primary mortgage, financial, auto and few other types... like the description implies. I submitted the url to the category that dealt with mortgage calculators because we have 7 calculators that deal with mortgage type calculations, and the next biggest category of calculators we have is ‘Financial Calculators’, which has 6 calculators in it.

This brings up my point... I didn’t submit the site to:
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Business/Investing/Financial_Calculators/
...because there was no editor. I didn’t submit to a few others because they were even more specific. In any case, I don't see exactly where this site fits in... I was expecting to see something like:

http://dmoz.org/Computers/Online_Calculators/Loan_Calculators/

...or something like that, but instead I found:

http://dmoz.org/Business/Financial_Services/Mortgages/Calculators/
http://dmoz.org/Home/Personal_Finance/Software/
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Business/Investing/Financial_Calculators/
http://dmoz.org/Business/Financial_Services/Automobile_Buying_and_Financing/

I didn’t choose the ‘Software’ category because I though ‘software’ was something you sell... our scripts are on our servers and we don’t license the software that we offer our surfers... but maybe that is a better place than where I submitted?

The only other thought I had was that I could submit some of our category pages to some of your categories...but since I already started down this road the way I did, it wouldn’t make sense to submit our index page to the mortgage category and then a subpage to, say, the ‘Financial_Calculators’ category. In addition, while I think the whole site is worthy of inclusion to dmoz, I am not so sure that our ‘category’ pages warrant individual inclusion. ...and I definitely don’t think our site warrants a new category.

Here are direct links into the category pages on our site:
http://www.online-loan-calculator.com/mortgage_calculators.html
http://www.online-loan-calculator.com/financial_calculators.html
http://www.online-loan-calculator.com/auto_loan_calculators.html
http://www.online-loan-calculator.com/loan_calculators.html

....do these pages have enough content to justify submitting into different categories? (maybe not the last page, because if I get the index page in somewhere, that would be plenty good)

I could write the editor and suggest that he review just the subpage on ‘mortgage calculators’, see if it gets in, then submit the other pages?


http://www.online-loan-calculator.com/mortgage_calculators.html
http://dmoz.org/Business/Financial_Services/Mortgages/Calculators/

http://www.online-loan-calculator.com/financial_calculators.html
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Business/Investing/Financial_Calculators/

http://www.online-loan-calculator.com/auto_loan_calculators.html
http://dmoz.org/Business/Financial_Services/Automobile_Buying_and_Financing/

http://www.online-loan-calculator.com/
http://dmoz.org/Home/Personal_Finance/Software/


... or should I just wait and see what happens?

>I didn’t submit the site to:
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Business/Investing/Financial_Calculators/
...because there was no editor.

That was a mistake. There's never "no" editor -- an editall (of which there are over 100) can edit any category, and an editor in any category can edit all the subcategories. And even if there were an editor listed, who is to know whether they had logged on within the last three months, let alone looked at that category?

Always go to the "most suitable" category. That will nearly always result in faster listing for you AND more efficient editing (that is, faster listings for everyone.)

My advice is to wait and see what happens. I would not submit the deeplinks to individual calculators. You shouldn't be disqualified from listing in the category you submitted to, just because your site offers more than just that. The worst that will happen is the editor decides to move it to a different, more appropriate category.

The real problem that you've uncovered is that there are several related/overlapping categories, and that this may be an opportunity for improved organization. The challenge is to get an editor in the area interested in determining if there is a problem, soliciting input from other editors, and then reorganizing the categories in question. If you are inspired, you could email editors either in those categories or in a higher level category notifying them of this issue and maybe someone will address it. But if not, I wouldn't worry about it.

>>If you are inspired, you could email editors either in those categories or in a higher level category notifying them of this issue and maybe someone will address it.<<

Or you could apply for a category, learn how the system works, and then propose a good solution. You have the knowledge for the categories, and it sounds like you can be fair when dealing with possible competitors. These are two of the main ingredients to a good editor.

>>>maybe someone will address it.

...I just woke up to find out someone has ‘addressed’ it.... we are in

Online Loan Calculator - Almost twenty financial calculations available, some in tabular form.
http://dmoz.org/Business/Financial_Services/Mortgages/Calculators/

I think the ‘Almost twenty’ part came from my first post, so I’m assuming it was someone that saw the post in here and took action....or maybe that was the consensus behind the scenes? Either way, a big thank you to the editor(s) of this community for taking the time to review the site and get it listed so quickly! I also thought that the listing was a pretty good work around to our problems as well... the first part says that I have about 20 ‘financial’ (or ‘money’ oriented) calculators, and the ‘tabular’ part, at the end, references our amortization (and other payment table) calculators (which are specifically ‘mortgage’ oriented.)

so basically, I feel pretty good about this whole thing. I emailed someone in here (when I should have just posted) but they took the time to respond to my questions so I thought I would post them...

-------------------------
>Should I write the editor that I submitted to and ask
>that they delete the entry and then submit to the software >category?

Aunno. The taxonomy of these things, um, may not be ideal. It wasn't immediately clear to me where the site should go. Why not submit separately to the software category with a comment saying "this was also submitted to the xxx category because I wasn't sure which was applicable." The editor will understand you're not intending to be sneaky or to spam.

>I think if I was looking for a mortgage calculator, I
>would look in the mortgage calculator category, not in a software >category.

A:Yeah, that happens with, um, less-than-ideal taxonomies.

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so with respect to what to do next, if there IS anything left to do, might be writing other editors. I think my plan is to submit the site to:

http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Business/Investing/Financial_Calculators/

...and then write the editor in the next category up, named ‘bigjohn’, and tell him that I got in like the letter said, point out this thread, and see what he thinks. Honestly, though, I’m pretty content.

...As far as me becoming an editor, I don’t know if I could do it.... something like this would drive me crazy ...too many different options. I also don’t know if I could be unbiased enough... hhehhe I think if I was, the first thing I would do is tweak my description.... ‘Almost twenty’ sounds a little negative to me... like the site failed to meet a goal even though we have a bunch of calculators. Our goal is to offer a comprehensive array of helpful calculators... however many that is. The other thing I would change is the term ‘calculations’ to ‘calculators’ because I think it isn’t grammatically correct to say it that way.... we offer a number of different ‘calculators’ and each one is capable of an infinite amount of ‘calculations’, if you get my meaning... sorry if that sounds nitpickey, but us ‘calculator types’ are pretty uptight characters

Anyway, thanks everyone for your time and getting us listed so fast.