Trying for over 2 years - still not listed

I have been submitting a site to its appropriate category for over 2 years, originally it was every few months when I thought to check and see if we were listed, then I added it to my Outlook Tasks with a monthly recurrence so I wouldn't forget. I still have heard nothing and the site is not yet listed. I even tried applying to be an editor and never heard anything back.

What is it I need to do to get a site listed? Do you have to submit to incorrect categories until you find an active editor?

I have been trying these two categories - which are both appropriate:

http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/North_...es/K/Kalispell/Business_and_Economy/Shopping/

http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Health/Alternative/Herbs/

Please let me know what I need to do to find an editor that will respond in these categories.

Thank you.

You might have misunderstood our objectives and how we operate here. ODP is a volunteer organisation building a directory as a hobby. Editors edit where they wish, when they wish and as much as they wish within the constraints of their permissions. We have no schedules or systems to force people to do work that they don't volunteer to do. ODP is not primarily a free listing service for website owners and it does not attempt to process their listing suggestions within the time scales desired by them.

Some volunteer will process your listing suggestions in time but we can't predict who or when that might be. Elapsed times can range from a few days to a few years. There is no need to re-suggest your website and doing so could be counter-productive because a later suggestion overwrites any earlier one. It's also forbidden in our Suggestion Guidelines which you acknowledged on each occasion.

<added> And it's not been over 2 years BTW </added>

OK, first of all, what you are doing simply cannot be done, and there is no way to do it.

That's what the submittal policy says: No site is guaranteed a listing.

It doesn't say "Only the sites of people who aggressively, repeatedly, and rudely violate the submittal policies are guaranteed to be listed." (You're not the first person to misread the policy that way.

That's why there's nothing in the guidelines saying, "To obtain a guarantee of a listing, do the following things..." or "To contact an editor and compel him to enter into any kind of discussion with you, do the following things ..." The "submittal policies" aren't keeping the real rules secret from you. That's all there is, there is no more.

So anything that you do to "try" to accomplish the impossible task of obtaining a guarantee of a listing, is instead guaranteed to be futile and frustrating.

Well, you may have already figured that out.

Here are some things that can actually be guaranteed.

• Editors have found and listed millions of sites, and hundreds of sites are listed daily. Obviously, someone likes to find and list sites.
  
• If you make a suggestion, we'll keep that suggestion until someone who might want to list THAT site has looked at it.
  
• We really think secret procedures that let some webmasters get special service are a bad idea, and we'll work to make sure that they get blocked whenever they appear. (In fact, even "suggesting a site" has a risk of becoming a special service, so we'll keep making special efforts to make sure that unsuggested sites get reviewed also.)

You may think these guarantees are worth more to surfers than to webmasters. That would be the whole point.

Thank you both for your replies. It is just very confusing to me. I have suggested sites in the past and had them listed within a matter of weeks. I have been submitting sites since 2000 and this is the first time I have ever had a situation where I have waited for 2 years and still heard nothing so I figured I needed to check and see what else can I do. I know it has been close to that long as I have been working here for over 3 years and started submitting the site to search engines over 2 years ago.

It does tell you in the instructions to keep returning and checking to see if your site has been listed. So I assumed that if it hadn't been it was time to resubmit - just like with any of the other engines I have submitted sites to.

I apologize if this was against regulations. I think it would be beneficial if there was at least an automated email that was sent when a site has been sucessfully suggested, at least letting you know that your suggestion has been received and will be reviewed and that there is no need to re-submit. I used to get emails from DMOZ years ago letting me know just that - but I have never received an email for this submission, so I was still trying to figure out if it had been sucessfully suggested or if it was possible the categories I was choosing simply didn't have a moderator anymore and if I needed to find a live person first who could help me make sure if my submission was even going through.

I used to get emails from DMOZ years ago letting me know just that

Click to expand...

This is puzzling, because DMOZ has never sent out letters like that. Are you perhaps thinking of some other directory where you'd been suggesting sites in that time frame?

...if it was possible the categories I was choosing simply didn't have a moderator anymore

Click to expand...

Anything is possible, but nobody can really know (because the volunteers work independently, without the need for coordination even with other volunteers).

and if I needed to find a live person first who could help me make sure if my submission was even going through.

Click to expand...

Our assumption is that the submissions all go through. The evidence is that it's at least mostly true. Without evidence that it's a problem, live people aren't going to see the point in manually checking every site suggestion to see if it went in--there are so many better things to do with spare time!

There is a bit of a catch-22 here--how would you see the evidence of submissions not going in, unless you were looking? And maybe the best answer is--if the wastage isn't great enough to show up on its own, it'll have to wait until all the processes with know inefficiencies are fixed. And when the developers have fixed all the known problems, it'll be plenty of time to go out of our way looking at potential problems which hadn't been having significant visible effect.

I assumed that if it hadn't been it was time to resubmit - just like with any of the other engines I have submitted sites to.

Click to expand...

Not only is DMOZ not a search engine, but every time you suggested the site you acknowledged having read the instructions which clearly state the penalty for repeated suggestions, so I'm not sure why you would "assume" otherwise.

hutcheson said:

Our assumption is that the submissions all go through. The evidence is that it's at least mostly true. Without evidence that it's a problem, live people aren't going to see the point in manually checking every site suggestion to see if it went in--there are so many better things to do with spare time!

There is a bit of a catch-22 here--how would you see the evidence of submissions not going in, unless you were looking? And maybe the best answer is--if the wastage isn't great enough to show up on its own, it'll have to wait until all the processes with know inefficiencies are fixed. And when the developers have fixed all the known problems, it'll be plenty of time to go out of our way looking at potential problems which hadn't been having significant visible effect.

Click to expand...

That is where the "automatic email response" comes in. It doesn't require a person to do anything, other than the programmer initially setting it up. It would automatically generate an email upon sucessful submission of a website so that the person suggesting it would have verification of their submission.

The down side is in how "repeated suggestions" is interpreted. In this case, I interpreted it the way it is meant on "search engines" (which DMOZ has always been listed as a search engine on SEO Guidelines and Instructional articles that I've read since 2000) that repeatedly submitting your site multiple times in the same day (or 3 days on some), or multiple pages of your site in the same day, is when you are penalized. So my interpretation of "repeated suggestions" was not an interpretation without a time frame. My interpretation was that it was like all of the other places I've submitted sites to, and the penalty happens when the site is repeatedly submitted in a short time-frame.

I apologize for the misunderstanding.

I use to really like DMOZ, my favorite browser is FireFox, and I use FileZilla for FTP, Thunderbird for my email at home, etc... but the anger I have found here in the forums has really surprised me. I had no idea that, unlike the other GNU Licensed scripts/products I have used that have forum support from volunteers, one would be so harshly responded to for deciding to ask what it is they need to be doing after trying for so long.

Honestly guys, lighten up a little. Not everyone is a moderator with full understanding of exactly how DMOZ works and what you should or should not do for a listing. That's why there is a forum.

makrhod said:

Not only is DMOZ not a search engine, but every time you suggested the site you acknowledged having read the instructions which clearly state the penalty for repeated suggestions, so I'm not sure why you would "assume" otherwise.

Click to expand...

It would automatically generate an email upon sucessful submission of a website

Click to expand...

Completely unnecessary. Everyone suggesting a site gets a confirmation screen. Nothing further is required.

Not everyone is a moderator with full understanding of exactly how DMOZ works and what you should or should not do for a listing.

Click to expand...

But that's precisely why there are public guidelines and a detailed explanation on the site suggestion form.
The fact that people don't actually read this (when they repeatedly acknowledge having done so) is hardly the fault of volunteers.

TracyS said:

I use to really like DMOZ, my favorite browser is FireFox, and I use FileZilla for FTP, Thunderbird for my email at home, etc... but the anger I have found here in the forums has really surprised me. I had no idea that, unlike the other GNU Licensed scripts/products I have used that have forum support from volunteers, one would be so harshly responded to for deciding to ask what it is they need to be doing after trying for so long.

Click to expand...

Here in lies a big misunderstanding.
The "Open" in Open Directory is only about the usage of the DMOZ data.
It is not about suggesting or listing websites.
Just go to those other forums and ask questions about services they do not provide and see how you will be answered if you are the 10.000 person asking the same question.
The answers you describe as "anger" are in reality "disappointed". Disappointed that people do not care to read the guidelines on DMOZ, do not care to read the guidelines on this forum, do not care to read the FAQ on this forum, do not care to read the threads marked "important" or "read this first", do not care to search for other threads with the same question.

That is where the "automatic email response" comes in. It doesn't require a person to do anything, other than the programmer initially setting it up. It would automatically generate an email upon sucessful submission of a website so that the person suggesting it would have verification of their submission.

Click to expand...

This suggestion has been made often, but ... I think it indicates a misunderstanding of the process.

When you suggest the site, you get a "thank you for your suggestion" screen. So far as anyone can know, that suggestion was successfully made.

What happens after that? Well, there was this server crash in which thousands of suggestions were lost. Do you want to get e-mail every week saying, "Good news, our server didn't crash this week, so your suggestion is still successfully stored in our database"?

Or a volunteer might accidentally delete the suggestion. Now, over 99% of the time, deletion is on purpose not accidentally, and the computer simply can't know which deletions were accidental, so there's no question here about the programmer being clever. NO programmer is that clever!

Sure, things can still go wrong after that "thank you" screen -- but there's simply no way to announce when either of these things go wrong, and ... mostly they just don't.

We simply don't HAVE any knowledge of ANY systematic loss of suggestions. So there's really nothing to send automated mail about.

Hi Jimnoble,

Thank you for the detailed description below of the inclusion process. I am aware that these are done on a volunter basis. I have a website which I have submited about couple months ago and have not heard back In haste I resubmited to the correct category ( to my best knowledge ) about 3 weeks ago. I am trying to submit a local limousine service company that operates in the City of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. I submited to Regional: North America: Canada: Ontario: Localities: M: Mississauga: Transportation: Limousines and Shuttles
Did I do anything wrong? Do I just have to be patient? Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated.

jimnoble said:

You might have misunderstood our objectives and how we operate here. ODP is a volunteer organisation building a directory as a hobby. Editors edit where they wish, when they wish and as much as they wish within the constraints of their permissions. We have no schedules or systems to force people to do work that they don't volunteer to do. ODP is not primarily a free listing service for website owners and it does not attempt to process their listing suggestions within the time scales desired by them.

Some volunteer will process your listing suggestions in time but we can't predict who or when that might be. Elapsed times can range from a few days to a few years. There is no need to re-suggest your website and doing so could be counter-productive because a later suggestion overwrites any earlier one. It's also forbidden in our Suggestion Guidelines which you acknowledged on each occasion.

<added> And it's not been over 2 years BTW </added>

Click to expand...

fforgach, I do not understand. You quote the answer and still ask the question. Maybe you did think that for you the answer would be different. It is not.

Hi, sorry if my question above came off as confusing. I am not expecting a differant answer for me, however I am concerned about my site submission which I did a couple months ago. I did not receive a confirmation e-mail. Is this a alone a concern? In haste I reapplied the site several weeks back. Now I am also concerned I am in violation of submition guidelines. I am a patient person, I just want to know I am still in the processing queue.

Frank Forgach

All the questions you ask are already answered in this thread.

> I just want to know I am still in the processing queue.
Please also read our FAQ and the thread Announcement: Discontinuation of site status checks

I did not receive a confirmation e-mail.

Click to expand...

The final screen of the suggestion transaction

The final screen of the suggestion transaction said:

Your site submission has been received.

An editor will review your submission for inclusion in the directory.

Click to expand...

Was that not adequate?

I just want to know I am still in the processing queue.

Click to expand...

As the Announcement: Discontinuation of site status checks right at the top of this forum says, we don't do site status checks any more.

I just want to know I am still in the processing queue.

Click to expand...

There's no queue.

There's not enough "process" to dignify the word. There are just people looking for websites on hundreds of thousands of different topics.

And all websites on the web are eligible to be looked at.

If your site is still on the web, it's still possible for it to be reviewed anytime.

Now, in the light of those facts, is there anything else we could tell you that could conceivably matter?

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I am not trying to be diffucult believe me. I do not know if I am currently in violation for my submition by applying twice with several weeks in between. I am not even sure if my application / submition was even received. I am looking to rectify these 2 concerns.

Frank Forgach

Thank you Jimnoble for taking the time to check that my website submission was received and awaiting review. You are a gentlemen and have clearly answered my question.

Frank Forgach

Thank you Jimnoble for taking the time to check that my website submission was received and awaiting review.

Click to expand...

I did no such thing. I merely reminded you what the final screen of the suggestion transaction said.