Upgrading category "from City to state"

I have been listed for several years now (thanks), my orginal category was a local recreational, my business has grown and a State category woud be more appropriate.

I have used the form to request a "upgrade", about a month ago but have heard nothing, and nothing has changed.

Any input would be great.

www.aimusainc.com AIM USA INC Richmond, Virginia

Are you still located in richmond?

Our business is after school programs for Kids, we have locals throughtout the state of virginia. In the virgina category I requested the update, I see Listing that are not as "localized as mine". I submitted back in '98 -99 and was true to a T. However, if you really look at the site. We have classes in Michigan, North carlonia, Virginia, and Maryland. We offer both Cheer and Self Defense (martial Arts). So my listing is really outdated cica 1998-1999.

If it's a problem, then I guess I will keep the old Listing, and not request a proper representation of the website, as for fear of being BANNED.

Thank you in advance for any help or comments

It's too early to ban you just yet. Just go through the forms here -- give us a link to the category where you submitted the Update request, which should also be the category the site is listed in (per forum procedures), and we'll take a look.

I'm not sure exactly what level of geographic listing would be appropriate -- possibly US, since activity encompasses specific locii in multiple states. (At any rate, it's not obviously unreasonable to ask the editors to reconsider the issue.)

hutcheson said:

It's too early to ban you just yet. Just go through the forms here -- give us a link to the category where you submitted the Update request, which should also be the category the site is listed in (per forum procedures), and we'll take a look.

I'm not sure exactly what level of geographic listing would be appropriate -- possibly US, since activity encompasses specific locii in multiple states. (At any rate, it's not obviously unreasonable to ask the editors to reconsider the issue.)

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I am currently listed here:

http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Virginia/Localities/R/Richmond/Recreation_and_Sports/

AIM USA Inc.

thank in advance again

Almost 3 months since submitting, no reply, no movement, no suggestion, no advice.

A few comments the first day posted here ( month ago), which lead me to believe some action was going to be taken, but no.

The site has been in this situation for several years.

What is a poor non-profit organization to do?

???

Actions are seldom taken based on the forum -- typically only in extreme or emergency situations. It's obviously unnecessary, since the "update URL" request serves the purpose.

At THIS poor non-profit organization, action is taken based on volunteer activity. And we can't predict that.

Now, the current status is: the update was rejected; apparently the editor felt the business location was more relevant for categorization than the locations where services were offered.

That's the editor's judgment call: over in the Symphony-Orchestra categories I've had to make that call several times, and I'm not sure I made it the same way every time.

What can you do?

Well, arguing about it here won't help any: the editor involved had probably not seen this forum beforehand, and probably wouldn't have cared anyway. And a listing in "Virginia" is absolutely unjustifiable -- since you claim to do SOMETHING in several states. (I'm not going to discuss whether that should make a difference in the geographic category: I'm not sure how I'd vote; with only a few thousand Regional edits, I'd probably defer to editors with more experience. But the decision would be based on the community experience with myriads of geographic listings -- and therefore it is not something on which your input would be needed.)

What might be reasonable for you to do at this point is to submit another update request, asking for the description to be changed to mention the geographic scope of your regularly scheduled activities.

Thank you hutch for your answer. If I hadn't posted, I never would have known we were rejected for a simple upgrade, that would make the most common sence.

So in essence I am being penalized for Honesty in my orginal submission back in 1998ish, and growth, expansion, diversification are irrelevant to the Editor of the category directory. So be it.

I wonder if they even viewed the site. Traffic stats that I view daily show no cross-over sections, multiple area views, that one would associate with someone "getting the Full scope of the site"

Thankfully our business is not dependent upon website traffic!!!

Oh well.

You seem to feel as though we should drop everything and rush to do a review of your site. That simply is not going to happen. We make a point of NOT giving people who post here any favored treatment -- not as "punishment" to you, but out of fairness to all others who might not know of this resource.

You have been told that your update request is awaiting review. To that end, this forum has served its purpose. Review times run for a few hours to more than two years. That is how the system works. I just took a mental break from editing in a category where sites have been waiting since early 2001.

I guess you must be lucky not to have a business dependent upon website traffic, for if it were you would have soon discovered that an ODP listing, while nice, is not the end-all, be-all that some people think it is. Have you done any other web promotion? Have you submitted it to the hundreds/thousands of search engines and directories that accept direct submissions? Businesses neither failo nor succeed on the basis of an ODP listing.

And there could be a couple of very excellent reasons why you haven't seen anything in your web stats. The most likely is that we have not reviewed your site in an in-depth manner since the original listing -- update requests rarely generate in-depth rewiews. Most updated can be accepted or rejected on the basis of a quick look. Secondly, not all editors rewiew sites by going through the ODP interface, so there would be no chicken scratchings that identify the visitor as having come from the ODP.

I did take a quick peek at your website, since I am a Regional editor (but I don't edit Virginia). Here is my personal opinion that is non-binding upon any other editor: I think your listing in Richmond is incorrect. That listing should be moved to a comparable category in Powhatan, since that is where you a relocated. Regional listings are generally based on where a company is located, not where it markets. I think you are very possibly eligible for a second listing with the part of our directory that is by topic. I would suspect that it would be someplace under Sports/. My advice: Search through the Sports/ categories and find the deepest one that best summarizes your company's activities and submit once there. I doubt we have a category that encompasses both cheer and self defense, so you may have some tough choices. Do not submit to more than one additional category. In the interim, I'll post a note to the Virginia editors to consider moving your site from Richmond to Powhatan, whether or not it gets moved is up to an editor there. This is a cooperative venture in which we make suggestions to one another, rather than give instructions.

One month after you have submitted to sports you may ask for a status check for that listing -- please reuse this thread.

Humm..first thanks for your information.

Here is a question in regards to "Regional Status"

If a company was incorperated say in Delaware, Had main office in Maryland, and website and products were "ONLY" benifical and sold to "tobacco farmers in North Carolina", where would the "regional" category in DMOZ go?

Delaware?
Maryland?
North Carolina?

based upon your prior statement, it would be Maryland if the website listed maryland as an office, Even though the website main focus is on NC tobacco farmers. So inessence, the directory listing is not for the purpose of being benifical to the "core" audience, but more or less a telephone directory? Where the business' office is located. What if there were several offices? Humm..

If that is true than regional listings are only if your "core" business is located in that specific locality, such as "Joe's chicken shake" since it would not cater to people any distance away.

But if your business catered to a cross-section of people from a geographical area one would want to only "drill down" to a spot that covers that area, rather than to the physical location of the home office.

Humm.. I wonder If Phillip Morris, USA, which has some corporate headquaters in Richmond VA would get drilled down to Richmond, even though there products and services encompass the world markets.

>Thank you hutch for your answer. If I hadn't posted, I never would have known we were rejected for a simple upgrade, that would make the most common sence.

Actually, now that you do know, what difference does it really make?

>So in essence I am being penalized for Honesty in my orginal submission back in 1998ish

Is it too far outside the realm of your ethical concept to consider that honesty helped you? I rather believe it did. For instance: the editor must judge about site placement for every site, whether unsubmitted or submitted. If the editor's judgment is that the site belongs in the category it was submitted to, then everybody wins: the editor saves time; and surfers get a new site listed (and, last and least, the submitter may even get a review and immediate listing, not simply a move to some other queue.) You could have just gotten a Virginia review and be waiting for the site to percolate down through the Localities - R - Richmond - Recreation chain.

You're still assuming that Virginia is the right level for your site, and (whatever questions there might be about the best way to judge the site) that assumption is flat wrong. were you as big a liar as Bill Gates, or as honest as George Washington, that assumption would still be just as wrong. That won't happen, and it ought not to happen, simply because VIRGINIA DOESN'T MATCH EITHER YOUR OFFICES OR YOUR LOCII OF ACTIVITY. It doesn't matter on what basis the editor judges -- any conceivable rule will lead to the same conclusion.

I'm not willing to discuss Phillip Morris here. I simply can't imagine the kind of mental attitude it would take to compare your situation in any way with theirs. If you hadn't noticed, they are a bit larger, and their services (if you call it that) are not at all rigidly constrained by geography, and they probably have more offices to boot. So the editor must treat them completely differently.

>I wonder if they even viewed the site. Traffic stats that I view daily show no cross-over section

The way I visited the site, you wouldn't have noticed me. Put not your faith in site logs, for they are incomplete and full of fallible data. But I will say that the site's navigation is clean and clear: you can get quite a good feel for what's there without Zorking every twisty little passage. (We like that in a site!)

Humm.. I wonder If Phillip Morris, USA, which has some corporate headquaters in Richmond VA would get drilled down to Richmond, even though there products and services encompass the world markets.

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If it were listed in Regional, yes. Even Microsoft is only listed in Redmond, WA, in Regional. If a site has broader topical interest, it can usually also be listed outside of Regional (hence the reason that spectregunner suggested that you might want to submit to something appropriate under Sports).

Another way of looking at the situation from your perspective: if (as we are saying) what you say about the website in the forum isn't considered when placing the site; if even your suggested category is subject to editorial revision -- how then could you possibly suggest that some other consideration should affect the regional placement?

Hint: the answer is simple, and I've already given it. But it's worth showing the intermediate steps.

If a different description is suggested, and that description conforms to the guidelines for descriptions, BUT it also highlights some way in which the site doesn't exactly fit the category -- THEN it invites the editor to consider what other categories might be more appropriate.

The editor could look at the sites where services are offered and consider whether a listing in US or in S/SE US might be appropriate. We'd consider such things as whether and what other sites might also belong in such a category, what taxonomic relationships and links there ought to be between the categories, and so on. Our center of attention is going to be the subject -- the category, and not the individual site. And so we won't ever view your site with the proprietary and parental love you naturally are disposed to give it. But we will try to put all sites in the best place for our surfers (as nearly as we can envisage them). And we'll fall short of perfection in many ways -- but our priorities will determine whether we, say, "revise an entire regional taxonomy to accommodate one site" or "spend the time reviewing twenty new sites." And who knows what priorities there are, except the individual editors who have and hold them? So we don't know when such a reconsideration might take place, let alone what results there might be.

The site was recently moved to http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Virginia/Recreation_and_Sports/ , completely independently of this thread it seems, a decision I personally agree with given Virginia is by far the primary focus of the programs when you actually examine where the locations really are. Should the programs be expanded outside Virginia to a substantial extent, a further upward move might be considered in my personal opinion. Usually with locations in more than one state a wider regional or national placing would be most likely but if something is 95% in one state it is probably logical to suppose it is of most use to users to be placed within that state.

In Regional sites can be listed by (a) where the organisation is physically located (taking or not taking subsidiary locations into consideration), (b) the service area, or (c) the geographical focus of the site regardless of where the organisation is located. Which option is selected depends on a whole host of factors including the nature of the site, the nature of the organisation, precedents, specific sector-related guidelines, and more. Decisions are not, therefore, simple and straightforward in many cases, and there can be more than one right answer. Anyway, it seems this thread has been overtaken by events.

Thank You Oneeye and/or any editor that made the move.


Thank you Hutch, Spectrunner for your ""Comments""

And with that, Blackbeltdomain was never seen or heard from again!!

No thanks are due. It wasn't me and there doesn't seem to be any connection with this thread. Pure coincidence that another editor happened to chance on the site and re-review the situation...