URL Submission and Editor Application Status

I have been involved in SEO in some form for eight years and have only recently become responsible for submitting URLs to dmoz.org. In this process, I have come under the impression that dmoz.org is an elitist organization run by overzealous editors who desire a competitive edge. I am not sure who is approving or disapproving my URL submissions and applications for editor privileges but I have been rejected twice for a category that does not appear to have an editor.

I feel that the URLs that I provided were appropriate; more so than what is currently listed. I also feel that the URLs that I provided as examples in my application were not in my own self-interest. I am an educated person and have been to an accredited four-year college and displayed no grammatical or spelling errors in my application.

How then, can dmoz.org say that it is an open directory? It seems more like a closed, elitist directory to me.

Perhaps telling me the status of my URL submission of http://www.oceansideoregon.com to the http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Oregon/Localities/O/Oceanside/ category will enlighten me more to just how open dmoz.org actually is. I submitted the URL probably three weeks ago and have not received a reply.

Why was my application to be an editor turned down when there is no editor?

--Tony

Well, Tony;

You are not going to receive a status check because it has been less than a month since your submission, and we will stop doing them within the next 72 hours. Had you read the READ BEFORE POSTING notice on the top of the forum you would have known about the one month rule -- but perhaps you were so focused on trashing us that you didn't have time to read the forum rules.

And no, you heard nothing from us with regards to the submission because we don't send out notices. We never have and probably never will.

If you had read our FAQ, you would know that no category is without an editor. Thus, that part of your rant about your editor application is factually incorrect. I also wonder why you are asking in a public forum for the reasons you were declined, when you received those specific reasons in the e-mail that told you that your application had not been accepted. If you didn't get the e-mail, then perhaps you were mistaken about being declined. If you got the e-mail and chose not to read beyond the first paragraph, then other issues come into play.

Is there anything else we can assist you with?

also wonder why you are asking in a public forum for the reasons you were declined, when you received those specific reasons in the e-mail that told you that your application had not been accepted.

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Actually, I specifically addressed those reasons... The reasons that my application to be editor was declined were because either I was interested only in self-promotion, there were spelling or grammatical errors, the URLs I provided were not appropriate, etc. It seems more like you did not read my post.

You are not going to receive a status check because it has been less than a month since your submission, and we will stop doing them within the next 72 hours. Had you read the READ BEFORE POSTING notice on the top of the forum you would have known about the one month rule

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Actually, I did read the guidelines to status checks a few weeks ago and honestly, I was so overwhelmed with all of the nit-picky rules that dmoz.org has that I forgot and thought it was a two-week rule. And since you are going to stop doing status checks in 72 hours, I thought now is a good time as any to get my status check out of the way...

Now on that note, does anyone care to help me determine the status of my URL submission or are you all going to support my claim that dmoz.org is an elitist organization by denying me and making my post attempt completely futile?

Tony:

You claim to be a really smart person -- do you really think that anyone would really want to help you based on the tone and tenor of your postings?

You seem to be going out of your way to be as rude and offensive as possible, so that we will ignore you, and then you can use that fact to "prove" that we are elitist and arrogant.

No, Tony, I don't think anyone wants to come out and play.

I am sorry. I know that I have taken the wrong approach in attempting to get help. It was wrong of me to attack dmoz.org as an organization and perhaps you can forgive me for being frustrated.

Perhaps if you were on my end you would see why I feel the way I feel. If you take a look at the category where I submitted my URL you will see some links to websites with tremendous databases that are linked in numerous places on dmoz.org. The URL that I submitted just happens to be the most appropriate URL for that category. There is not another website on the web that can lend as much to that category as the URL that I submitted. The URL that I submitted is not linked anywhere in your directory.

Why is it not linked after three weeks of it being submitted?

On your vision of reality, you should reapply claiming a graduate degree from Yale, and see if that works better. Of course, I didn't mention a degree at all when _I_ applied. Maybe they assumed that meant in the circles I moved in, it was swank to assume everyone had advanced degrees.

But that's not really the most plausible theory. And, come to think of it, I specifically disowned any credentials in Musicology when I applied for the Music category--and was accepted. That, I think, gives me some evidence to support my interpretion of that lack of interest in academic credentialization as the opposite of elitism. But who knows? Maybe I've forgotten more than I remember of those graduate courses in formal logic.

Another way of looking at it: there are different kinds of elitism, and everyone is perhaps susceptible to some form. The ODP is partial to a definition of the "elite" as "those that actually do the work" -- an attitude common among volunteers, engineers and teamsters; but rare among people with political power, fame, inherited wealth, or arbitrary credentials. With your own emphasis on wealth and credentialization, I would have expected you to find the ODP community less than, um, collegial.

As for receiving a reply to a site suggestion, it's just not done. In our experience, too many webmasters turn vicious -- oh, sure, it's not more than a few percent of them, but after 50,000 site reviews, even a few percent can add up. So we meet webmasters only in public, well-lighted places with cops nearby (and still often end up calling the cops.) E-mail is right out. (Reality intrudes in so many ways on our dreams.)

A civil question deserves a civil answer.

There are presently more than a million website waiting for an editor to review them -- and reviewing submissions is not (and will never be) an editor's highest priority.

In many parts of the directory the wait time is in excess of three years, which is a problem if people view the ODP as some sort of webmaster listing service (which it is definitely not!), but is not a huge issue for ODP editors because we view the pool of suggested sites as just one place where we can find good sites to add.

The issue is compounded by the fact that more than 60% of all submitted sites are what we classify as spam. They are mirrors, redirects, cloaked sites and other malicious attempts to get multiple listings. In some parts of the directory (parts of computers, parts of shopping) the number of malicious submissions exceeds 90%.

So to you, we understand that three weeks is a very long time if you have the expectation that the ODP is a listing service. To us, three weeks is a blink of the eye when we look at our total task.

That is one of the reasons why we are shutting down the giving of sttus checks -- it simply consumed so much of our bandwidth with no real ROI in terms of our #1 mission: building a directory.

Now, let's get back, for a second, to your editor application. I don't deal with them, but I will tell you what little I know. When applications are declined, people receive a form letter that contains the ODP equivalent of the Top Ten List of Reasons Most Applications Get Declined. Usually (but not always) the meta editor who reviews the application will put a few specific comments at the bottom of the e-mail. In my experience, few people seem to get to that part of the e-mail. They react to the word they were not accepted, speed read the fisrt few reasons, get P*****, and stop reading. I do know as a fact that if a meta editor feels that an application has merit, the meta will often make very specific suggestions as to how to improve the application. I know of people who have applied four or five times before getting accepted. There is a tremendous amount to absorb in doing an editor application -- the sites must be germane, the title and descriptions must be guidelines compliant, the category cannot be too large. etc. I'd suggest going back to the e-mail you received and look to see if any personal advice was offered at the bottom.

I'm late for dinner.