What is a site?

I guess this is also on the "deeplink" issue.

I'm a dad, and an etrepeneur and a hobbiest, and a vacation rental owner.

Now I realize content, and unique content is a primary factor in each listing.

A seperate page for a rental cabin, which has floor plans, attributes and seperate pages with maps and interior pictures seems to qualify as a "site". but I'm not listed yet. If a friend of a friend knew that I had a rental condo and was patient to let their fingers do the walking you'd hope that the direcotry would allow them such. Similar if a neigbor or aquantance had knew the address and wanted to contact me directly. While I advertise, and have much of the information up at places where I advertise, my own page on the condo serves as a different sort of reference and of course the paid and non paid listing might expire at any time.

Detailed pictures, and issues about what I came accross in building a treehouse qualified as a site and I think in good faith dads building treehouse would find unique and value adding information in looking at my page. Some more than others depending on what they were hoping to build. I'd have liked to see what I did first...and I liked seeing what others did...saves mistakes and adds to efficiency...the idea or a web resourse.

Now, hosting those two under the same domain seems to cause a bit of an issue with the dmoz, or does it?

What should I do when I put a site similar to what I did on the treehouse (which I'll expand on) on the water feature I put around my yard. Now I've read lots of books an seen lots of magazine articles on home water features. Mine though is unique enough to satify, inspire and help other home owners innovate. When I get it finished enough to get listed would i behoove me to get a new domain name instead of parking the new site under my existing domains?

Again, there will be people who would likely be interested in seeing what I did that didn't know me, my name, that I had a treehouse, or a rental cabin or where I lived.

Now I know the directory is not about search. And I'm not entirely sure that search is what I'm about either on the issue.

I think the idea is that, if somebody wanted to see, gee I'd like to see some examples of brooks waterfalls and ponds a homeowner built in his yard, he'd be able to go to a directory and find them.

The page rank and stuff , and the searches are so much about trading links and the like. I don't really want to spend my time doing that. Nor would I only want to see the sites of people who spent their time doing that on the next hobby.

(I'm trying to build a driveway gate and I'm having a darned time finding a way to get to pages where guys have put up what they are proud of having done and which might give me ideas). An index on that is useful in ways where only guys who really want to make a living off the gates would go through the cross linking trouble.

It seems in terms of being a research site, and important service is done indexing people sharing ideas and content who aren't in it to necessarily make a buck.

Now thats a comment rather than a question, but I guess the question is, do folks that want various different advocations of theirs and pages that have something actually to share that might interest someone in the field, do those people need to create seperate domains to get half a dozen or a dozen of their differing endeveours listed?

The cost difference is not terribly huge, although its a bit tedious.

Also, the way the search engines work at the present, if you wanted to make your stuff findable it seems that having different pages under one site are slightly prefferable in boosting your finabilty on any subject (page rank).

I don't know how to approach this dilema but I think I am inclined to set up seperate free standing domains on seperate subjects with links based upon, me or to the extent that the subjects intersect, each other.

Deeplinks are "only for exceptional sites."

What you're describing sounds like mostly a personal site -- the unifying theme in what seems like such disparate topics is that they are "what you are interested in." The ODP, perhaps more than any other directory, favors such sites.

Generally, we'd list that site once, no matter how many domains it were spread out over. (It might be deeplinked "in exceptional cases" but obviously most cases are NOT exceptional.) But we really do deeplink exceptional sites, some of which are personal sites. My personal rule of thumb is: if the majority of a personal site is on one subject, I'd list it under that subject, if not, it would go into a "Personal Pages" category. If the material on OTHER subjects were comparable (in scope, quality, depth, and authority) to, say, a featured article in National Geographic (or Better Homes and Gardens, or Newsweek -- some magazine in a related field) then I would consider deeplinking. The example you describe sounds like a "do-it-yourself home handyman" site, not to be considered for deeplinking because all the subjects are so closely related.

If a personal site (or for that matter, a business site) IS spread out over multiple domains, we tend to feel as if our tolerance was being taken advantage of -- as if people were making decisions about their site layout to manipulate or deceive us. (It's not really a good idea.)

If your friend can find your website, then they can let their fingers walk through your navigation -- we don't need to duplicate your site map or Google's index!

Think in terms of one listing except where deeplinks are both remote from the main listing (that is, in a totally unrelated category) AND would, if considered as a separate website, be one of the top listings in the category.

How to find stuff

hucheson,

thank you for your quick reply. I do understand the "do it your self" notion.

But even on that category, I still have a bit of a query.

I think, at this point you are concerned with time resourses, and perhaps that is a very valid concern at this point in time.

However, while my friends can find me, and perhaps even friends of friends, I think it is important to be able to find things withou knowing who or where people are located. Its not only that I want people to stumble upon me, but that I would like to be able to find such sorts of information without needing to peruse thousands of sites in search engines that have high ranking but only deal with a subjec in perifery, or are stacked with commercial sites primarily seeking page rank.

On my driveway example, perhaps the index is young, and perhaps not as many do-it yourselfers post those things as they do with say tree-houses.
But what am I to do, use the DMOZ to look at every do it yourself indexed page to see if they do gates?

I am looking for a homeowner who built a large driveway gate on a steel frame, and who for purposes of child and bike ingress and egress built a gate within that gate. I've learned a bit from the commercial sites, but they start duplicating themselves, and I'd think there might be someone across this large world who may have done such and might have put it up on a web page with some comments.

The engines like google won't even index sites that don't have indbound links? They might peruse a set of personal pages and index some content, but the search systems tend to include more chaff as they go down the list,...I'd be happy to see indexed a (unimportant ?) specific topic page at number 345 on the list if jumping down that low didn't seem to allow them to trhough in "important" sites with tangental information with the same weight as unpopular, small but specific pages. DMOZ isn't search, but I think the idea is that supravised indexes are supposed to help those issues.

As for the seperate personal sites, I suppose if it quacks like a duck, it is a duck is a very fair rule. However I'd think that might cut both ways...if it quacked like a seperate site it would be a seperate site? follow on (sorry this is long)

It sounds like a good part of your dileman is based upon resources.

I also think there needs to be a way for people to index materail that other people would like to see.

Thinking back to research papers I did (twenty some odd years ago, I would pore through files at libraries, go through journals etc) Some times in a file on a City, you'f find a postcard from a worlds fair 85 years ago or something.

If someone had such a postcard, and took nice scans of it, and perahps added some text that they rememeber about theiir trip, and created a web page for that card and those reflections, such a page...while not encylopedic in its form, whould be quite useful to people doing research on either the event, the city at the time, or someone doing social studies on social mores of the era.

So a page such indexed (and will there be cross indesx. (california history, san francisco, 1915) actually I'm not sure you have such a designation.

In fact, I have a great aunt with some curios just like such, and I think created her a web page where I added some information, her persnal relfection and some pictures of tickets and trinkets she saved would be a small but vital site to folks interested in that field.

I know I am addressing things that have been raised. I guess if nothing else, it would be nice to have these issues elaborated upon in a FAQ., or reference.

If that is something that there are no resoursees for now, but fit the eventual goal for the DMOZ, it would be nice to know that.

If there are better ways for people to make such information available on the web, perhaps you could delegate subjects temporarily to sister indexes (univerity departments etc, or maybe professional associations for things like pumps and windmills) so that small contributions might be virtually indexed by a DMOZ sugestion (perhaps with some emphasis) to look further there?

Tom

Seperate sites on own merrit? Ads

If I were to do that Pan Pacific site for my great aunt...page or two of reflections and some pcitures. A litle magaize article basically, or a collum, not quite as long as a New Yorker personal history, but perhaps with more pictures.

Would the links I put on that page materially change the way that such an article should be indexed?

And a seperate issue I haven't quite understood, although touched on in the first post on this thread,

When is a link and advertisement, and when is it a content link?

I don't think (am I wrong?) that cotent pages are penalized for having a few adds on them, (as long as the content is pre-emeninent).

Is there a guide or a Faq sort of thing that might explain how I might put an advertising link (say to my rental condo?) without it looking like a spam sort of link? Is there a distinction between me puting a Amazon book refferal and a link to a very small commercial page?

goal is not to circumvent but to comply with sprit

BTW, my questions are not intended to find a "loophole".

What I'd like to avoid is starting in a direction that is both poor ettiquette and will not facilitate exchange of knowledge directly between other related sites (i.e. organic web of cross links between other sites by other people on the same or similar topic)

It sounds like if I indeed create sites on separte issues that would stand on their own merit that I must be very careful about including links between those sites and others I might be involved with.

Perhaps a byline, and a Url for the author is stadard practice, and other links must be unfafilated with the owner/webmaster/writer?

If and when I do a web site with pictures and experiences of of a neophyte boater driving a boat with his wife and two small children through france (and not speaking french), I'd imagine that such a site would be useful to folks considering such a vacation, might and might not get linked by tour operators, but would be more likely to get linked should it stand alone.

You might ask what would I gain from sharing my experience? Is the goal simply to drive traffic? Well, I think the goal would be only to drive very specific traffic, those same sorts of people who were so intersted might trade favors in other ways, or return the favor by telling me about a great family adventure they had taken that I hadn't dreamed of.

And in taking the time, I might expand my own personal knowledge. Am I suggesting that the DMOZ post all family vacation photos? NO way...but if your editors in travel saw that a given page provided elaborations, useful hints, and answered questions that a person might not be able to find elsewhere, the inclusion would be so based.

Now, it sounds like in part, the idea of putting everything under one site is what you want to avoid and the idea of deep links as spam producing is the issue at hand.

So I guess it is the links that provide the danger of abuse and I need to be very careful in putting links on sites that might appear to be feeders.

A unique site with no links couldn't be spam could it?

Again...I'm new at this but I want to put up a bunch of stuff. Maybe some of the stuff will be precursers to stuff I'd want to get published in hard form...who knows. I grow in different ways every few years....some opportunity may pull me out of this current yen to express myself.

The ODP is not and doesn't want to be and cannot be the only way to "find stuff on the web" -- any more than a library card catalog can be a substitute for a book index or an encyclopedia. Many things can't be found in the ODP, and that's fine. It is primarily an index of sites.

Google's inadequacies are not our problem either. (Google isn't and can't be and probably doesn't even want to be the only four ways to find information on the net.) But ... if the ODP has a link (A link!) to a site, and the site has decent navigation, Google can find all its pages. So not only is that not an issue to us, it's not an issue at all.

Thanks hucheson, I know that search isn't an issue...the ODP purpose isn't that people find others sites.

But I do think I understand that the ODP does have a charge to facilitate research into various inquires both acadademic and commercial.

Funny you mentioned the libary index, I had just posted about that issue on another thread. I would like to better understand that and think its an issue of its own.

The guidelines for editors for promotional material are simple. If you can ignore them, then do: just evaluate the site on its informational content. If the promotional material is so prominent that it's obvious it's the purpose of the site, then the site should be rejected because of that.

But -- there's a distinction, often overlooked, between "information about unique product or service offered" and "advertising". The former is listable. If you are the only one offering a particular cabin for rent, then information about it is not "advertising", it is "information".

hutcheson said:

The guidelines for editors for promotional material are simple. If you can ignore them, then do: just evaluate the site on its informational content. If the promotional material is so prominent that it's obvious it's the purpose of the site, then the site should be rejected because of that.

".

Click to expand...

If I read that correctly a seperate site that qualfies on its own merrits would not be penalized for links to un-related sites if such links were not distracting, did not seem to take pre-emenienc or did not pear to be the dominate part of the site with the qualfying issue secondary. A small power bar logo, and a one inch square link to a 10K run might not necessarily ruin a historical article on the Pan Pacific Exibition.

On the condo thing, I think I understand the unique information requirement.

However I'd like to know if the guidlines for deep placement would make that same information less unique should it be combined with other information.

Also, what if I advertise some-where, and those advertising the site have similar but less information than my own site, and by their very nature, are temporay relationships with me. I'm not sure there is problem yet, but I'd like to understand the ODP protocol on such stuff if possible.

Again, Me Tom Norian, I don't feel personally entitle to any direct anwer. But it would be nice to have a place where vacation rental owners could see a FAQ or something on what issues your editors have been confronting and stuff.

Again thanks for the work, and the answers. I think I understand how things work much better than I did before I started looking around and your answers elaobated on issues I couldn't quite find answers to reading prior posts and dialogue.

I still am having a hard time with the why's of the libary versus indes thread....look forward to any help you can give there, and I hope that maybe you all might consolodate some of the stuff into couple FAQ questions to keep you from re-answering how the wheel works.

The short answer is: if you are designing your site's deeplinks and domain names with a view towards the number of ODP links you can get, you are not just an abuser but a devious abuser.

No I won't do that

No I won't do that.

But I do think that should I develope seperate sites on different issues, I will be less inclined to put the seperate unconnectd sites under one master domain.

If I wanter to be found by a truly targeted group there are some incentives to develope ruly seperate sites.

Rather than tryint to start a new "about.com", or sometihing, which might have been my initial inclination. Fore example, I was contemplating creating a small kick boxing site for my hairdresser under my domain banner. If her deire was that women kickboxing ethiusiasts in the SF bay area might find her it sounds like I should help her get a seperate domain of her own and help her put up an interesting and unique site.

As for the homeimprovement, I imagine that the editors in the various fields have high standards. An interelated page would desrve not to be listed. Something unique and entirely free standing might deserve to be listed but might also be better placed with other stuff I also do if it were more personal. I'll be cognicent of that bridge if I were to cross it.

Its sort of a delicate issue it apears, and one that I am only now contemplating its significance. In order not to get inundated by subcategorzing deep links of other sites, the rules created by the ODP sort of incentivize more sites at the cusp decision point. In my humble opinion, some of this might be adverted by being more open to having a single page listed different ways(if merit would allow), but again I'm sure you are aware of problems in the execution of that that I don't garner.

Best to you, and I appreciate your work towards an open society.

We must find ways to allow individuals to interact and find each other not subject to the corporate thumb. At the same time, hard to interact in an open sewar with no rules, and the human immagination will not always be depoyed in benign ways. Checks and balances.

A site you built about a small kickboxer (or for your local church, coven, college, or Kiwanis Club) would not be considered "part of your personal site," even if it's on the same domain.

That's the value of editorial judgment: we can act to disencentivize the encentivization of strict rules.