Whats the point?

HI guys, apologies for the negative heading but it gives you a theme for this posting.

I submitted my site well over a year ago with no response. I submitted it again earlier this year, but now, under a different category as my business has changed. No response yet.

I understand I wont know if Im still on a list awaiting an editor, or have been rejected, and it may take years before I will know if I am listed. So, I guess, every couple of years I should re-submit at the risk of being acused of spam, a fine balance between spaming and having some interest in being included in Dmoz.

But Im struggling here because I understand that Google are now seeing Dmoz as not being kept up to date so does not represent what is really happening on the Internet anymore, so Im wondering what the point of Dmoz is anymore. Either it is a good and current reference, or it is out by as much as many years out of date. The former in my opinion has value, the latter has no value to anyone.

Am I missing the point here? Im wondering what the value of Dmoz is if it isnt anywhere near up to date, or am I wrong / mislead?

thanks

There's a lot of misinformation on those webmaster sites, , don't believe everything you hear.

Keeping up to date with site suggestions isn't our goal, so that's really a non issue with us because we're not a listing service for site owners, even though we do list sites.

What we do is build categories (a group of sites) that will be the most useful to web surfers looking for specific information, and those surfers are who we serve. So, we don't want every site, just sites that might have unique content that will add value to the category.

Our view is that a web surfer doesn't want to see the same exact information on 10 different websites, so we look for sites that have some unique content that other sites might not have. It's a little like we don't want ten copies of the same book, we want ten books that have a little something different to offer the reader.

With that goal in mind, we allow the public to help us by suggesting sites to us for our consideration, and we really appreciate what you send us, but we also have other sources to find sites, and we also have many other tasks to do within the Directory. Site reviews are just one of them.

There could very easily be tens of thousands of such site suggestions, all with an equal opportunity to be listed, but there is no first in, first out system of reviewing of them, because we're not a listing service, and there's no way to predict when a volunteer will have the time or desire to work in any one area, it's just one giant pool of suggestions that are distributed across the Directory.

The editing community are all volunteers, with various levels of permissions, so a lot of editors are restricted to certain areas of the Directory, until they request and can demonstrate they have the understanding, ability, and trustworthiness to edit in other categories, . We do that for your protection as well as the for the Directory.

I hope that gives you a better understanding. (and, no, one or two submissions would not cause us to think you were a spammer, but our version of spam includes more than just multiple submissions).

http://dmoz.org/guidelines/include.html

Whats the point?

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The point is, though the books submitted might not get reviewed and added as quickly as the suggester would like, the bulk of the library is still doing what it was intended to do, providing a very good resource for the web surfer seeking information on a specific topic, without having to click on 30 sites with the same exact content , .

By the way, if you have a brick & mortar walkin business, you might want to submit it to your city (locality) in Regional:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/

HI Crowbar, thanks for your response. I reflected on my post after I sent it, thinking is was perhaps a little provocative and also, by the looks of how many posts are on this subject, not original. So thanks for responding and responding constructively.

I have some thoughts based on your reply.

I guess I am at an advantage that my content is original so I can side step the issue youve raised over duplication of sites with the same content. I understand and agree with what you have said there. However, My site offers ambient music of my own and also a growing number of other independent artists who make and upload their music to the site. Our market is focused on ambient music lovers but also therapists of all kinds who want to use music within their therapy, directly, or as background. Our licensing agreement explains the use of our music to cover this. There really arent that many music download sites out there focused on the niche of ambient / relaxation music, especially with consideration for therapists.

So given that, I would think <url removed> would be very original. Like many submitters (which I would imagine, 9 times out of 10 is the site owner trying to get his/her site listed so that it will be seen by its target market) Ive possibly tried to put the site into the wrong category, is the site within a health and fitness area or is the site music / mp3 retailing?

I am thinking that if therapists were looking for ambient relaxation music they would probably go to search for an mp3 download site and search under such terms as 'relaxation music' or 'ambient music' to start with.. maybe.

Maybe I should have put it there instead of health and fitness, but I wont know if Ive been rejected or am still waiting. Thanks for clarifying about the spam concern. I may take another look and focus on ambient music more for a new submission.

However, such is the process and resources at the Directory that I wont really know if Im rejected because of a disagreement in the category Ive proposed, or Im still waiting for months, perhaps years?

Additionally if there is no clear rejection process by which site owners can learn if they’ve been rejected, and under what grounds so they can reconsider (as opposed to argue) and resubmit in a more appropriate category, then sites for this reason also will not be made available to the surfer who is looking for the most relevent sites based on their search.

If also there is no clear understanding by the site submitter if they are in a queue or are still waiting, perhaps (or so I hear) many months or even more than a year after originally submitting, then I would wonder what the search engines would think about the relevency of the Directory if it was so ambiguious as to what was in, and what is still awaiting evaluation making their search results less than current and relevent.

Ive taken a look at Google and serached under 'ambient music'. I didnt see the Directory, but saw Wikki, and a few others, notably at least two on the top two pages listing ambient resources that have not been updated for years.

So its seems from Google's perspective, they are not giving their users the best and most up to date reference for what is happening on the web, more like it seems 'ambient music' is dead and not going anywhere. This is such not the case that as a user, I would start to not trust Google searches and go elsewhere to another search engine where I knew their own categorisation checks and searches were very current.

But considering I do have original content, and I am not getting listed the search engines that use the Directory, such as Google, who also are passionate about user experience, the surfer is being let down.

Is there anyway I can find out if my site has been rejected or is in the queue?

Im wondering if the Directory appreicated site owners submitting their sites then perhaps this could be demonstrated by offering a confirmation mail of being in the queue and a rejection or acceptance mail by the Directory volunteers would keep site submitters motivated beyound any doubt that rises its head within blogs and forums where site owners express their frustration at being stumped at what is going on.

I don't think your post was provocative, especially since most editors have sites of their own and understand how things look from the outside.

If a site suggestion has been submitted to the wrong category, we don't delete it, we send it to the correct category. I did so with a couple this morning.

Your site sounds very interesting and useful, but I don't edit in that part of the Directory. I can tell you that most categories have a "Description" link at the top right corner of the page that usually explains the type of site suggestions that get listed there, which might be helpful to you.

Google hasn't updated from us in a long time, so you're better off searching the ODP Directory, itself, by leaving off the www. stuff and just searching for mysite.com.

Additionally if there is no clear rejection process by which site owners can learn if they’ve been rejected, and under what grounds so they can reconsider (as opposed to argue) and resubmit in a more appropriate category, then sites for this reason also will not be made available to the surfer who is looking for the most relevant sites based on their search.

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We really don't have the resources at this time to do that, and the resources we do have, need to be used for more important things, . Also, the less than honest submitters would use that information in a way that would make it even more difficult for the honest site suggestions, like your own, to get reviewed.

Depending on where it is in the Directory, some categories get a lot of rejects, and some categories, like perhaps in Regional, get very few. For instance, Real Estate and Travel & Tourism categories get a lot of spam in Regional, but Education gets very little.

In the Topical category of Shopping, many editors just don't want to edit there, because it is a spam magnet, time consuming to deal with, and very unenjoyable to work there. Giving a site status report to any of those type of sites would make it even worse.

If a site gets rejected for one of the reasons in that link I gave you, there is nothing that site owner can do to make it acceptable, except to get more creative in hiding it, which would slow the process down even further for the honest suggester.

We used to give status reports here, but found it wasn't helpful to either the site owner or the Directory.

All of us want to be liked, appreciated, and as helpful to the public as we can be, but status reports really weren't working.

Thanks Crowbar. Im thinking now I will take some time to think, look up the best place or places to submit and check to see the size of the categories as a way to see if they are over subscribed already. 'MP3 Download' isnt going to be one of my choices then..

'MP3 Download' isnt going to be one of my choices then..

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The best thing you can do to help editors review your site is to suggest it to the single most appropriate category. When you think about where that might be, think about it in terms of what your site contains rather than the market you're trying to gear your product towards. For example, Health and Fitness would not be an appropriate place for your site.

If you go to dmoz.org and search on "ambient", you'll see the category http://dmoz.org/Arts/Music/Styles/E/Experimental/Ambient/ . You'll see a number of subcategories and @linked categories there including http://dmoz.org/Business/Arts_and_Entertainment/Music/Labels/Specialty/Experimental/Ambient/ and http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Entertainm...c/Specialty/Experimental,_Noise,_and_Ambient/ -- from the description you give, your site fits one of those two categories.

motsa said:

The best thing you can do to help editors review your site is to suggest it to the single most appropriate category. When you think about where that might be, think about it in terms of what your site contains rather than the market you're trying to gear your product towards. For example, Health and Fitness would not be an appropriate place for your site.

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Thanks motsa that is very helpful

Guy

That's why motsa is a meta, .

haaaa!! Im on it :O)

actually.. Ive looked through those categories and found a few dead sites. Im wondering, since it is my passion, is it worth me volunteering or is this too close to my own business?

surely if I get my site listed by somerone else, there's nothing more that can be done to prioritise a site, so as a volunteer all I can do is make sure that there is a good list that provides variety and choice in the same context as the categories themselves? anyone else who submits a similar site to mine will simply be offering up new resources with new artists. I wont feel threatend by that.

maybe I will apply anyway.

As long as an editor is unbiased and treats his own sites as impartially as he treats all other sites, and doesn't show any favoritism towards his own site, or bias towards a competitors site, there is no reason why he can't edit a category that his site qualifies for.

Editors are expected to treat every site equally and follow our Guidelines. I no longer have any sites at all, but when I did, the site I had at the time was one of the three example sites I used (and I stated it was mine), and it belonged in that category.

If it had belonged in another category, I have no doubt whatsoever that my application would have been turned down, and I would have received the standard list of reasons to choose from, asked to figure out which thing applied to my case, and encouraged to reapply after fixing what I misunderstood the first time, .

Many current editors had to give it more than one shot before they finally got accepted, and I'm sure that almost all editors have been turned down for wider editing permissions that they requested after becoming an editor, I certainly have, .

It's nothing personal, it's just a judgement call. Our metas have a responsibility not to approve an editor before he's ready. They aren't ogres, despite popular belief , they are some of the finest and most knowledgeable and experienced editors we have. I have a great deal of respect for them, they're like our big brothers and sisters. They look out for us.

I can actually say this openly, at the risk of sounding like I'm kissing up, because I've made it well known that I have no desire or need for higher permissions, I'm happy right where I am.

actually.. Ive looked through those categories and found a few dead sites.

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Great!

Well, not great that there are bad sites in the directory, but great that you have found them.

Can we assume that you will visit the reporting thread and provide us with the details so we can hunt those critters down and put them out of their misery?

Guys, I think your posts prove that Dmoz is certainly alive and currently very active. Crowbar, thanks I will take your feedback onboard and give it a shot because Im passionate about the subject area.

Spectregunner, yes, would be good to at least be able to do that.