OK, one of my longer ones and I only get it out for special occasions, but it fits the bill more or less.
DMOZ has never been, is not, will never be, a listing service for webmasters. It is not our job, is not any part of our concept, to provide in any way shape or form a listing service for webmasters. If anything we are the anti-Christ of listing services for webmasters. We do not exist so webmasters can send us their sites to review and list so webmasters can promote their sites, increase their Google Page Rank, sell their wares, show off to their friends what brilliant web marketing experts they are.
So what are we?
We are a bunch of unpaid volunteers who spend their spare time working on a project to catalog all the unique content on the Internet that we can find. We search the search engines, we write down URLs from the back of buses, we ask whether our dentist has a website. We trawl through pages of links on personal websites and on other directories.
And we invite members of the public to help us with our little project by sending us their suggestions. It is called the Suggest URL feature. It can be the results of their travels around the Internet, something they have seen on the back of a bus, their dentist's website. Or it can be their own site.
We take all the stuff we have found ourselves, and everything suggested to us by the public, and when we have some spare time we look through it at our own pace, listing some, rejecting others, saving the rest for the next time.
Original stuff now: your needs as a webmaster don't concern us, no-one should ever launch into a business that has a listing in DMOZ as a critical part of the plan. Not only can the wait be anything from 2 minutes to infinity, we never guarantee to list any site, and the majority are rejected. Explore other routes to promote your site, not all cost big bucks and many are free. Google search doesn't charge for example and what bigger search engine could you want.
