www.foster-yeoman.co.uk

Almost 3 months ago I submitted a url for my company's website for inclusion in the ODP. I have re-submitted the site today but would like some feedback upon the status of the original submission. The site category was http://dmoz.org/Business/Construction_and_Maintenance/Materials_and_Supplies/Masonry_and_Stone/Natural_Stone/Quarriers

Regards,

Chris Snape

The site has not been touched by an editor, so is presumably still sitting to the unreviewed queue. Your resubmission will, unfortunately, have pushed it to the back of the queue.

Step Four of the page entitled 'How to add a site to the Open Directory' says "If a site you submitted has not been listed after three weeks, you may submit it again or you may send an e-mail to an editor of the category for which the site was submitted". There is no indication that re-submitting a site will affect its current position in the unreviewed queue. Given that I submitted this site almost 3 months ago is it not possible to give it some sort of priority in the editorial review ?. At the very least surely it would be possible to maintain its original position in the review queue ?.

Regards,

Chris Snape

First: yes, there's a way to keep a site's place in the queue, and that way is, um, not to resubmit.

Secondly, don't worry about this too much. For one thing, many editors don't always view sites in chronological order. (I hardly ever do.) For another, you can even use this "feature": for instance, to replace a keyword-stuffed, hypeful submission you made back in the times of your deep ignorance with a crisp, concise description of the site's contents -- which will stand out so much in the mountain of Hormel by-products, that many editors will immediately review the site because the professionalism of a well-edited honest description gives promise of an honest site submitted to the appropriate category: which is both easy to review, and satisfying to reward.

I think the advise to resubmit comes from the desire of the ODP not to lose good submissions. That is, if you submitted something but for some reason the submission process failed or lost the data, then the advise is to resubmit so that at least it is back in the queue. I think the three week timescale may have been realistic a few years ago, when the ODP contained a lot less sites and received a lot less submissions. Nowadays, in many categories that figure is not so realistic. In spam laden categories many months or more would be a better estimate.