since you referred me to the thread, let me reply to alucard's points :
We believe that we are providing a useful service to our customers (our customers being surfers and the downstream sites that use the data that we produce) and thus far, evidence seems to be that this style of directory, run in this fashion, is valuable. If we didn't matter, people wouldn't be complaining so loudly when "their" site doesn't get included.
Obviously dmoz does matter, but just because it matters doesn't mean it's run in the most efficient manner. Blood tranfusions matter, but they also add improvements as needed, like AIDs screening. (Yes, I'm not a fool, I understand the vast difference in importance between DMOZ and blood transfusions, just illustrating the point, something can be useful, even necessary to life, and still need great improvements.)
Many editors have questioned the value of the status checks - it is a regular discussion on internal fora. There are those that feel it serves no value at all, and should be stopped. There are those who feel that it has value.
I think if you look at this situation from a human psychological stand point. You have someone in a room, you tell them when they press a button that a piece of candy they like will fall into the room, eventually. They press it and wait... human nature is to hit it again. You see this with soda machines, you put the money in, press the button, nothing happens... couple seconds delay, you press it again. A reasonable delay for a soda machine may be only a few seconds, is 1-2 years really a reasonable delay for this directory? I really don't think it is.
After that, though, there is nothing that a submitter can do to speed things up - it's going to take as long as it takes. So why keep asking the equivalent of "are we there yet"?
I think Alucard is missing the point of the questions. The question is asked like "are we there yet" because, as we have established, DMOZ is important. And people are being nice, because the last thing they want to do is irritate the editor who is already acting like they couldn't really give a damn. But the real question is "why the hell is it taking DMOZ so long?!?!"
Like I said, why not have a soft limit for a fair amount of sites to be reviewed in a certain amount of time, and make that rate keep up with the rate of submission. As I said, not to burden the volunteer editors, but as an indicator of when they need assistance. I'm not saying stand behind someone and drive them with a whip to review sites... it's a volunteer position. But if they don't have the time, let other people apply, let the soft limit be the indicator of when other's should apply for a given category. If you've got more sites being added than you can handle, or if the wait is years, perhaps it's time to allow more editors in.
I think even a volunteer organization would understand this logic. Albeit, DMOZ is not as important as say... a soup kitchen, but generally, if they can't keep up with the rate of food that needs to be outgoing, they would look for more volunteers to fill the positions that can't keep up.
I'm not sure why there would even be argument about it... "NO!! WE LIKE BEING YEARS BEHIND ON SUBMISSIONS!! IT'S THE MOST EFFICIENT WAY TO OPERATE!" I just can't imagine people saying that... but I only need read up this thread to see almost exactly that.
Who do you have to blow around here to get your site looked at? =)