Your site is very strange.

Hi there.
Your site is very strange.
Everybody wants to be listed here but only lucky can.
I live in Russia and as you probably know there was socialism before.
Perhaps not all know what it is but I will explain. There was almost nothing. Some things were cheap others were free (like here) but it was almost impossible to get at least a little.
It was called deficiency. Maybe in English it means something different but in Russian it means very difficult way to get something.
There is socialism here also.
It is almost impossible to get listed on your site (but everybody wants).
I read this forum I read FAQ and I know your submission policy but there is no real answer how to be listed.
My site (yaldex.com) is more than 2 years old and I tried to submit it several times without success. I know that now it is forbidden to submit many times (nevertheless I saw many sites which are listed in more than 10 directories!!!:icon_excl ). But how can someone know if his (her) site is listed or no and if no then why? Your FAQ does not give real answer because there is no feed-back from editors. Therefore people try again and again (and again) to submit sites and it probably gives you additional work. Why you cannot give explanation of reason of refusing?:icon_ques Why do people have to wait forever?:icon_ques Why do you reply here on forum and do not after submitting?:icon_ques
I know answer (I think everyone knows).
Because your editors work without payment!:icon_excl As I know in many western countries (maybe in all) it is prohibited to work so, because this is either swindle or way to avoid taxes.
NOBODY WILL WORK FOR FREE AND NOBODY DOES IT!!!:icon_excl
Your editors work only to promote their sites (it is clear) and then do NOTHING. In this time hundreds of thousands people wait at least for reply.
Isn't it socialism? I thought it died. Why can't you take money ($5 or $10) for only fast examination (not for be listed) with feedback?
I think many people will work for this payment.
Keeping your site absolutely free provokes rumors about corruption of your editors and not raises your authority.
Are you going to change something in your submission policy or people will wait forever and scold you?

P.S. I did not want to offend someone I only wanted to propose some ways to improve your site and raise your authority.

Thanks,
Igor Ivanov.

Igor Ivanov,

Thank you for your thoughts. I understand that you are frustrated about your site, but that is not something I can do anything about; instead I will address the points where you have clearly misunderstood what the ODP is about.

The ODP is not somewhere where people work for free. Incidentally, you are wrong about people never working for free -- millions of volunteers do a lot of work for free everywhere, every day -- but that's beside the point, since what we do here has nothing to do with work. It is a hobby, or volunteer work if you like; it is what we do in our spare time instead of watching TV or collecting stamps or reading. We do it because it is hugely enjoyable, and that is the only reason most of us keep doing it. It has absolutely nothing to do with any political ideology -- trust me. (Of course there are many editors who are Socialist, and pretty much any other ideology you can imagine as well. This is obviously a good thing.)

So your basic premise is erroneous, and as for your suggestion of introducing paid submissions -- that just won't happen for a number of reasons. One of them being that this is a hobby, done on a volunteer basis, and money doesn't enter into it. Incidentally, how would the introduction of a paid system make accusations of corruption go away? It seems totally counter-intuitive to me.

Regards.

>Everybody wants to be listed here but only lucky can.
getting listed has nothing to do with luck

>I live in Russia and as you probably know there was socialism before.
we didn't call it socialism, we called it communism, which is different

>It is almost impossible to get listed on your site (but everybody wants).
it is very easy te get listed but is is very difficult te get listed fast

>I read this forum I read FAQ and I know your submission policy but there is no real answer how to be listed.
it is, just read the guidelines and suggest your site. there is nothing more you can do

>But how can someone know if his (her) site is listed or no and if no then why?
just search for your site in DMOZ and you will know if it is listed
if it is not listed and you have a site that meets our guidelines it is still waiting review

>Why you cannot give explanation of reason of refusing?
the reason are already given in our guidelines

>Why do people have to wait forever?
I don't know why people wait, maybe they have nothing better to do

>As I know in many western countries (maybe in all) it is prohibited to work so, because this is either swindle or way to avoid taxes.
completely nonsense, ever heard about volunteer work, it is very well known in western countries and many people do volunteer work, volunteer work is never paid work

>NOBODY WILL WORK FOR FREE AND NOBODY DOES IT!!!
millions of poeple around the world do volunteer work for free

>Isn't it socialism? I thought it died. Why can't you take money ($5 or $10) for only fast examination (not for be listed) with feedback?
because it is against DMOZ most basic principle, see http://dmoz.org/about.html

The Open Directory was founded in the spirit of the Open Source movement, and is the only major directory that is 100% free. There is not, nor will there ever be, a cost to submit a site to the directory, and/or to use the directory's data. The Open Directory data is made available for free to anyone who agrees to comply with our free use license.

Click to expand...

>I think many people will work for this payment.
they can but not with DMOZ
there are many other directories working with payed submissions, if you want such a service feel free to use these directories

>Keeping your site absolutely free provokes rumors about corruption of your editors and not raises your authority.
All those corruption rumours tell me more about the people telling them than about DMOZ.

>Are you going to change something in your submission policy or people will wait forever and scold you?
As far as I know we will not change our policy about suggesting sites
If we changed it to what you want it to be (payed) most editors would immediately stop working for DMOZ and start their own version based on the original principles

>P.S. I did not want to offend someone I only wanted to propose some ways to improve your site and raise your authority.
improving DMOZ can be on 2 aspects
- improve it for our customers (the people who use the directory)
- improve it for the editors (easier ways to do our work)
your proposals didn't have to do anything with these 2 aspects and have been made by webmasters who are only interested in their own sites many times and have been rejected as many times

>It is almost impossible to get listed on your site (but everybody wants).

That's not like the old Soviet Russian consumer products, not at all. Nobody wanted them, everybody wanted European or Asian imports.

And what advantage did European and Asian imports have over Soviet products? Simple. They were built BY people with choices, FOR people with choices. The people who BUILT European products, knew that other people wouldn't BUY what wasn't good.

That's like the ODP. When the ODP started, there were half-a-dozen major directories already. We knew, from the beginning, that anyone else could try to build a directory, and if we couldn't build the best, people won't use ours. And so we choose what to build -- we focus on building what's important to our community -- that is, what we know we want. And we build it well, because we will be among its users. With our freedom we built a product that would be valuable to people.

The Soviet system was quite different. The factories churned out whatever the five-year-plan said, regardless of whether consumers would need that. The goods were shoddy, because it didn't matter how bad they were, nobody, not even the factory workers, needed them.

That sounds almost like ... webmasters. People generating sites--

(1) without any consideration of whether those sites were needed. Do consumers really need a million HotelNow affiliates, fifty thousand VStore affiliates, or fifty anonymous doorway-advertising-spam from the same person who knows nothing about any of the products advertised? No, a million 50 thousand 50 times NO! And yet, that is what you see on the web!

(2) Do consumers need no-information all-promotion-all-the-time websites? Again, no. Shoddy value, the sort of sites that the webmaster himself would NEVER use, containing nothing any consumer couldn't find just as well elsewhere.

(3) Can these webmasters compete in a free market? Absolutely not, if consumers even KNEW they had competition they would be dead immediately! They "need", they "demand" ODP listings so they can block out their competitors in Google search results. And they want ODP listings because ... the ODP HAS authority, and THEY ... DON'T.

So, wake up, your body may be free, but your mind is still in the chains of communist economic thought. If you think the ODP is failing to provide some service to webmasters, then (it's a free internet!) YOU can step up and offer those services to webmasters on YOUR website. It will have no authority from your political power, all its authority will come from the value and reliability of the information that YOU post on the site. And YOU can get paid whatever it's worth--if it's worth anything, you'll get ALL the money. And if you do something WE think is worthwhile (AFTER seeking it WORK!) it's possible that we'll help you, or imitate you, whichever seems most effective.

But until then, we won't stop you, and we won't compete with you. It's a free market: if you can add value for someone, you can make money.

As several people have said, we've made our choice, and it is different from yours. That's OK, it's a big web, there's a lot that hasn't been done yet, and there's no need for us to compete with you.

> I understand that you are frustrated about your site.
I am not frustrated about my site, I read forum, I know that some people wait for 6 years and I know that my site will never be listed there.

>millions of volunteers do a lot of work for free everywhere.
But what do they eat? Maybe they are all rich? I agree that reviewing sites can be hobby but anyway if you work without payment you work as you want, SO YOU CAN DON’T WORK. So do most of editors. And people in this time must to wait.

> how would the introduction of a paid system make accusations of corruption go away?
If you pay stable price for reviewing you don’t need to search additional ways to pay editors.

> getting listed has nothing to do with luck
It raises PR so if your site is listed you are lucky.

>we didn't call it socialism, we called it communism, which is different.
I don’t know how you call it but I lived in this time in this country and it was called socialism. Communism was only dream (silly dream IMHO).

> it is very easy te get listed but is is very difficult te get listed fast.
See above the reason.

>just search for your site in DMOZ and you will know if it is listed.
So if my site is not listed during one month I submit again (so do everybody)? Or I should wait forever?

> the reason are already given in our guidelines.
There is no reason if there is no answer.

>I don't know why people wait, maybe they have nothing better to do.
I will discover you secret. They wait for good PR. Don’t tell anybody.

> completely nonsense, ever heard about volunteer work, it is very well known in western countries and many people do volunteer work, volunteer work is never paid work.
As I remarked you live in Nederlands I lived some time in Belgium (it is near Nederlands). It is prohibited to work for free there. It is law.

> millions of poeple around the world do volunteer work for free.
See my response above.

>there are many other directories working with payed submissions, if you want such a service feel free to use these directories.
I did it but as I mentioned I want (as everybody) good PR. Is it crime?

> All those corruption rumours tell me more about the people telling them than about DMOZ.
Just type "dmoz corruption" in Google and you will get thousands answers.
Look this link http://www.akamarketing.com/webmaster-forums/2349-die-dmoz-die-3.html

> If we changed it to what you want it to be (payed) most editors would immediately stop working for DMOZ and start their own version based on the original principles.
If editors will be paid they will only start to work fast and good. That all.

> improving DMOZ can be on 2 aspects
>- improve it for our customers (the people who use the directory)
If you editors will work faster that is all what customers want.

>So, wake up, your body may be free, but your mind is still in the chains of communist economic thought.
I waked up 15 years ago. But it seems that somebody did not here.
PEOPLE WANT FROM DMOZ ONLY GOOD PR. THAT IS ALL.

P.S. Thank you for review in Soviet Russian socialism! I did not know it.

>I know that my site will never be listed there.
You can only know this if you already know your site does not meet the DMOZ guidelines. If you know this you should never have suggested your site as all.

>If you pay stable price for reviewing you don’t need to search additional ways to pay editors.
We don't need ways to pay editors at all.

>> getting listed has nothing to do with luck
>It raises PR so if your site is listed you are lucky.
It raiases PR as much as any other link to your site will do. If you need PR you must work yourself to get it but don't rely on people who are not interested in PR at all and who don't owe you anything.

>>just search for your site in DMOZ and you will know if it is listed.
>So if my site is not listed during one month I submit again (so do everybody)? Or I should wait forever?
Wait forever.
When you suggested your site you were asked to read the guidelines

Please only submit a URL to the Open Directory once. Again, multiple submissions of the same or related sites may result in the exclusion and/or deletion of those and all affiliated sites. Disguising your submission and submitting the same URL more than once is not permitted.

Click to expand...

>> the reason are already given in our guidelines.
>There is no reason if there is no answer.
Just read http://dmoz.org/guidelines/include.html#notinclude and you will have the answer why a site will not be listed. And http://dmoz.org/guidelines/include.html#include to know why a site will be listed.

>>I don't know why people wait, maybe they have nothing better to do.
>I will discover you secret. They wait for good PR. Don’t tell anybody.
They are stupid. You will only get PR if you do work yourself to get it. Make sure you get links from many sites. DMOZ is only 1 link for PR, nothing more nothing less.

>>there are many other directories working with payed submissions, if you want such a service feel free to use these directories.
>I did it but as I mentioned I want (as everybody) good PR. Is it crime?
As written before DMOZ won't give you good PR.

>> If we changed it to what you want it to be (payed) most editors would immediately stop working for DMOZ and start their own version based on the original principles.
>If editors will be paid they will only start to work fast and good. That all.
No. DMOZ editors will stop editing in DMOZ.

>> improving DMOZ can be on 2 aspects
>>- improve it for our customers (the people who use the directory)
>If you editors will work faster that is all what customers want.
You seem to think that webmasters are our customers. They are not. Never have been and never will be.
Our real customers are only interested in finding the information they search for. They don't care if one or more site are not listed if they can get the information they want on other sites.

You also seem to think that it is the task of DMOZ editors to list sites or to review suggested sites. Both are wrong. Our task is to build the directory. It might seem the same for you as we need to list websites to build te directory but fo us it is not the same. We look at the big picture and are not interested in single websites while you are only interested in your own website.

It seems that we speak in different languages (so it is). You cannot (or don't want) understand what I told above and what everybody wants from dmoz.
Pity.

I understand completely what you and other websmasters want from DMOZ.
But DMOZ does not provide what webmasters want. And ít seems that they (you inlcuded) don't want to understand that we don't provide the service you want.
You are free to want such a service and there are many other sites that will deliver such a service. But DMOZ is not one of them.

You cannot (or don't want) understand what I told above and what everybody wants from dmoz.

Click to expand...

We can, but we don't think it would work, and it wouldn't meet our objectives.

The only suggestion you seem to have made is to introduce a paid for express review service. With the cost you suggest, how many hundreds (or even thousands) of site owners do you think would take it up? Even if all our current editors wanted to do such paid for work (which I suspect most wouldn't) do you think there would be enough to handle the volume of requests?

Then what about all the people who think they would like to become editors to earn some money? We have standards to maintain, so who would assess the applications (and would they be paid for doing so)? Wouldn't this result in more editors who are editing for financial gain (and therefore open to bribery) rather than less?

(This has been brough up here many times before, so I'm sure there are plenty more arguments against it if you search the forum.)

At the end of the day, how would your suggestion help web surfers (not webmasters)? Web surfers are the people whose needs we try to meet, and if suggestions don't help them, we're generally not interested.

You may want anything you want to want: that was true even under whatever-you-want-to-call-your-military-dictatorship.

You may build whatever you want now. And you may hire anyone else for whatever services you want. You just can't hire me.

Hey guys, there are only editors here. I cannot reply to all I should work a little (it is not my hobby and I am used to be paid).
All my replies are above or I repeat one more time: Just type "dmoz corruption" in Google and you will get thousands answers.

I read it on Google therefore it must be true.

A couple of ways you might try breaking out of your Marxist mindset: Suppose we assume that nobody works for no money. But how about thought? Do you think for no money? Can anyone pay you to think?

I think nobody thinks for money, all thought is free. (Some people think ABOUT money, but that is different.)

So, is the ODP more like "thinking" or "working"?
You want it to be "working" (for you, of course, and for no money, ironically enough.) But what I intend to do is "thinking."

Hutcheson, did you read my posts above? If no try again!
> A couple of ways you might try breaking out of your Marxist mindset.
I am not Marxist I am anticommunist and capitalist!

corruped dmoz? that's a good news!

Hello Igor,

I dont have enough time to read the whole thread, but i think, that is enough what i have seen.

I dont want to argue with someone, writing about 20 paragraphs to declare "I know answer (I think everyone knows)."

I am a volunteer. And before reading your answer about socialism and communism, just want to inform you, that i am from Bulgaria and i do really know what this is.

I am volunteer. And before asking me why, or declare that this is because i want to list my site, want to inform you that this this weekend i spent more that 28 hours editing. I want edit them instead of money. For earning money i have business. This is something else. About your statements - they are ridiculous...i know editors with more than 40 000 edits...are all these sites posesed by his affiliates ?

"PEOPLE WANT FROM DMOZ ONLY GOOD PR. THAT IS ALL."

If you know more about PR you wouldnt think so. Just see what results gave yandex.ru while searching your site. And check your site's description - fuuuuullllllll with keywords. Are you thinking that editor will leave them? And how you with few words will describe your own site ? If i have to edit your site the only competitive words left will be "software development". No css, na Java, no programs, no "heavy words".

IMHO - as a newbie with mentor from Russia - for me site in english without native language is really strange.

If i accept your opinion that DMOZ is PR machine - well - than we must not touch it it is obviously, that works fine - you really dont know how many added sites there are.

Long thread. I have to edit. Because in my country Directory there are about 2000 sites listed.

Best wishes

Todor

Hey yaldex,
I have nothing to do with Dmoz (not an editor or admin). But I would like to share my ideas with you regarding working for nothing. Everyday I login to 13 developers forum, answer a lot (around 100) questions there and I put 3 to 4 hours everyday on this for the past one year and I have never earned a penny from it. But I love doing it more that what I do for money. Also its not for free what people do here, its their passion working on directories, Wikis and Forums. If you are still not in a mood to accept, search for my username in google and you will find around 23,000 results. Most of them are my forum posts which worth not a single penny. Strange people haha!!!

I honestly say this with no intentions of offense or attack, merely to help you because it would be on my conscience to watch you continue to be frustrated in confusion 2 more years from now:
That red text on the blue is really vivrant and harsh on the eyes. The drop-down menu items have virtually no vertical padding and it actually overlaps onto the next button below. For example, hover over your help menu and look at the bottom list item. The "p" is outside of its container.
Try validating it:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://yaldex.com/
You also have quite a bit of unappealing advertisements. Register for some web design forums and ask for critiques.
I'm certainly not an expert web designer but you were looking for a reason so I thought I'd give constructive criticism.
You do have a lot of tallent.