Applied for an Editor but denied twice.

[lindat]

I applied to be an editor in

"Shopping: Clothing: Costumes: Holiday: Halloween" two seperate times.

 

The first try the comment was poor spelling. Ok..

 

Early this week I re-applied. Before I did this, I spent time looking at the descriptions that are already in that category, fucusing on the wording used and sentence structure. I spell checked everything. I patterned my trial descriptions similar to what is already in the category. Trying not to copy but to use what I had learned in my search.

 

I found online stores that were very much the same type of content as those already existing in the category. And I did not cut and paste text from their sites. I kept the descriptions very straight forward and succinct. Srictly the facts.

 

Again I was refused. This time with no explanation.

 

I selected the costume category, simply because that is what I have experience in. I am a costume designer/creator. I own an online store that sells costumes and other items. The category only had 14 entries in it, so I assumed it was not all that large.

 

Perhaps it was decided that I wanted to edit simply to get my submission online? (Admittedly, that is my end goal, but I felt if you were that far backed up, at least with someone working on it eventually we would get to my submission.)

Is that the reason I was denied?

 

Perhaps it was the syntax I chose for the descriptions, or my selection of sites that would go under that category?

 

Using the existing sites already listed as my guide was the only resource available. What more can a person do to demonstrate their willingness and desire to contribute to this project?

 

Any guidance would be appreciated.

 

Thank you.

[donaldb]

The first thing that I would recommend is that you read the [thread=1289]FAQ and General Advice[/thread] at the top of this forum. There is a lot of info in there about becoming an editor.

 

Second, be careful about the description examples that you emulate. For any number of reasons, not all descriptions are going to be guideline compliant. When I'm looking for description style examples I often look for a category higher up in the hierarchy that has a listed editor. Usually an editor higher up the hierarchy will have more experience and their description style will be more guideline compliant.

 

Thirdly, make sure that the URLs that you use as examples are not already listed in the directory. If you use the search only enter the domain.com part of the URL. If you try to search using http://www.domain.com you usually don't get any results.

 

Hope that helps a bit.

[lindat]

Thank you.

 

I did read all the information available to me prior to submitting an application to become an editor. Although I did not do an Open Directory wide search for the companies I submitted, they certainly were not in the sub category I was trying to apply for. But now that I know they can not be listed anywhere in the Open Directory, I will definetly do that next time.

 

I have to admit to a feeling of frustration with this process. But in the interest of trying to be involved in this project I will keep trying.

 

Is there anyway to tell why I was refused? So I do not repeat the same mistake over and over?

 

Thank you

 

Linda T

[donaldb]

Sorry, there is no record kept of why applications are denied. But I would highly recommend reading all of the info in the FAQ and General Advice thread that I mentioned above. And maybe read the section of our guidelines that pertains to writing titles and descriptions - http://dmoz.org/guidelines/describing.html#titles The guidelines are your best way to learn. Following examples from categories is risky if you happen to pick the one category that was last edited in 1998 before there were any real guidelines