Editors with Conflict of Interest??

[motsa]

Originally I applied to be an editor and was also turned down I believe by the same person ie Editor.

Highly unlikely. Only meta editors and catmods can review editor applications so the chance that the person reviewing your application and the person listed as an editor in the category where you want your site being the same person is astronomically slim.

 

It makes things really bad when an editor has a conflict of interest and only allows his own site to be listed.

If you have some reason (other than the fact that your site hasn't been listed) for believing abuse is taking place, feel free to report it using our abuse reporting tool report-abuse.dmoz.org . The most common reason, though, for a listable suggested site not being listed in a category is simply that no one has gotten around to reviewing it, not abuse. As was mentioned in your old thread, this is especially likely in directory or guide categories in Regional since the degree of spam suggested to those categories is usually higher than other Regional categories.

[crowbar]

As a Regional editor, myself, I can confirm what motsa just said. I stay away from certain categories because they're spam magnets, the sites themselves are so overloaded with information that they're a pain to wade through, and my time is better spent in cleaner categories getting three times as many site suggestions reviewed.

 

Now, with editor abuse insinuated, I have even less desire to visit them.

[jonscomputers]

Cant get listed

 

I can assure all editors my site is not spam and my category is targeted to only 1 city. I run a business directory that is targeted only to 1 city in the usa. My site is very well ranked by all of the search engines so it is not anything wrong with my site. I have heard all of the editors at dmoz try and say it's this or that reason but all of their reasons don't add up. When the category I am trying to get listed in only has a few sites listed in it and those sites have stayed the same for 3 years. I was not turned down as an editor because of any good reason. I have been trying to get listed for 3 years and during those 3 years I have been advertising dmoz on every page of my site but I am going to change that soon. I own and operate one of the largest business directories in my city and I know as an editor of a directory what is involved but when you most likely have 1 editor for my category it is easy to understand how a conflict of intrest could be a problem.

[crowbar]

That type of site is more useful to us, as it often provides many other new urls for sites in that locality that haven't been listed yet.

 

I would suggest you submit the suggestion one more time.

 

For what it's worth, jonscomputers, we could care less about where your site ranks, it has no bearing on whether we list it, none whatsoever. It's not something I look at or that I'm even aware of while editing.

 

The reason that 90% of unlisted site suggestions haven't been listed is because an editor just hasn't reviewed it yet. (and that is the honest truth)

 

Every single site suggester believes that their particular site suggestion is absolutley the very best of sites, and should be listed immediately, , and that if there are 100 or more other site suggestions there, the editor must be crazy or crooked not to review theirs first.

 

That doesn't constitute abuse, and the 200 to 300 other editors who can and often do edit there, can't all be crooked, can they?

 

I am one of those editors, and I have editing permissions in all 50 states, and every category in every city. Which one of those thousands and thousands I choose to work in on any particular day is totally up to me. I don't consider it editor abuse if I don't choose the one category out of all of those that your site suggestion happens to reside in. And, each of the hundreds of thousands of other site suggestions we get, are also just as important to those site owners as yours is to you.

 

That's why our editing has to be impartial, and not show any favoritism.

[pvgool]

I can assure all editors my site is not spam and my category is targeted to only 1 city. I run a business directory that is targeted only to 1 city in the usa. My site is very well ranked by all of the search engines so it is not anything wrong with my site. I have heard all of the editors at dmoz try and say it's this or that reason but all of their reasons don't add up.

There are only a few reasons a suggested site is not listed

1 (and most probably) no editor reviewed it yet

2 (less probable) it was send to a better category

3 it is not listable and as such was rejected (you can check yourself if a site is listable by reading the DMOZ guidelines)

4 (very unlickely) an editor made a mistake

5 (almost impossible, but can happen) editor abuse

If you are sure option 3 and 2 are not applicable and you suggested the site more than once (hereby eliminating option 4, two mistakes in a row for the same site is almost impossible) only option 1 and 5 are open.

As no editor can influence everything that happens in a specific category not listing a website based on abuse is almost impossible.

Not reviewing a site on itself is not absue you must have more prove to file an abuse report.

My beth is that the site is still waiting review.

 

I was not turned down as an editor because of any good reason.

If editor applications are turned down it is always for a good reason. It might be that you did not recognise that reason.

 

I have been trying to get listed for 3 years and during those 3 years I have been advertising dmoz on every page of my site but I am going to change that soon.

We never ask for backlinks or any advertising. If you have these links or not will not influence your chance of being listed (unless you use data from DMOZ in your directory, in which case you must put the needed links on your site)

 

I own and operate one of the largest business directories in my city and I know as an editor of a directory what is involved but when you most likely have 1 editor for my category it is easy to understand how a conflict of intrest could be a problem.

No category is owned by a single editor, many (depending on the catgeory upto 300) editors can "work" in a category. Through this potential social control we are able to eliminate most (intentional and non-intentional) errors.

[jonscomputers]

Broken Record

 

If you look at my past posts you will realize in the past 3 years I have heard this all before over and over again. As I said I own and operate and edit a very large directory and as such I am very well aware of all the rules and complaints as I get plenty myself. With that said 3 years is a very long time and a submission every 3 to 6 months = 6 to 12 submissions in three years. I think that is plenty of time to review a site. Now with that said I have placed other sites during the same time frame and they were listed no problem. Now if my site meets all the requirements rules and regulations and the site is submitted according to your guidelines there must be something fishey when I can get other sites listed but not this one. I also understand that as editors you have access to edit other categories but really how many editors are interested in editing directorys and guides in one regional city. Also if there are so many 1000,s of submissions to go through in this category then why have the same site been listed over the past 3 years. I would think if there were so many submissions to this category that there would be some new sites showing up over the past 3 years. You see I research my area and I know exactly how many directories there are in the area and I find it hard to believe that you receive 1000's of directories submitted that you have to review for this category. Also I never implied that dmoz owed me for advertising dmoz it was just a statement and your reply is a testament to dmoz's gratitude for helping dmoz.

[pvgool]

> a submission every 3 to 6 months = 6 to 12 submissions in three years.

This is clearly against DMOZ 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.

 

> but really how many editors are interested in editing directorys and guides in one regional city.

Not many I guess. Which is exactly the reason why your suggestion is not reviewed yet. For DMOZ it has much more value to list the real websites instead of some directory which would only add an extra step for our users before they could reach the real content.

[lmocr]

but really how many editors are interested in editing directorys and guides in one regional city.

This is the key question to ask - if the answer is none, then there won't be any listings added to that specific category. If the answer changes at some point in the future - then there will probably be listings added to that category.

 

Added - call me slowpoke.

[jonscomputers]

Forget It

 

I can see that your not interested in adding sites that improve dmoz and I am tired of all the retoric for 3 years. I give up ! I am removing all links to dmoz and will leave you alone. I have seen lots of others go through this nonsense and its not worth it to me. I think this is more like an editors country club for elite members only. Have A Nice Day !

[donaldb]

I think you might have missed the point about what people were saying to you. The biggest reason why your site has probably not been reviewed is because no editor has an interest in editing in that category. It's just that simple.

 

Editors pick the categories that they wish to edit based on their interests. If no editor is interested in editing in that category, then suggested sites are going to be sitting in the pool waiting for someone to come along and take a look. Eventually someone is going to find that category interesting and then they may look through the suggested pool and review your web site, but until that happens, the suggestions are just going to be waiting. That might take years. That's OK though because editors are working on other areas where they have an interest and they are adding hundreds of web sites to the directory on a daily basis.

 

The other issue that has been mentioned here, is that sometimes we're not going to add directory web sites to the ODP. It all depends on the type of directory it is. If it's just a directory that lists other web sites, then an editor might decide to go through the directory and list the sites that they find there instead of the directory itself. If it's a directory that is also a destination/portal type web site that contains lots of unique information above and beyond just the directory listings, then an editor might decide that it's a great addition to the ODP.

 

It has nothing to do with long line-ups or editor corruption, it's just the way this project works. We edit in the areas where we have an interest, and eventually every category gets an edit. We don't know when that will be, but that's OK. We're not trying to add every site on the Internet, just the ones that we find that add something interesting to the categories that we edit

[crowbar]

Also if there are so many 1000,s of submissions to go through in this category then why have the same site been listed over the past 3 years.

For the record, I did not say that, I said:

 

"Every single site suggester believes that their particular site suggestion is absolutley the very best of sites, and should be listed immediately, , and that if there are 100 or more other site suggestions there, the editor must be crazy or crooked not to review theirs first. "

 

and, I said:

 

"I am one of those editors, and I have editing permissions in all 50 states, and every category in every city. Which one of those thousands and thousands I choose to work in on any particular day is totally up to me. "

[mybanman]

spamming dmoz is the easiest thing if your a genuine spammer. For example suppose you want to list your hotel affiliate website. Here what you to. Put together a bunch of cut and paste lightweight directory pages. Call yourself by a guide such as guidetorichmond.co.uk

Next submit some inner pages to pages run by your mates. For example

 

http://www.guidetorichmond.co.uk/strawberry.html

Arts: Literature: World Literature: British: Gothic: Walpole, Horace

 

http://www.guidetorichmond.co.uk/rda.html

Reference: Education: Special Education: Learning Disabilities: Dyslexia: Centers

 

http://www.guidetorichmond.co.uk/rda.html

Regional: Europe: United Kingdom: England: London: Richmond: Society and Culture

 

http://www.guidetorichmond.co.uk/cinnamonflowers.html

Regional: Europe: United Kingdom: England: London: Kingston: Business and Economy

 

(yes one lightweight page even gets a double listing)

 

and there you have it. Good sites cant even get added but a 1000 page copy and paste affiliate hotel website has 4 entries.

 

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.guidetorichmond.co.uk&btnG=Google+Search

[crowbar]

I don't edit in that area of the Directory, but, this type of post is very helpful to us when it's reported, mybanman.

 

Got any more? Weed em out, brother.

[gimmster]

Deeplinks such as http://www.guidetorichmond.co.uk/rda.html are acceptable if they are the only web presence for an agency such as this.

 

If you have a better url we would appreciate it if you used the 'update listing' function from the category it is listed in.

 

We'd also like to know if it is a fictitious 'organisation' that snuck in, although in this case that url is linked from the British Dyslexia association site (see http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/ldas.html )

 

<added> The thing we are interested in is unique content - where this content is located is not the primary concern. </added>

[hutcheson]

It is very obvious what happened in this case. It has nothing whatsoever to do with spamming the ODP, although the actual information flow might not occur to someone who's obsessed about spamming. (In fact, it would be a violation of the submittal policy for the webmaster to submit such a page.)

 

But in this case, some editor, having nothing whatsoever to do with the website itself, was searching for content on a historical person (Walpole was perhaps the father of the English gothic novel.) And the editor found something unique and interesting about him on a website devoted to his home town (no surprise there!)

 

I didn't add THAT link, but I clearly remember adding a similar page (from another local-town site) to a category (about another author) that I was building. It happens all the time: when you're looking for information on more specific or obscure topics, you will often deeplink sites devoted to some related topic.

 

But for pages like that, the spamming process you imagine, simply doesn't work. Because spammers don't bother to generate original content, they just steal from wikipedia (or some less authoritative source), maybe with clumsy rewording. It's a whole lot easier to get thousands of pages that way....but it doesn't bring the "street cred" of multiple ODP listings.

 

This illustrates something else about the ODP process that people often miss. We aren't reviewing websites for review. We're building categories. And so what we're looking for is not yet another 1000-page-of-plagiarized-drivel sites (and you know as well as I do how many of THOSE there are!) we're looking for information--any sort of information--about some topic. And if I'm looking for information on the medieval looting lutenist Stigello "the sticky-fingered", there might not be ANY single sites devoted to him, but I might find a picture of his grave here, a MIDI file of his music there, an impassioned diatribe from one of his victims (translated from Hungarian, with notes) on some academic site, a biography at wikipedia, a list of notable victims, ... who knows? So there might be all kinds of deeplinks.

 

And meanwhile, suggestions for a million Las Vegas travel portals, 999,990 of them committed by webmasters who couldn't find Las Vegas on a map of Utah with both hands and a flashlight, are languishing for lack of interest.

 

That's OK. Sooner or later we'll figure out how to pick out those 10 real authorities.

[Callimachus]

And meanwhile, suggestions for a million Las Vegas travel portals, 999,990 of them committed by webmasters who couldn't find Las Vegas on a map of Utah with both hands and a flashlight, are languishing for lack of interest.

 

Damnit Hutch, even I can't find Las Vegas on a map of Utah using hands, feet, flashlight and a magnifying glass. Now if I use a map of Nevada ... ;p

[hutcheson]

Yes, _I_ know it's just off the edge of THAT map. But I don't think those webmasters know that.

[Eric-the-Bun]

hutchenson has sort of got it right - Googling for Las Vegas, Utah I came across a Real Estate site with the following text:

New Homes in Las Vegas, UT

Looking for new homes in the Las Vegas, Utah metro area?

. Can't argue with that can you?

Oddly enough a search for Las Vegas, Arizona produced results including exactly the same site with the text

New Homes in Las Vegas, AZ

Looking for new homes in the Las Vegas, Arizona metro area?

hmm obviously Las Vegas either moves arund a bit or there are a lot of them!

 

regards

[arubin]

But there is a [cat=Regional/North_America/United_States/New_Mexico/Localities/L/Las_Vegas/]Las Vegas, New Mexico[/cat]....

[mybanman]

hutcheson

 

smoke and mirrors my friend. One of those pages is even a redirect. I know of sites with unique content that cant get listed because they are affiliate sites. Have been directly told that by an editor. Now you are saying that each page is judged on its own merits? Your view of wikipedia is slanted IMHO. As someone who has seen their content scraped into wikipedia you need to be sure of cause and effect. Wiki is the worlds biggest scraper site. Not saying it doesnt have original content but your coming at it from the wrong angle.

[gimmster]

The site that is a redirect isn't listed anymore, thanks for bringing it to our attention.

I know of sites with unique content that cant get listed because they are affiliate sites.

The unique content may not be immediately visible, no one is going to scan every page in a site looking for one page of unique content. Lets say you suggest a site to a tourism/lodging category - the first thing that is checked is the lodging information to see if it adds value to the category (does it list places available to stay that are not already listed, does it add more information about properties that is not available on the properties own site (think ratings, reviews, facility comparisons between different properties). Note these may not be enough in and of themselves for a listing, but they are indicators of unique content, so don't write a site with these features and expect it to be an automatic listing.

Now you are saying that each page is judged on its own merits

Category building is not the same as site reviewing, although there is a lot of overlap. Normally we list the root url of a site when reviewing a site, but when looking for information to populate a category we are more interested in the unique content, even if that content is on an otherwise unlistable (or already listed elsewhere) site.

 

<added>

Site in an ODP context is not always equivalent to url/domain name. Sometimes a url will host many sites on pages or subdomains that are unrelated to the owner of the url - think ISP's providing free hosting in the form myfakehosting/~yourusername, where we list each subdomain. Some sites are spread over multiple domains - think companies marketing to multiple countries, or targeting different market segments where we list the main url and let the company do the linking to their sub sections.

</added>

As for wikipedia, I have no opinion one way or t'other - I avoid the site as much as possible (as in fact I do anything named after a tram at Honolulu airport )

[mybanman]

The unique content may not be immediately visible, no one is going to scan every page in a site looking for one page of unique content.

 

No but when those unique 'multi-page sections' are suggested to their appropriate cats and not added one must raise their eyebrows at single pages being added to dmoz because you say they are 'unique'. As for hotel directories one wonders how any of the many sites listed ever managed to find their way in then since as you say

 

no one is going to scan every page in a site looking for one page of unique content

 

viewing the many sites with nothing but database pulls or copy and paste text they clearly offer nothing over the actual hotel sites but manage to get listed. Yes i note your comments on reviews etc but this is evidently not the criteria most of the time. And if thats not the criteria what does that leave?

 

This is without touching on networks where each domain within a network gets listed.

[crowbar]

No site is guaranteed a listing, and we are not interested in "fair play".

 

We have one focus, the web surfer who is looking for specific information.

 

Site suggestions/recommendations are reviewed if and when an available editor wants to review them, and they are added to the Directory at our sole discretion, for our own purposes.

 

We are always interested in having sites that don't comply with our Guidelines pointed out to us for investigation, as some do slip by us occassionally, and part of our job is quality control.

 

Abusive editors are another matter. We don't tolerate them and appreciate possible abusers being pointed out. If you have suspicions, then PM a meta editor with the details and they'll investigate it, but, do not assume that just because your site hasn't been listed, that there is editor abuse.

 

Your site suggestion may be one of the thousands of junk sites that we normally just delete. There is a big difference between what you think of your site suggestion and what we think of it, .

[gimmster]

when those unique 'multi-page sections' are suggested to their appropriate cats and not added

This is where we may be having a problem, does this 'unique 'multi-page sections' stand alone as providing the best authoritative information on the subject, or is it just another rewrite of existing material? Whether it would be considered as seperate from the main site is dependant on how closely the 'section' is aligned to the main subject of the site. A site on SEO with a section about the owners horses might get two listings. A site about SEO with information on how to design web sites would not, because they are both about the same subject - Web_Design_and_Development

 

That said, we ask that you (the generic you, not you personally) do not suggest such sections. We are not going to bar a site for suggesting 1 section of unrelated content to an appropriate category, but the things I see are people trying to get us to list every single page of the site. For that reason we ask that only the one suggestion be made for the entire site, not one for each section.

 

Editor listing guidelines are not the same as the site suggestion guidelines, we expect editors to know what is appropriate to list according to the guidelines. The reality is that most people who suggest sites do not bother to read and understand the guidelines, so their multiple suggestions are normally wrong. We wish that wasn't the case, but people are basically lazy, itreally takes weeks to get a real garsp on the complexity, much less the individual exceptions, and people want it done in 20 seconds, so thats all the time they take to suggest a site.

(To prove this, scan the forums and see how many posts you can spot here asking for clarification of the guidelines)

[mybanman]

deleted