hutcheson - 1:48 am on Oct 7, 2006 (gmt 0)

The site suggestion process is designed to make sure a site is brought to the attention of the editor, at the moment he wants to review just such a site (that is, a site on that particular topic). And that, the suggestion process does very well, extremely efficiently (for the editor and for the suggester.) The weakness is, of course, spam: 90% of all suggestions, and more of the "competitive category" suggestions, are spam, and everyone knows it.

So a suggestion can't, and shouldn't, make one topic a higher priority than any other topic. Because editors know, all too well, from experience, that the "competitively suggested" categories are not the most productive places to work.

And a suggestion can't, and shouldn't, IMPOSE a priority on any particular action within a topic. But a well-written suggestion does have a great influence. By "well-written" I mean "describes what is unique about the site, so even without looking at the site itself, the editor can make an almost perfect guess about what he will end up doing with it." Such "no-brainer" edits tend to get done first, leaving the painful decisions till later. (With good reason: the people who can write an informational description can write an informational website, and, pretty much, vice versa.)

Still, suggestion rejection is by far the most common no-brainer editing action.

Sending to a more appropriate category is probably the second most common no-brainer. You can skip that step, by spending as much time as you need finding the best category match. It shouldn't take more than an hour or two--but it might save months of pointless waiting.