hutcheson - 11:17 pm on Jul 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

>There is a specific common interest for SHOPPING section of DMOZ, and that is a self-promotion; Why else would a webmaster suggest a site more than once.

Sorry for the confusion, I can see where you were misled by my choice of words. By "common" I did not mean "something frequent." I meant "something SHARED." You can talk to another webmaster about a concern you two SHARE -- that would be an interest COMMON (common to you two, that is, regardless of whether anyone else in the world shared it.)

If you are talking to an obsessive butterfly-collector, you'd better be interested in butterflies -- or the conversation will be a failure, no matter how many people in the world admire the athlete you want to discuss.

Because reality is, I have no obligation to talk to you about football--regardless of how many people in the world might care about it, I don't. You talk about football, and I'll either leave, or I'll ignore you, or I'll be rude until you change the subject. And if you try to tell me I OUGHT to care about football, I'll appoint you a lifetime member of "fit subjects for the most sarcastic rejoinders I can ever imagine." And you'd probably treat me the same way if I talked about beaked whales or baroque music or Babylonian mythology. That's the reality of conversation.

So, in this forum, a topic that has nothing to do with webmasters isn't likely to be welcomed. And so I'll take my OTHER interests--in the sciences, arts, humanities, whatever--elsewhere. That's what everybody does--they go where topics they care about are likely to be discussed. You'd be insane to expect anything else.

And suppose you want to talk to the ODP patron, or an ODP editor. Your own self-promotion ain't NEVER gonna be a "common" interest--and that's no matter how many other people in the world are also interested in the distinct-but-analogous interest of their OWN self-promotion. So, drop that subject completely and talk about something else. Or drop that PERSON completely and talk TO someone else. Or get used to being rejected -- impolitely, if polite rejection doesn't accomplish the important task of ending a conversation where there is no "common" ("shared") interest.