Couple of questions about applying for a local cat

[Marcia]

I've thought about applying for a local category for a long time, but for one reason or another haven't. Good reasons - I've always done volunteer activities, from childhood on, but to be perfectly honest, mostly the bashing I've seen has stopped me. Epiphany this week - a real eye opener. There's no longer any reason not to - in fact, it was a highly convincing revelation.

For someone doing work on websites of any kind, I can't think of anything that would *not* have some relation, but it's not anything highly commercial I'd be interested in. I get just plain tired of ecom and $, I wouldnt want anything really commercially oriented in the usual sense of the word.

For the locality there just aren't enough possibilties to do non-profit - it would have to be citywide and that would be far too big. Neither would there be enough possible entries for most of the other little specific topical categories within the location - with the exception of a HIGHLY competitive area which I really wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. That area already has an editor (who does a few other areas in that niche) but the general area cat is open, as are several above it. There are a few sub-cats under the one I'm looking at, but none warrant exclusive attention.

Question 1: Is it possible for a specific small local area with a few relatively empty subcats under it? The whole general locality is pretty much empty - except for that one that's already covered.

Question 2: Looking at sub-categories, this gets a bit confusing and there seems to be heavy lap-over. Can someone explain what these mean?

Counties
Localities
Metro Areas
Regions

Question 3: The app would be above board, open and tell all, but is it best to keep identity pretty much anonymous? What are the pros and cons of that - and is it possible?

Thanks.

[rfgdxm1]

For question 3, the app does ask for your real name. However, your login name could be something that couldn't be linked to your real name, or other online personae.

[kctipton]

Since my login isn't gone - yet - I'll suggest that a nonprofit emphasis could = a religion category (lots of churches) or education (schools and such) or, more broadly, any Society_and_Culture category in a locality. Obviously , the larger the town the larger the number of nonprofit sites worth listing.

Locality = city/town/burg of any size
County = legal subdivision of a state
Regions and Metro Areas = more or less a US Census Bureau construct. Not an issue for you, I think.

As for being anonymous, your public profile does not have to have any identifying information on it which would reveal who you are. Your application, as noted, is an OK place to list your real name since that will never be put on your profile unless you put it there. On the application be sure to pick an inscrutable login name, not one like kctipton or rfgdxm.

Try a Google search for "regional guidelines" and you'll find some additional info about that area of ODP (you may need to read the cached version of it for now...).

[motsa]

Question 2: Looking at sub-categories, this gets a bit confusing and there seems to be heavy lap-over. Can someone explain what these mean?

Counties
Localities
Metro Areas
Regions

There's very little overlap because sites in general would be listed in the lowest applicable area, e.g. a business with only one office in Town A would be listed in Town A; a business with offices all over the metro area (which generally consists of multiple neighbouring locality categories) would be listed in Metro Area Z; a business with offices all over the county would be listed in County T; etc. (now that I've written that, I guess I'm assuming you're in North America somewhere -- some other areas of Regional, most notably the UK, have somewhat different guidelines in place).

Question 3: The app would be above board, open and tell all, but is it best to keep identity pretty much anonymous? What are the pros and cons of that - and is it possible?

It's absolutely possible but it's up to you how anonymous you are by what information you put on your profile. Keep in mind you can't change your editor ID so pick something you're not going to regret later on.

[orlady]

Adding to what others have said:

Brand-new editors are seldom accepted to edit counties, metro areas, or regions, largely because the scope of these geographic categories often is confusing to newcomers.

[Marcia]

Oh, just about anything here at a county or regional level would be too much to even think about starting with.

This might be a unique geographical situation, but let's call it greatbigcity - which is a big metropolitan city in a huge county by the same name - greatbigcounty - that encompasses the entire city plus much more.

greatbigcity has little local areas within it that are still part of the city - and those are what the lowest level is among the applicable categories.

The particular local "littlearea" is mostly residential, with high-rises, a shopping mall and businesses that are mostly nationwide chains or enterprises. One non-profit which is already listed, one auto repair that has no site - not a lot of independent local shops, most of which don't have websites.

>>nonprofit emphasis could = a religion category

Using kctipton's example, at the county level (which is a huge territory) the religion category has many, many local area subcats under it - very broad coverage, really too much to start with.

At my localarea level for religion, there are 4 listings - last edited in March. If there are 6 in the whole localarea for religion altogether with websites that would be stretching it. There would be nothing to do. A lot of applicable sites in surrounding areas are under Denominations.

Localarea at the generalized level is second from the bottom level - as mentioned above, mostly residential and big chain business - there couldn't ever be a tremendous quantity altogether.

Arts & entertainment - last edited May, 2002 - 1 listing
Education - last edited October 2002 - 6 listings
Health (all types) - last edited September 2002 - 6 listings
Recreation & Sports - lasted edited August, 2002 - 1 listing
Society & Culture - last edited October, 2002 - 2 listings

Even Business & Economy doesn't have all that much in it, but ecompasses a few sparsely populated sub-cats, some of which haven't had additions since 2000.

I have a feeling that some applicable sites are probably in broader categories geographically, since few enterprises are really restrictive to just the localarea except by street address. So it would entail filling in blanks and getting more current.

What I'm primarily wondering is if it's possible to get in at a level one up from rock bottom, since most of what's at the very bottom just doesn't have much in the way of possible entries, knowing the area.

[motsa]

Depends on what you call rock bottom and thus what you mean by one step up from rock bottom. Keep in mind that localities listed under a Metro Area or County (even under a Metro Area/County topical subcategory) are just links to the localities' own categories, not subcategories under the Metro Area or County. So applying for a Metro Area or County generally doesn't give you editing rights over the individual localities.

If "rock bottom" is a leaf topical category (like Business and Economy or Religion) under a locality and "a level one up" (or more) is the locality with less than, say, 100 sites total, then yes, you start editing at a level above "rock bottom".

If "rock bottom" is the individual localities and one level up is the Metro Area or county, as orlady mentioned, you stand less of a chance getting accepted there because it helps to have more ODP experience at the locality level in order to understand how everything works.

[motsa]

Actually, I think I know which locality and county categories you're talking about (coincidentally I was going to use both as real ODP examples of my first point in my previous post). If I'm right, the county religion category has less than a handful of sites; the rest are in locality subcategories that you wouldn't be able to edit if you were only editor of the county one (hence the reason it would have made a really good example for me to use ;)). The locality category I think you're interested in is largish but not impossibly so.

[donaldb]

Ummm - why not just find a locality that looks like it might have some potential. Do a Google search on the zip code and see what comes up. Who says that you have to edit the locality where you live? Ever taken a family vacation to another part of the country? Does all of your family live in the same locality? If not, does that locality need help? There are a heck of a lot of localities that could probably be filled up with good listings.

Keep in mind that even though it may not be somewhere that you are familiar with, or are overly interested in, the point is to help improve the directory, not just the locality where you live. It gets you started, and lets you see how things work. You can always move on to bigger and better things after you get your feet wet.

[orlady]

Churches and nonprofits are an important part of a community and should be represented in dmoz locality categories. As Marcia notes, there are many local churches listed in denominational categories that are not also listed in the locality. (They belong in both places.)

I think that building up the "Religion" or "Society and Culture" category for a large suburban community could be a good project for a new dmoz editor.

[editor_qbp]

I'd guess that if a church (or something) is listed in one place, eg denominational category, and not again in regional is because an editor, either in regional or the denominational category, saw that the site was already listed and rejected it on those grounds :) I remember that rejection of sites based on what other categories they were in was hazy ground for quite some time for me as a new editor.

[marisa1116]

>>saw that the site was already listed and rejected it on those grounds <<

No... More likely that the site was submitted to one and not the other. While editors are encouraged to send copies to Regional/Topical, it isn't mandatory.

[orlady]

What marisa said. :)

Also, many categories -- including many denominational categories -- have been built by editors, not from submitted sites. Editors building directories of churches for a particular denomination often do not think about sending copies of the sites to the locality categories where they would also fit.

The flip side of this is regional editors (like me) who don't send church sites to the denominational categories. Often I can't figure out what denomination a local church belongs to. :o

[g1smd]

I have now got into the habit of sending a copy of a site in a Topical category off to the appropriate Regional category, but I always find it a lot of hassle - far too many mouse clicks. If you send the copy you are looking at, then you don't have the site in the category you are reviewing anymore. I need to find an easier way to make a copy, send the copy over, and keep the original for review and listing. When the forums come back on, I'll be looking about for answers.