DMOZ editor visited. How long till listing in dir?

Dmoz

[phaze]

I noticed from a referer that a DMOZ editor has visited my site. I checked the dmoz copy of the directory and no listing. Any idea how long it will take? I'd like to know how long till I jump up and down in frustration and relist, or jump for joy.

phaze.

[theseeker]

Edit: stever said it better.

[flicker]

>Take a look at the professional responses from employees of Google, All the Web, Yahoo etc. Compare >them with the [responses of ODP editors]...

That would be because GoogleGuy and similar folks are professionals being paid substantive amounts of money to be professional--and smile their way through startling amounts of verbal abuse--in public. ODP editors are *unpaid hobbyists*. We do this because we enjoy it. We chatter on about it because we enjoy it. When people ask us nicely, then like any other hobbyist on a forum might, we sometimes offer useful advice, because we feel friendly. When people insult us and try to force us to do free site promotion for them against our wishes, then like any other hobbyist on a forum might, we sometimes tell them to go jump off a bridge, because we feel annoyed.

We're not professionals. We're amateurs. We're hobbyists. We do this in our free time because we like to. You can't force us to do it the way you want it done, or work longer hours at it, or do different work that we're less interested in. That's really all there is to it. You'll have fewer headaches if you stop bashing your head against that wall.

*deposits two cents*

[outland88]

There seems to be an aversion to answering many questions about DMOZ.

>So you think poor old RD at DMOZ isn't paying anybody or is that what you want to believe. Why don't you bring that up in your DMOZ forums Motsa. RD will "cut you loose" so fast it'll make your head spin. You know I'm 100% right not 99%.

[flicker]

Repeating that silly claim for the third time doesn't make it so. We're all unpaid volunteers. If we were being paid, then we probably *would* have to do things like refrain from saying what we think in forum conversations, clock regular hours, and maybe even wear appropriate business attire while we edit. Some webmasters woiuld be much happier if that were the case. However, it isn't. We're just hobbyists doing something we enjoy and find useful. No conspiracies. No oppression. I just like to kick my bunny-slippered feet up and indulge my librarian's soul in a bit of web classification every few nights. Sorry not to be more exciting. (-:

[motsa]

You're not even 1% correct, outland88, let alone 100%. But you're going to indulge in your conspiracy theories regardless of what we say so what's the point of answering you with anything approaching seriousness?

[BillytheKid]

Thanks for the advice, but I have no spam filters and the email addy their message would have gone to is not one I use regularly. It gets very little mail. I wouldn't/didn't miss any messages.
Anything else I can try?

TradeMark

See the ODP Public Forum under Becoming an Editor. Also, you can try again as you would have received the automated response which must be replied to for further processing. :)

[TradeMark]

Thanks, BtK.

Man, I'm just trying to get REVIEWED (and included ;-) in DMOZ. It has been soooo long and given that is water under the bridge, should I resubmit the site or not? That is the question. I'm looking for some guidance from one of you high-paid editors.

TradeMark

[wolfgang]

TradeMark, I hope you get your answer here because there are clearly some committed editors who frequent this post. Unfortunately you are submitting to a category that has no one's attention. As one would expect in a volunteer effort, there is the inevitably wide disparity in quality of service. I myself have had both the good and the bad. The problem is I've come to define the good as ANY action at all and the bad is NO action at all.

[podman]

The problem is that there are a great number of site owners out there, and I've seen their sites in great detail.

But the owners never post a message in here that says "Great job guys, I submitted my site, and it got reviewed and added the same day"

Neither do they post "What great editors are at ODP, I submitted my site, and the editor sent me an email pointing out that it had navigation errors that needed fixing"

[wolfgang]

There is no reasonable response to those statements that wouldn't violate the charter of this forum.

[outland88]

I keep waiting for DMOZ metas to post something in their own private and public forums about the recruiting of all this free labor. It won't happen, to many self intersts. Its like I said the owners of DMOZ aren't going to let anyone step in the way of them recruiting free labor for AOL and Netscape. All cults function this way.

[flicker]

If you think doing anything for free in your spare time must be a cult, you really need to get out a little more, friend. (-:

TradeMark, you can visit the ODP public forum and ask after the status of your site; this can tell you if it's still waiting there or in need of resubmission.

[outland88]

Its never advisable to expose your site to a total stranger, especially a DMOZ meta. If you want to submit, do so at your convenience and leave their self interests alone.

[outland88]

>Take a look at the professional responses from employees of Google, All the Web, Yahoo etc. Compare them with the [responses of ODP editors]...

If this isn't a cult I don't know what is!

[victor]

Its never advisable to expose your site to a total stranger

So true. I only let my personal friends see my websites. I may not sell much, but it makes me feel safe and secure.

If this isn't a cult I don't know what is

It isn't, so I guess you don't.

The voices are telling me this thread has run its course.

[podman]

LOL

I've seen someone recently who had such a hate of DMOZ that he was willing to deface his web site, which was to his credit indeed a very well done site, to try and get removed from DMOZ. Think of that ---- please remove me from DMOZ - so that people will not see my site, because I don't want the ODP to benefit from my work - and if you do not, then visitors will see my opionn of the ODP and it's editors.

It's a very strange world.

[TradeMark]

Thanks Flicker. That is what I have done. No response yet. ;-)

[rfgdxm1]

>If we were being paid, then we probably *would* have to do things like refrain from saying what we think in forum conversations, clock regular hours, and maybe even wear appropriate business attire while we edit. Some webmasters woiuld be much happier if that were the case.

I have a confession to make as an ODP editor. At times, I have edited naked while drying off after taking a shower. ;)

[motsa]

>> I keep waiting for DMOZ metas to post something in their own private and public forums about the recruiting of all this free labor. It won't happen, to many self intersts. Its like I said the owners of DMOZ aren't going to let anyone step in the way of them recruiting free labor for AOL and Netscape. All cults function this way.

Why would we post something about it anywhere when it isn't an issue for us? You'll be waiting a very long time if you're expecting your posts here to have that kind of an effect. And, by the way, you mention waiting for something to happen in the private forums as though you have access to it -- wouldn't that make you one of the cultists?

Just thinking out loud, that's all.

[TradeMark]

I submitted my status check to Site Status Submission forum at DMOZ. I was told the same thing I was told 17 months ago. My site is currently waiting review in a category with three sites in it.

This is frustrating...

TradeMark

[flicker]

I'm sorry it's so frustrating... we do realize it's aggravating to ask for help, even for a favor, and receive no response for many months. Sometimes a quick "no" would almost seem preferable to waiting indefinitely. However, bearing in mind that an ODP listing is a free feather in your cap, not a right or a business necessity, the best thing to do really is to submit it to the right place and then forget all about it. There's no point even stressing yourself out by keeping it on your stack. You know it's waiting to be reviewed someday; don't spend any more of your valuable time worrying about it. It really is only one link, whether you get it or not. *two cents*

[wolfgang]

Trademark, you're wasting your time in this thread. You just received rationalization for and confirmation of the inconsistency that exists in the ODP system, which is why I maintain it's on a slow death march. The concept behind it is good, but it's based on a utopian philosophy that each person would pull his own weight. However some sites get reviewed by committed editors and are added quickly and others languish under dead categories. Another example of the failure of socialist philosophy.

[flicker]

I know it's a difficult pill to swallow, but as long as I go and add a dozen new sites tonight, the project doesn't really care whether they're in a less-traveled category or a more-traveled category, a commercial or a non-commercial category, or, in fact, whether I found them in the submissions pile or by surfing on the web myself. The end result is that the directory will have gotten bigger and better. No one likes to hear it, but the truth is processing site submissions is not the point of the project. If you'd step back for a moment, you might see that that makes sense (seeing as how the submitters are not paying us anything).

I'm sympathetic as to how frustrating this must be to people who have misunderstood the purpose of the ODP, but I don't see why it continues to sting once the misunderstanding has been explained. It's just one little link, and you don't need to pay anything to be considered for it anyway. In real life I maintain an educational site which links to interesting resources I find. It's much the same. I choose sites to link to because it's good for my users, not because it's good for the webmasters of those sites. I don't HAVE to link to anything. I often ignore link requests. Does this make me a mean communist? No, it makes me a webmaster with an agenda and userbase of my own. The ODP, too, has an agenda and userbase of its own, and as long as editors continue to add sites of interest to its users, they rightly feel they're contributing to it.

[sidyadav]

Man, you guys don't realize the DMOZ is a 100% free site. In what way can DMOZ possibly make some $$$ out of its service? and what about the editors? Its just a free non-profitable directory with a large index of 6 million documents, that people don't respect.

One of you said "some editors don't care" (something like that meaning the same), if the "some" editors didn't care, how does DMOZ have 6 million documents in its index? and that too hand edited. Its not like it has a web spider which spiders pages, or is a search engine sort of thing.

For those who think DMOZ editors are lazy:
Here's a thread that I love, and which answers how much work the editors have to do:
[webmasterworld.com...]
read msg#11, msg#13, doh, just read the whole thread!

But that thread is (imo) very similar to this thread, and some of the so-called "I think dmoz editors are lazy" people have also replied in that thread.

(BTW - I'm not a DMOZ editor. I'm an Open-Site editor :) and I'm sure the same work goes into editing DMOZ)
Sid

[theseeker]

Note: The current figure of 6 million sites on the front page at dmoz.org is erroneous, due to a temporary bug while categories are being converted to the UTF-8 character set. The actual figure is just a little over 4 million.

[cbpayne]

4 million is still bloody impressive.

[sidyadav]

4 million hand indexed websites and still people say the DMOZ editors are lazy.

Sid

[cbpayne]

4 million down, only 3 billion to go :-)

[victor]

There are nothing like 3 billion websites. Pages maybe, but not websites.

Exactly (or even approximately) how many websites there are is not an easy question to answer.

Netcraft gives a current figure of 47 million webservers:

[news.netcraft.com...]

Many of those will be hosting multiple sites, but very many sites will not be listable according to DMOZ's guidelines:

[dmoz.org...]

[hutcheson]

>4 million down, only 3 billion to go :-)

Actually, way more than 10 million down. Not all ever listable; not all STILL listable; not all submitted from outside. Many editors will have often gone hundreds deep in Google searches, looking for a handful of sites on a particular topic. It's really not possible to tell exactly how many sites have been reviewed, but I think 2-3 million submittals rejected, .5-1.0 million delisted sites, and 4-5 million search results checked but not listed, is a very conservative estimate (from sampling based on my own work.)