Does Open Directory Project Favor Websites?

Can I list all pages of my site in the Open Directory if I am editor?

[MrRoy]

Hi All

I would like to draw attention to all the site owners about an existing truth. I recently found that in a particular category 2 websites are having their entire site listed in all the categories.

It is very disappointing to know that some sites have been given undue privilege. Site-owners have been trying hard to get listed in DMOZ. It takes years to get a listing of a home page in any particular category. It should be alarming for all the ODP editors, they should have a look into it. It is really very surprising for us to see that some websites have all their pages listed in DMOZ.

A further clarification with a justified answer on the above issue is required

Regards
MrRoy

[edited by: skibum at 4:51 pm (utc) on Aug. 29, 2006]
[edit reason]
[1][edit reason] no specifics please [/edit] [/edit][/1]

[hutcheson]

Your description is ambiguous--and of course some details can't be given in this forum. Which is perhaps a relevant example: webmasterworld (like every other site) has rules based on its owner's best judgment, which he's never required to justify to anyone. If a site is useful to you, and you can put up with the owner's rules, use it: otherwise, there are other sites.

There are three possibilities that might be described with those words: (1) historically, there was a justified requirement, which may no longer be operative, (2) there is a currently justified requirement, (3) it's unjustifiable fly-by-night webmaster abuse, soon to be cleaned up by honest editors. Without details, it's impossible to tell which case you're referring to.

[flicker]

It does depend somewhat on the site in question. Sites with major informational content like universities, museums, online encyclopedias, and so forth frequently have lots of deeplinked listings, because that is useful for our users. Online shopping sites should almost never have more than one listing, and certainly not for individual project pages.

So it's impossible to make a definitive judgment without more details, but if it's something that looks egregious to you, you can file an abuse report and it will be looked into (by someone other than the editor who made the edits that concern you.)

Just, you know, don't waste our time filing complaints about all the Smithsonian Institute or Wikipedia links in our directory. Use some common sense. ;-)

[pagode]

He asked the same question on R-Z
It was about sites with recipes in cooking.

And he also asked the same question on IHelpYou.

[flicker]

The recipes section is one of the ones that permits extensive deeplinking. Our users have evidently found it easier to locate recipes that way. Many sites containing unique recipes are listed more than once in that part of the ODP.

It all just comes down to what's good for our users. A recipe site's Mexican recipe collection being listed in our Mexican recipes category while their Italian recipe collection is simultaneously listed in the Italian recipes category is something that makes it easier for them to find the right recipe. Amazon.com having 800,000 listings in the Shopping/Publication/Books category is something that would make it HARDER for them to find anything there.

[hutcheson]

If you are designing the site to obtain multiple ODP listings, then chances are extremely high that it is not something that would be listable even once.

Current sites did not get deeplinked by being LIKE some other site that was already deeplinked; they got deeplinked, often without being concerned about the ODP at all, but by being UNLIKE any other site on the net -- and by gaining a reputation among searching editors as reliable places to find content.

There are some exceptions; in the beginning the ODP worked closely with some particularly content-rich sites to flesh out particular parts of the directory. As time went by, some of those deeplinks have been removed; other similar sites appeared later, and the community decided NOT to deeplink them systematically: the first site is always by definition unique, but the second site may not be. Traces of some of those early working relationships still remain -- some still for the better, some not enough for the worse that it's become a priority to pull them out by the roots.