Forum Moderators: open
Donny
Thanks for letting us know.
Did you send an email to the editor?
Did you join the special DMOZ forum?
Your listing is either a regional or a topical, so make sure you do at least the other.
Generally, topicals add more weight but the regional will help too!
You need to see each category as a unique entity; a site submitted where I edit will be reviewed in a week (absolute max) as a I edit in few cats, and can keep on top of them; some nearby cats have no 'resident editor' and may get visited quite rarely.
But if your site belongs there, and you send it to me, I'll simply pass it over; if I've had 10 or 20 do that, and I'm short of time (and they're *obviously* inappropriate submissions), they'll simply be deleted, with a note as to why.
And that note will be there next time the site gets submitted.
Two or three inappropriate submissions ... well, you get the picture.
We don't play favorites; we do our best - but few of us have patience with those who try to elbow others out of the way. Save those tricks for Yahoo! - those editors get paid!
There's Four Simple Rules for a good ODP listing:
1. Make a good site
2. Submit to the right category
3. Read guidelines *before* entering title, URL and description.
4. Press 'submit' button
Rocket science? I think not.
Rocket science? I think not.
I think you forgot...
5. Wait
6. Wait more
7. Get fed up with waiting and apply to be an editor because you've got interested in the ODP through waiting and trying to see why you are waiting
8. Wait
9. Join ODP forum and read up on relevant posts
10. Wait some more
11. After two months, make second application as editor for different category
12. Wait
13. Keep checking the ODP to see if any sites have been added or if the categories have been cleared out. Keep checking the ODP forums.
14. Wait more
Leading to a possible
15. Shrug shoulders and get on with more productive pursuits in life and profession
Rocket science?
Would that be... Science: Rockets ?
I've just about lost hope on one site. I submitted to the exact category, which hasn't been updated since June 8th. I should have submitted to a better, closely related category that shows a July 25th update.
giving up hope that quickly marcia? i've got 2 sites that i've been trying to get listed for well over 2 years now - there are no editors for those categories and i'm already an editor elsewhere in the ODP and not willing to take on any more categories, but i still haven't given up hope of getting these two sites listed there one day. obviously, people's home pages and other junk are far more important than quality business sites ...
obviously, people's home pages and other junk are far more important than quality business sites ...
The beauty of the ODP is that it doesn't discriminate between the two. Could you imagine Yahoo or Looksmart listing a personal homepage over a shopping site that looks exactly like the 1000 other sites that sell the same thing? I don't think so.
As for "other junk" remember one man's trash is another man's treasure. ;)
What we need is for these DMOZ listings to become so common that these congratulatory threads are unecessary. If DMOZ cannot now attract enough editors to respond to the quantity of demand, the requirements to become an editor and the rules for review of sites should be streamlined to meet it. It makes no sense to hold onto an archaic method of service that rewards some and penalizes others through no fault of their own.
"Habit with him was all the test of truth; 'It must be right, I've done it from my youth.'" Crabbe
If DMOZ cannot now attract enough editors to respond to the quantity of demand, the requirements to become an editor and the rules for review of sites should be streamlined to meet it.
DMOZ strives for quality not quantity. While it may not seem fair, sometimes the benefit of adding the page of a local high school band will far outweigh adding the 50,000th web designer to WDAD [dmoz.org] or a candle shopping portal to Shopping...Candles [dmoz.org]
What can you the webmaster do about that? In some case nothing. But you can always strive to make your site so unique and better than the rest that it begs to be added.
Several thousand sites do get listed in the ODP every week. What would you say if all those webmasters came here bragging about it? ;)
Not picking on Danny, just putting things in perspective
It is.
>Several thousand sites do get listed in the ODP every week. What would you say if all those webmasters came here bragging about it?<
Judging by the amount of cats that don't have editors, and the amount of complaints in just this one board, I would suggest that several thousand sites per week is inadequate.
>DMOZ strives for quality not quantity. While it may not seem fair, sometimes the benefit of adding the page of a local high school band will far outweigh adding the 50,000th web designer to WDAD or a candle shopping portal to Shopping...Candles<
This is just a straw man that I hear over and over. Streamlining the process would not have to change this outcome in the least. But it would bring it about in a timely manner.
[edited by: Axacta at 9:16 pm (utc) on July 26, 2002]
Listing in the ODP is a lottery and the lottery consists of how many editors are active in that part of the directory, what the backlog is there, and how active or conscientious those (volunteer) editors are.
Unless there is an effort by the ODP to push editors to areas which are underrepresented or in some other way more worthy, which I doubt with volunteers and the stress on areas of interest and experience, then there is no quality filter in the sense implied.
Indeed if you have a keen editor with an interest in high-school bands might you not find hundreds of similar sites about teenage tuba players listed while the rocket science category lies underrepresented?
That's what the Greenbusters [webmasterworld.com] have been invented for. This activity is still too new to have measurable effects in every remote corner of the directory, but its benefits are already clearly evident in those areas that it has reached up to now.
The editors are really listening to the valid complaints, and we're trying to improve wherever we see a chance. But the directory is simply too big for cleaning every queue over night even with this new tool.
That's good to hear, because sometimes the impression is given to outsiders that anyone who criticises is automatically considered an affiliate spammer. ;)
Seriously, I think behind much of the criticism is also an appreciation for the hard work that does go on and the importance of having an independent, if sometimes decidedly quirky, major directory.
There is also a place for editors (mainly editall+ or higher-level editors) to submit categories needing help badly.
*Wishes there was a sig tool :(*
