When applying to the ODP, make SURE you do so to the right category.

Or else, bad things may happen.

[rfgdxm1]

While many reading here are savvy enough to know this, I post this for newbies who may not. I just went through a pile of unrevieweds as an ODP editor today, and the percentage that were submitted to the wrong cat was huge. :( And many of these unreviewed were well over a year old. The reason why submitting to the right cat is so important is that likely these unrevieweds I sent off elsewhere will end up in a queue unlooked at for another year or so. Obviously bad for the submitters. This can be made worse by the fact that the editor may not send these off to Test/Misplaced which tends to be edited by taxonomy experts, but instead take a wild stab at where they think it goes. If most ODP editors are like me, they know very little about things outside of the area they edit in the ODP. Which can mean the editor will send it off to the wrong cat, where it will sit for a year before some other editor sends it off to yet a third cat. I had one case where this happened several times with a site submitted in the year 2000! Put in a nutshell, submitting to exactly the right cat at the ODP can greatly speed up approval times. Unless, of course you don't mind if your site isn't listed until the year 2006. ;)

[tedster]

What are the common mistakes that people make when they end up submitting to a seriously wrong category? Can you see any common reasons for this type of thing?

[rfgdxm1]

Please note it doesn't have to be a seriously wrong cat. For example, if I edit Shopping/Foo/Bar, and your site belongs in Shopping/Foo/Something, unless I have editing privs in both cats all I can do is send it to the unreviewed of the other. And, even if I edit Shopping/Foo and can edit both subcats, if you missubmit to Shopping/Foo instead of the lower cat, I may not just add it to the unreviewed of the lower cat because I don't want to intrude in another editor's cat space. Although I must confess I tend to often be guilty of doing that because the child cats are so numerous it is easy to forget which have editors.

As for why people missubmit to seriously wrong cats, I'm beginning to wonder about the sobriety of a lot of these people. Although, it is possible that what I was seeing in many cases was spam. There is no way of knowing if a site is sitting in unreviewed in many different ODP cats. Only if it has been already listed.

[MaxMaxMax]

From my own experiences, I get the feeling people submit to the wrong category because that category has - or had at the time - an editor, whereas the one they belong in doesn't (at least they can't see a named editor listed).

Presumebly they assume that if there's a named editor, he/she will approve their listing and shunt it to the correct category. Not realizing that all that editor is going to do is send it to the review queue for the right category, involving all the delays already mentioned.

I say this because on a lot of boards I see people asking questions like, "My category has no editor, so I'm sending my submission to one who has, is this OK?"

[WindSun]

The fact is, it makes little difference if you are in wrong cat or not.

Nobody uses DMOZ directly, and once Google picks up the link from DMOZ it could care less what category it is in, aside that it will show the wrong directory listing. It won't affect your PR or anything else.

[cornwall]

To be fair to submitters, sometimes it is not clear which category is the right one to submit to.

With, I suspect, empire building, sometimes you get two different categories in the same country, where you could submit.

for example
Top: Regional: Continent: Country: Regions: City: Travel and Tourism: Lodging: Hotels

would be the correct place to put a hotel for review. But you will often come across a sneaky variant

Top: Regional: Continent: Country: Travel and Tourism: Lodging: Hotels (and no, its not done with a simlink)

Whilst I appreciate that it is difficult for Metas to monitor this because of the size of DMOZ. It is a factor that makes submission to the "correct" category difficult.

So do I submit to both, neither, complain to a meta, or kick the cat?

[cornwall]

The fact is, it makes little difference if you are in wrong cat or not.

Whilst that is true for the site owner, DMOZ does prefer to put them in the correct category (as they define it)

I think we could all agree that its up to DMOZ to allocate the site to the correct category, rather than have site owners just bunging their sites into the category that gives them the most PR, however gratifying that would be to us site submitters ;)

[gimmster]

Top: Regional: Continent: Country: City: Travel and Tourism: Lodging: Hotels (Note Regions: City: should not exist (Regions: City@: is valid though as it points directly to the city))

Top: Regional: Continent: Country: Travel and Tourism: Lodging: Hotels (and no, its not done with a simlink)

This is actually correct taxonomy - what is supposed to happen is that a site for a single hotel goes in the first(City/Locality) category, whereas a country wide chain with hotels in several cities would list once in the country category.

There may be intermediate levels as well
Top: Regional: Continent: Country: County: Travel and Tourism: Lodging: Hotels for example

The higher categories should link to the City(Locality) sub categories, sometimes via the intermediate levels

Like so
Country
--T&T/Lodging/Hotels
----Locality@ (link to Localities/T&T/Lodging/Hotels)
----County@ (link to Counties/T&T/Lodging/Hotels)

--County
--T&T/Lodging/Hotels
----Locality@ (link to Localities/T&T/Lodging/Hotels)

--Locality
--T&T/Lodging/Hotels

Any clearer?
:)

[rfgdxm1]

>From my own experiences, I get the feeling people submit to the wrong category because that category has - or had at the time - an editor, whereas the one they belong in doesn't (at least they can't see a named editor listed).

Nope, at least not in the cats I am seeing. If this were the case, I'd be expecting these to be showing up in cats where there is an editor on shown. These seem to occur in any cat with equal probability.

[rfgdxm1]

>Nobody uses DMOZ directly, and once Google picks up the link from DMOZ it could care less what category it is in, aside that it will show the wrong directory listing. It won't affect your PR or anything else.

Google or the submitter may not care, but ODP editors sure do. One of the worst things from an ODP editor's point of view would be to end up adding a site to a cat where it obviously doesn't belong. This runs the risk of some meta or higher editor looking at your cat, spotting a site that obviously doesn't belong there at all, and them asking "umm...why is this site selling widgets listed in your cat for doohickeys?" For an ODP editor, the easiest submissions to deal with are those to obviously wrong cats. In that case, all the editor has to do is send those sites off elsewhere in the directory, where if anything goes wrong then it is some other editor who gets the blame, not them. Also, submitting to the wrong cat runs a significant risk most people are unaware of. In the case of a doohickey site submitted to a widgets cat, the editor is supposed send it off the widgets cat, or to Test/Misplaced as quite often the editor won't know where sites outside of the scope of their cat go. However editors, especially newbies, often will just look at the site and delete it with a note "no content about doohickeys, inapproprate for category". If the submitter is thinking along the idea of getting the site listed as quickly as possible for the Google PR value, then the correct strategy is to submit the site to whatever cat it likely would have the best chance of getting approval in. This isn't an obviously wrong cat.

[reuben101]

I wanted to add that many, perhaps all, cats have decent description/guidelines available for those that are unsure where to submit. If the submission doesn't match the guidelines, there is a very real chance it will be deleted or moved elsewhere.

I think most editors do their best to get the submissions to the proper cat but this will obviously slow the listing process down dramatically. Expecting someone else to spend more time than you did to list your site is exceedingly arrogant (in my opinion) and will lessen the chances of the site being listed in a reasonable time frame.

[cornwall]

what is supposed to happen is that a site for a single hotel goes in the first(City/Locality) category, whereas a country wide chain with hotels in several cities would list once in the country category.

Whilst I agree that is what is supposed to happen, my point was that in many cases there are many instances of a single hotel for say, Hicksville, being listed in both Locality and in Travel & Tourism.

Whist you and I may know what should be going on, my point is that a number of editors do not, hence double listing of a single hotel.

Which takes me back to the problem that many submitters have of knowing the correct category to submit to. I submit many sites, so am (hopefully) more aware of what is going on than the webmaster who only submits one or two sites.

My point is that it is not always the submitter who is to blame.;)

[rogerd]

I've noticed the same problems. While a few of the submissions in my little category were understandable errors based on moderately subtle differences between categories, I see a lot of wildly misplaced ones, including many foreign language and country-specific sites that belong in a Regional cat.

Windsun, you may be correct about the PR of a listed site, but very few editors will list you in their category if the site doesn't fit. More likely, you will be deleted or shuffled into another queue. And some people (like me) actually use the DMOZ cats to search, though mostly at Google.

[g1smd]

No-one is going to totally whack a site that lands somewhere close to the place that it should be listed, but submitting real estate realtor sites anywhere in the /Arts branch, hotel reservation web sites to the /Science branch, and other such crazy things will usually result in a deletion rather than a move to the unreviewed of the correct category. The problem then arises that the site then has a history of bad submissions and deletes, and when the site gets reviewed in the correct category where it belongs, an editor may just look at the long delete history and consign the site to the bit bucket, rather than risk their reputation adding a site that has a "dodgy history". That's the risk you run trying to fool the humans who do the reviews.

[kctipton]

Thanks to a new bookmarklet from meta-editor itubert, it is now possible to load up a big chunk of unreviewed sites and delete all but one of any exact duplicates found. I usually pick areas with a total of 1000-2000 unreviewed sites to clean up with this bookmarklet. I find that the competitive areas have 8-10% multiple submissions (possibly to multiple subcategories), and the more serene areas have maybe 1-2%. The bookmarklet does NOT pick up situations where companies submit every page from their site :( Maybe someday...

Comeon y'all, pick the ONE best category for your submission. All of the multiple submissions make a lot of extra work for editors.

[Amras]

We are a site that has hunderds of different products, all one theme, that has 8 major categories; home decor, garden, jewelry, clothing ,stationary, toys, books and posters. Home decor and garden have several sub-categories. I submitted to the large (12,000) Shopping-Home and Garden category thinking this was probably the best fit. Should I also submit to the clothing, jewelry etc. sections? If so, just the clothing etc. page? Hard to pick the right category sometimes.

[rfgdxm1]

>My point is that it is not always the submitter who is to blame.;)

My point in this thread isn't to blame submitters. It was just to point out that from the submitter's point of view, it is very much in their best interest to make sure to find the right cat. That the submitter may be innocent and confused is irrelevant to the issue that choosing the wrong cat can delay approval for over a year or more.

[hutcheson]

>So do I submit to both, neither, complain to a meta, or kick the cat?

This meta says, if you go to one category and you don't see the other as a "related category" or subcategory, then submit to both. The editor, if awake, should notice the overlap when the site is reviewed for the second category.

What may happen is that the categories get merged, or a new subcategory gets created for the overlap. Or there may really be some subtle reason for the overlap, and your site may get listed twice.

Whichever happens, the directory is better as a result of your submittal. And your site is more easily seen (from two different places in the ODP taxonomy) as a result of your submittal.

Now, if the two sites are already linked as "related" to each other, then only submit to one of them. If your site ends up listed in the other, then that was editorial discretion, and probably means your site won't ever get listed in the first category. (Listing a site in two "related" categories is almost never helpful to the surfer.)

If you really think the first category is more appropriate, contact the editor, or submit an "Update URL" request, asking for a category change and giving reasons why it fits the other category better. In such cases a "move" is more likely to be acceptable than a "double-list".

Contacting a meta is always an option if you see a pattern of abuse in the sites listed (or their description.)

[hutcheson]

>Should I also submit to the clothing, jewelry etc. sections?
No.

>If so, just the clothing etc. page? Hard to pick the right category sometimes.

Read the submittal guidelines. Pick the "ONE" best category for your site. There is a "general merchandise" category for sites of businesses that retail many different types of wares.

[cornwall]

So do I submit to both, neither, complain to a meta, or kick the cat?

This meta says, if you go to one category and you don't see the other as a "related category" or subcategory, then submit to both.

hutcheson,

Both the cat and I are grateful for your clear answer.

[Powdork]

I have a site in a region.eventplanning.weddings category (of which i am in the editor). The event planning cat was recently added on top to keep up with topical guidelines. According to the guidelines for the event planning cat all of the sites (except for the ministers) should be in the event planning cat now that it exists. How do i change that when you have to go up three levels to get to a cat with an editor? Also, I feel my site should also be in the national cat for wedding directories since the area in question spans two states and is the second most popular wedding destination in the states. Would the two cats conflict? If so, should I drop my site from the local category and then resubmit to the national one?

[Bluesplinter]

Powdork, you should really take these questions to the resource-zone. That's what they're for.

[edited by: Laisha at 6:19 pm (utc) on Feb. 23, 2003]

[Dynamoo]

I think the point is that submitters often don't spend enough time with their submissions. Your DMOZ category and description are IMPORTANT and you should spend some serious time finding the correct category and writing a description that meets to ODP guidelines.

The bottom line is that submitting to a wrong category can add several months (or more) to your waiting time. If you submit to completely the wrong category, the editor who processes your submission may not know which category to move it to and may place it in a further incorrect category.

In my opinion, writing a good description takes TIME. Going through all the categories to find the correct one takes TIME. If you've spent months construction a web site, it's definitely worth spending a couple of hours with the ODP to get it right.

[quaxo]

I'm not sure that what I'm going to say makes really much sense, but could it be that the 'Add URL' link is incorrectly interpreted by a large number of submitters - who take it to mean "Add your site *to ODP*" instead of "Add your site to *THIS category*", in spite of descriptions and submission notices? (Linguists would call it a bad implicature ;-)

I edit in some italian categories of ODP and notice constant submissions of *spanish sites* from *Spain* to a specific subcategory of World/Italiano, no matter what the site is about. :-/

[rogerd]

quaxo, that's an interesting theory. Most of my off-topic submissions seem to be from people who haven't read ODP guidlines and/or the category description, though. Maybe the submittal screen could display have a confirmation checkbox next to the category name and/or display a text box with the cat description.

My guess is that it would have little effect, though. When someone submits a Bulgarian language site to my US cat I assume it's because they couldn't read the instructions. Adding a few more instructions probably wouldn't help. And some users just seem oblivious to everything, even if their English is fine.

[quaxo]

it would have little effect

it's because they couldn't read the instructions

Well, these are hypotheses, but do we have any evidence that things really go this way? ;)

I mean, I'd like to see some stats about the number of misplaced submissions and a list of possible causes before deciding what strategy ODP should implement.

I like your idea of a confirmation checkbox with a warning sounding like "Check the category to which you are submitting your site: submitting to an improper category can cause much longer delays before your site is listed" and I think we could suggest it in ODP.

[Dynamoo]

There is supposedly a bug which sometimes means that submissions accidentally end up in a more-or-less random category.

Of course, this could be related to the duplicate category numbers in the RDF dump, but sometimes the ODP just throws a wobbly I guess.

But the warning about mis-submitting is true. This is why there are sites still bouncing around since 1999 looking for a home.

[hutcheson]

>>I mean, I'd like to see some stats about the number of misplaced submissions and a list of possible causes before deciding what strategy ODP should implement.

Aha, a sensible fellow!

I've seen the raw data -- tens of thousands of site submittals that got (more or less randomly) caught in the "cannot determine IP address" trap.

Based on that data, we've made a few suggestions to the technical people. But it often comes back to this: there's not much that people can't do better.

[TheDave]

Ok, we sell trophies. You tell me how this is the wrong category for me to submit to:

Top: Shopping: Gifts: Personalized: Trophies

That is what I was told by the editor of the category. They recommended I submit to the Regional:My Country:My State... directory.

I'm sorry, but the limited experience I have had with DMOZ is that for *commercial purposes* the place stinks. That editor isnt even there anymore.

[gimmster]

Disclaimer - I am not a shopping editor

>>Ok, we sell trophies. You tell me how this is the wrong category for me to submit to:
Top: Shopping: Gifts: Personalized: Trophies

That is what I was told by the editor of the category. They recommended I submit to the Regional:My Country:My State... directory. <<

It is my understanding that a listing in Shopping requires you to provide a list of products for sale, pricing, a method to order, and deliver either to the contiguous US, or Internationally. Whilst it can be inferred that you deliver Internationally from the fact you quote a specific currency, you actually don't state that fact on the site. The only area on your policies page that doesn't provide information is, in fact, this specific area.

In the absence of you meeting the Shopping requirements you were, very correctly, advised to submit to your Locality in the Regional branch of the directory. Note that you can be listed in both, but you must meet the requirements of the individual branches.

It was listed earlier today in Adelaide/Business_and_Economy/Services , but if all required information is on the site should be resubmitted to Shopping. Include a note in the description regarding shipping/pricing/products/whatever now being provided, and ask for a re-review. It wont't get done any faster than a normal submission, but at least you know you are there in Regional in the meantime.