Forum Moderators: open
If that describes your situation that could have been what happened.
Of course, this thread will turn into DMOZ bashing.. it's the usual thing that happens when someone starts a thread about one of the things:
;)
First, it might have been listed because an editor saw it and liked it and added it. ODP is not dependent on submissions, and in many categories most of the sites listed have been found by editors and are not the results of a submission.
The other possibility is that the "minor" site is in fact the true URL. If the "major" site uses a framed redirect or some other mirror tactic, the editor is supossed to ignore the fake/major URL and list the real one. ODP doesn't care about your business plan, it only cares about listing the correct, single location of listable websites.
If so, I would consider that inappropriate editing. Since the owner can have only one of his domains listed in the ODP, I'd say he would be the one to know what he considers the primary site. For example, the owner might have submitted keyword-keyword-keyword.com instead of mysite.com because he intends shortly to abandon mysite.com, because the keyword stuffed domain name is superior for search engines.
Editors joined to categories in their particular hobby, academic or professional research area, or social/religious/political interest are on the hunt. They may have been frustrated with the difficulty finding of sites about their obscure religion, or want to help the cause of their underrecognized theorist, or want to build a clean listing due to the unfortunate spam that comes up when trying to search on their literary hero, Richard Viagra Debtconsolidation. They scour related links pages, Copernic, high school projects, and the like to be able to list anything remotely useful.
The same cannot be said in other parts of the directory. I doubt any real estate category editor is concerned that someone searching Google for real estate won't be able to find it, or that they haven't received any new submissions in months. She may feel burdened by the volume of submissions, and by meta-editors standing over her shoulder due to past abuse in the category. I wouldn't be surprised if she burned out after a few months and moved on to focus on underwater basketweaving clubs in her hometown.
So it is that a web developer who maintains a dozen commercial categories for his bread and butter, a non-profit or two for spare time and a hobby site for personal entertainment might see the occasionally updated hobby site and the afterthought non-profit listed long before any of the commercial submissions has even been seen by an editor.
If so, I would consider that inappropriate editing. Since the owner can have only one of his domains listed in the ODP, I'd say he would be the one to know what he considers the primary site...
Note that I wrote "I would consider that inappropriate editing" and not "such editing would violate the ODP guidelines". By that I meant it is something *I* would never do, rather than editors aren't allowed to do this. I would use editor discretion to favor the domain name preferred by the site owner. Mainly on the theory that only a clueless site owner would submit a URL that he knew wasn't going to be around permanently.