A new start

getting off the 'list'

[Powdork]

As one who has apparently made his way to the ex-editor's list I'm curious about what it would take to get off it. I haven't said a bad thing about dmoz in nearly six months, I have removed a site about Dmoz from the web (even though it did pretty well with adsense) but still can not get quality sites listed for myself or clients. Since it's apparent I won't be removed from the list, what can I do to hide my identity. Is it as simple as changing whois info and getting a new ip? Is my machine address important. In short, what variables would I need to hide or change?

[edited by: skibum at 3:26 am (utc) on July 20, 2004]

[tschild]

Speaking as an ODP editor I don't see how I should be able to identify a site made by you if I happened on the submission. (I don't know of a blacklist of specific persons, and such a notional blacklist would need to be known to editors in order to work...). We don't look at the whois entry in most cases either (unless the site's content leads to the suspicion that it's a bogus one). There are also sites critical of the ODP listed in the directory.

My suspicion is that your submissions have not (yet) been listed for reasons unconnected to your identity (there are a lot of conceivable reasons). Best inquire in the Open Directory public forum (google for these words) after the fate of your submissions.

[Powdork]

There definitely is/was an ex-editors list blackballing submissions from those said editors. Whether or not I am on it I can't really be sure. I would assume the most logical way to go about would be to block submissions from known IP's at the server level, so lower level editors would never know it happened. That would also be among the easiest to get around. The best way would be to filter using IP, whois, mac address, design style and more with a meta checking these in a region know to be inhabited by said ex-editor.
It is also important to note that unmentionable-zone has raised the alotted time between submitting and asking about your submission from 1 to 6 months.

The nice thing about it is I could submit an up and coming competitor and ensure they couldn't get listed.;)

[tschild]

It is also important to note that unmentionable-zone has raised the alotted time between submitting and asking about your submission from 1 to 6 months.

Not quite. 1 month from (last) submission to first status request, 6 months from that to any follow-up status request.

Also I doubt that ODP editors waste their time sleuthing after ex-editors' sites per se (as opposed to spam, domain hijack, bait & switch sites regardless of the site owner's identity.)

[flicker]

There are a lot of sites by ex-editors listed in the ODP. I just saw one last week. They aren't automatically excluded.

Whether an ex-editor's site is listed or not has a lot to do with whether the site was the reason for the editor's termination in the first place, as I understand it. If an editor became an ex-editor because he kept writing misspelled, grammatically incorrect and inaccurate descriptions, his submission will eventually be reviewed like anyone else's. If an editor became an ex-editor because of listing his own deceptive spam site contrary to our guidelines, the site should have been deleted at the same time the editor was removed and won't be re-listed.

I have no idea which end of that spectrum you in particular fall closer to, but at issue is the *site* you're talking about--if it was removed when your editorship was revoked, then it's very doubtful it will ever be re-added unless the content changes, since listing it is probably why you were terminated. If it's a mirror of your old site or an affiliate site or lead generator or copied content or something like that it won't be listed no matter who submits it for you, and it's entirely possible that if a submitter has a deceptive history his sites may be in for extra scrutiny (again, I have no idea if this applies to you or not, I'm speaking generally). But if you've just gotten an SEO contract for some never-submitted site with original content which goes nowhere near a guidelines issue and you're worried your history as an ex-editor/vocal critic may hurt its chances, you can stop worrying, AFAIK.

All of the above constitutes personal and unofficial advice not necessarily endorsed by the ODP, the university, or my cats. ;-)

[Powdork]

Thank You flicker,
first I was never terminated. I left after an argument with (what I consider) to be a very rude meta. I'm certain he probably has similar feelings about myself. At that point, I launched a site that was partly very critical about dmoz, partly information for submitters, including a forum that ended up being almost exclusively detractors. One night, that deemoz forum received several visitors coming directly from dmoz's internal editors forum. The next day, my wedding site was gone, and I have not been able to get others in since. I have resubmitted that site, sites for local restaurants (should be a shoe-in), and more. I have a new site and I would consider a dmoz link very important for this site, but I don't want to take the chance of submitting it myself because then it will be forever associated with my name, and thus never get in. I can have someone else submit it, but I was wondering what links I would need to go to obfuscate my association.

[rfgdxm1]

So long as a submission were made by a friend, or at a cybercafe, etc. there is no way anyone at the ODP who could identify you submitted it. At that point all anyone could know was the IP it was submitted from. That IP would not be traceable to you. Only way at then anyone could positively link a site to you is if your name was on the site itself, or in the whois data. I guess in theory by checking what sites link to a submitted site, and what sites that submitted site links to, if those sites were known to be yours that could arouse suspicion.

A much more plausible explanation for the sites that you submitted not being listed is that they are just still sitting in reviewed with the million or so other sites in unreviewed you aren't affiliated with. Happens all the time sites sit in unreviewed quite a while at the ODP, and this had nothing to do with any conspiracy.