Forum Moderators: skibum
One of the dangers of having thousands of affiliates, all of whom claim in their own name to be providing your goods and services, is that you may be mistaken for them.The editors don't have the time or inclination to spend very much time tracking down which of the thousands of distributed-conspiracy-to-conceal-the-original-mirror is the real one...<snip>
And since your whole business model is predicated on successful concealment of the true provider of the services...<snip>
There has been no mistake to be corrected. The ODP pursues its goal of listing unique content. You pursue your goal of replicating your content thousands of times. The results are predictable and inevitable.
So there's nothing to discuss.
Is this a case of ODP editor corruption? What else could it be? My client's site is considered an authority in his niche and has more content than 99% of those listed in the top 100 Google SER's.
Watch out marketers...once ODP removes you the site will be banned from the directory for LIFE since there are no appeal processes.
Good luck to all and I sincerely hope you do not piss off the wrong corrupt editor.
Bobby
It is a useless, corrupt and inefficient system. It is a dinosaur that just hasn't died yet.
Were you in violation of their terms though?
Ah, see that's the problem with ODP. Violation of terms is completly up to the editor, who may even have been an affiliate of the main company, who kicked the main company out as to try to improve the editr's affiliate site. That may not be what happened, but it may have and things like that happen when you have a group of people with compromised interests.
Ignore them and move on.
If however, you have "concealed the purpose of your site", as stated above, and your site doesn't look any different to the rest of your affiliates, then your listing will go the same way --> /dev/nul.
It is a clear policy; but the usual unfounded bleats about editor corruption abound.
Thread done. Time for a mod to close it.
Time for a mod to close it.
I think that should be up to a mod to decide, don't you? ;)
As far as the editor corruption thing goes, I have no personal experience one wayor another, but the system is set up to be subseptible to corruption. And I haveto go by the old adage, that if someone calls you a donkey once, ignore it, if someone calls you a donkey twice, looks for the ears and tail, someone calls you a donkey thrice, put on a saddle.
You're a donkey.
You're a donkey.
Time to saddle up then!
corrupt editor
You think a righteous editor would list the site? That's the equation right? Great editor lists it, corrupt editor does not. How silly.
Therein lies the problem.
My client got into the affiliate game back in 1999. He is completely computer illiterate and does not even know the value (or, disvalue) in ODP inclusion.
He exclusively uses CommissionJunction who has explicit policies with iframes, etc. that are the main objections to ODP editors. He had no idea that a few, out of thousands of affilaites, have used the blackhat tactic of iframe traffic.
As was stated in my thread to the editors, which is hyperlink so you can read with your own peepers, I ask what the problem was and how to correct it for resubmission.
The answer: you're a spammer and you don't have an appeal process. Basically, you're sh*t out of luck.
Where is the fairness in the policy? Why shouldn't there be a system where an appeal is made? That is the elitist attitude that makes so many discount the basic movement that made ODP atractive just a few years ago.
The whole directory is corrupt in trying to catch their own corruption (better yet, perversion of their original vision).
You're a donkey.
You're a donkey.
You're a donkey.
Very mature, dear. Glad to see you are backing up your argument with something reasonable.
I just wanted to post something that was as demonstratably and blatently untrue as the post that it was responding to.
I can point to many, many editorials and threads (both here and elsewhere) that say that ODP is corrupt. How many sources can you point to that indicate or prove otherwise?
I have not seen much lately defending ODP, and that would indicate that there is a problem.
The resentment to this thread comes from the age old accusation of:
"you didn't publish MY SITE so editor X is corrupt"
which as soon as you stop and actually read that again (and knowing that over 200 editors can edit in any category in the entire directory, and knowing that if you are talking about a category many levels deep that maybe another 50 branch editors also have access) you will see what a complete load of claptrap it really is.
I found some of this from the ODP site quite humorous:
Instead of fighting the explosive growth of the Internet, the Open Directory provides the means for the Internet to organize itself.
We'll ODP, maybe you should just try and organize yourself first.
These citizens can each organize a small portion of the web and present it back to the rest of the population, culling out the bad and useless and keeping only the best content.
The Open Directory follows in the footsteps of some of the most important editor/contributor projects of the 20th century. Just as the Oxford English Dictionary became the definitive word on words through the efforts of a volunteers, the Open Directory follows in its footsteps to become the definitive catalog of the Web.
whatever... actually, that is great comedy.
You are mistaken in your assumptions of the point of this thread.
First, my client's site was listed for 5 years and was the SECOND entry in the category.
Since then he was removed because his affiliate network that he has built in the 6 years on the internet (which is very expansive).
My thread on #*$! (please read the link I provided in the first post) asks for what reason he was removed and what can be done to correct the problem.
The answer was a big (F*CK OFF) from an editor citing his affiliates and their blackhat tactics. How is he to control the efforts of literally thousands of affiliates whom he has and never will meet. How does he protect himself against those affiliates that break the CommissionJunction rules which state no iframes? He can't...yet was penalized because of it.
My client is considered an authority site in his niche. Why is there not an appeal process to have a reconsideration? My client has forwarded this episode to his CJ representative who is obviosuly less than helpful. What can be done in this late stage of the ballgame?
That is the overall theme in this post. ODP is suffering from such an overload that they cannot or will not allow reconsideration of decisions EVEN WHEN THEY ARE WARRANTED.
...plus I have knowledge that a higher category editor who is in charge of the sub-category that the category is listed in webmasters for a prominent competitor.
Sounds fishy? It did to me as well...
1. Too many spammy keywords on the homepage (this was for SEO purpose only)
2. Joining too many affiliate programs (this is not true as the links were going to other sites in our network, and the links were on our homepage only.
Other then my homepage, all the pages on the site have unique content of educational value.
I am not worried about the traffic received from ODP (it is almost 0). I am much more worried about the effect it might have on the PR. This site dropped its PR ranking from 7 to 6 recently because of a mistake I made with internal linking. Being removed from ODP makes it almost impossible to get back to PR7.
Getting dropped from PR7 meant that googlebot is no longer refreshing every 2-3 days. Also, it may have lost its status as an authoritative domain at its same time. Therefore it appears that in my case, ODP is very important
You do not need PR 7.
PR 5 is sufficient to be refreshed daily...
They also consider directories spam. In fact, they will visit your directory, scrape all the sites they don't have listed off of it and add them to their directory and then say you don't warrant a listing because you lack unique content. Let that set in for a minute before you go block them in your htaccess. ;)
After the reply I received from "hutcheson" I told him how unusually rude his disposition was to the members. He is the most rude person I have EVER encountered on a discussion forum. After he heard the truth and realized that a lowly nobody had spoken what so many have thought silently he banned me from the forum.
He then went on to delete my site listing from the directory based on his personal issues. It is sad that hutcheson, a supposed meta editor and senior in status, is allowed to have his editorial discretion swayed.
So, I asked why my client was removed. He was extremely rude. I told him he was rude. He then removed MY site from the directory and banned me from the forum.
...this is why ODP will become non-relevant and contain out of date information. If it takes years for some sites to get in the links contained are so out of date they cannot be considered fresh.
Besides the removal of my site, I found that the direction which the editor is taking the section to is highly questionable.
My site was a biology-related site in a section with 40 other sites. On one day this October, he removed 10 existing sites from this section with 6 of his own preferred sites.
What he removed were mainly sites discussing individual organisms. The sites he added were bioinformatics sites that contained databases of the genomes of individual organisms. They cannot be considered as content sites as all the content consistes of thousands upon thousands of genetic code
e.g "ATGCTGTTGGGAATTTCTCCATTACGGATCCTCGGAGGACTTC.....
This stuff is only useful for research people with Ph.D.s and above. However, most of them will know the exsistence of these databases through scientific publications, forums or meetings. There is really no need for these highly specialized in the ODP. I feel that he is destroying this section but there is nothing I can do about it.
... scrape all the sites they don't have listed off of it and add them to their directory ...
hmm..., great quality control.
so, i guess a new strategy to get into dmoz is to build a directory with links to all your other sites, and then go p*ss off a meta at RZ.
anyhoo, dmoz is of significance *only* because some engines use it as a seed. and before anyone screams, yes a tiny, infinitesimal number of people might use it.
may i propose a better crawl seed? there is a directory that looks a lot like dmoz on the net, *except* that it is hand reviewed by PROFESSIONAL LIBRARIANS. it might be smaller, but hey, the engines only need the *seed* right?
real information researchers laugh at the engines and dmoz, they prefer more reliable starting points. and many of these are publicly available for free. anyways, the big G should be able to pay for a subscription.
