It should be interesting to see how long some people have to wait for their site to be reviewed.

I submitted my site in Spring 2003 and still not reviewed - [link]

I know that the ODP have a problem with the scarcity of editors. Are they being too particular in their selection of editors? Do they need to relax their criteria for selection a little? I have applied five times and been rejected each time. Are good applicants being put off by the fact that they know that they possibly face a huge backlog if selected?

I just had a look at the ODP and I've got 2 listings.

Shhhhh ;-)

No other nominations then?

My site was listed for many years as 'mysite.freeserver.com.' It took me about three years to get it changed to 'mysite.com.' About three times a year, I would fill out the change the URL form.

Spring 2003 - that's nothing, there are sites been waiting for reviews much longer than that. [I've reviewed a lot of them, so they are no longer "waiting".] But seasoned editors know that the amount of time a site has been "waiting" is no indication of the value of reviewing it - therefore sites are not necessarily reviewed in order.

A lot of sites get reviewed and accepted that were never ever suggested.

And there is no value of reducing the bar to get more editors in, it just reduces the quality of the work. There are enough problems with existing editors who are making gross mistakes and need to be educated.

Remember also, that the editors are generally working to a different goal than site submitters. From an editors view, there is no race to review submissions as quickly as possible.

So yes in retrospect, if I find a very good site that was submitted in 2000, it's too bad it wasn't listed sooner, but until I review it I don't know that. It might be just as important to review the site that was submitted yesterday that announces an event that happens next month.

From another point of view, maybe no sites should be reviewed until they have been up for at least six months. The number of sites that I review that can't seem to exist for more than three months are a waste of time to review. It's frustrating to review tham and then have to go take them out again.

There are many useless sites that have been submitted, and many really great sites that have yet to be submitted. However they all stand an equal chance of being reviewed.

The suggestion pile is just one place that editors look. Being in that pile does not, in fact, guarantee any sort of review.

The directory grows by tens of thousands of listings per month, and that is all the editors are concerned with.

I have one waiting from before December 2003. I don't know the exact date as I didn't submit it myself. I wanted another URL submitted instead as the content was removed from the original site, beefed up dramatically and put on a new domain. They would not allow the new site to be listed when I asked at resource-zone which was in March last year.

Since february 2003, I have submitted my site at least 3 times. Only once it was reviewed and nobody told me why it wasn't accepted. Anyway, I don't care very much since it stands very well on google for a lot of searches.

But I was thinking: what's happening with DMOZ is really a sad and non-democratic experience. One can block an entire category only to have its website and friends ' listed inside. And its sad because such vulnerable directory is used by google to improve search results, and has a strange credibility, based only on suppositions, not facts . What about a true open directory where people will vote from time to time for the editors? Let's say, once / year. It would be much better.

I too fail to understand why DMOZ has such credibility.

Perhaps somebody could explain?

>> One can block an entire category <<

Bzzzt.

Incorrect.



There are several hundred editors that can edit in any and every category of the directory, and hundreds more that have access to thousands or tens of thousands of categories. It isn't possible for any one person to block anything at all.

I have two sites that are still not listed since i first submitted in 98

Dear g1smd, believe me, in Romania the internet is small compared to America (only 80.000 .ro domains) and I would bet that any average american doesn't understand a word in Romanian, so it will be virtually impossible for the large american community of DMOZ guides to have a control over the small amount, but priceless, material submitted in Romanian language, that they didn't understand. And, I suppose, the same is true for Hungarian, Bulgarian, Polish and so many minor communities/languages that, however, make together many millions of websites.

Assuming that the category for romanian sites is World/Română - according to our stats, currently 88 active editors are registered for subcategories of that language and over 10000 entries are listed. If you compare the rating "sites waiting for review / sites listed", it is the same as in World/Deutsch and a lot better than in Top/Business. Chances to get listed there aren't much worse than in other categories.

PS1: I agree that is is difficult for editors not knowing a language to edit there, their work is mostly limited to "service" work like checking erroneous listings and so on.

PS2: Of course other languages have much more editors than Română, but for most of them have much more sites available for listing, too.

[ Message was edited by: windharp 02/10/2005 11:13 pm ]

Buna ziua -- kevinro -- Scuza, eu nu vorbesc româneşte -- but there are a lot of things you may not know that contribute to that problem of Romanian sites being added - and you should be carefull to have facts to back up your claim. I monitor World/Romania and I know sites are being added all the time. But it appears Romanian site owners do two things that contribute to the problem

1. They fail to read category descriptions and do not realize the difference between Regional: Europe: Romania and World: Română - now we have tried to help out by making descriptions on the categories to explain this - yet they are ignored. On a daily basis - Romanian language sites get submitted to Regional when they should have been sent to World. Some of these sites have been sitting waiting for review in the wrong category for years - that's not abuse, it's just nobody was interested in working on the backlog. Over the last months I have moved over thousands of sites from Regional to World, but those sites must now be reviewed along with the ones submitted directly there. So by reducing the backlog in Regional I have only increased the backlog in World.

As an example - I see a site waiting to be reviewed in Regional in Regional: Europe: Romania: Business and Economy - it was submitted on Feb 15 - it should not have been submitted there since [link] says

in both languages
***************
English

If the site that you want to add is in the Romanian language, then add it in the category World: Română: Regional: Europa: România: Afaceri şi economie.
Romanian

Dacã site-ul ce se doreste adãugat este în limba românã, atunci adãugati-l în categoria World: Română: Regional: Europa: România: Afaceri şi economie.
*****************

Now it looks like that site it must have been recently submitted to World as well, since a Romanian speaking editor has already reviewed and added the site [not bad - three days to get listed]. So in this case I delete my copy since it's not << Not English - în limba românã >>

A secondary problem [the opposite of the above] is that bilingual Romanian/English sites can go in both places - but the site owner may not have done that], I try to help out by ensuring that a copy of any site like this gets submitted to be reviewed in categoria World/România, but of course that just increases their backlog of work.

------------------

2. Romanian site designers are smart and have acquired the skills of SEO marketing [including the questionable tactics], consequantly there are a lot of mirrors and other such sites that cannot be listed. It takes time to weed through those, and increase the workload. I'm getting sick of seeing Bucharest hotel sites are just affiliate bookings to someone else, or car rental agencies that in fact are all the same company.

Because of the problems outlined in the two points above, I accept less than 10% of the sites that I look at. That means I might have to spend half an hour of my time to get one site listed.

-----------------------
Note that all editors have access to all editing logs,and if sites were being deleted in large numbers without being reviewed it would be known. As with any large endeavour there may be indiviudal case of abuse that are harder to find, but a blanket condemnation of editor corruption is unacceptable

Mulţumesc

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^ one more thing
people will vote from time to time for the editors? Let's say, once / year. It would be much better

we do - twice a year - search Google for mozzie awards -

editors profiles will often display banners listing their nominations and awards

World/Română/ as a team got nominated in the last contest

[ Message was edited by: macdesign 02/17/2005 11:10 pm ]

Hi macdesign, sorry if my words have seemed too be so unjust to you. I am sure that there are a lot of DMOZ editors, like yourself, who are trying to make a good work for us all, however I remember very well that I submitted (at least the 1st and the 2nd time) my site to a category that had a guy with a Romanian name as editor... so he should have been able to read what's inside the site. Anyway, the positive fact is that the next day after I wrote down my message here, our website was reviewed and subsequently approved. Now I am curious to see whether this will bring a boost in our SERP's, since the website is already doing well in many searches.

Having done a little detective work, I'm 99% sure that I know what site you mean.

You originally submitted that site to the incorrect [English] category

Regional/Europe/Romania/Business_and_Economy/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development

and it was moved to World/Romania on 18 July 2004. Last week it was given an initial review by one editor and that was approved by another.

At no time did any editor delete the submission, and as in most of these situations, that site was simply waiting for an editor to review it

Yes, maybe, but since Jan. 2003 until Feb. or March 2004 the English section was the main section. You can verify this information at Internet Archive. The site is basicaly in Romanian only after that date. Anyway, I want to stop here my intervention on this thread and I apologise again if you felt that my words were unjust.

In fact, that thread was about "longest nomination". Let's summarize that, if one submits his/her website at the wrong category, the website will wait longer in order to get a review.

Longest wait I found so far in Romania 31/May/1999

Shortest wait [not in Romania] I reviewed and accepted a site 6 minutes after it was submitted.

Oldest site I reviewed today 24/Jun/2001 - Accepted

newest 21/Feb/2005 - two sites - one declined as having no content, the other was not in English and got moved to the correct category.

Plus I found two sites never ever submitted and added those

You have to look at this from both sides of the fence. on one hand you have the editors that probably have thousands of submissions to sort through and most of these will be similar to junk mail and everyone hates that. its not an easy job and no one is blaming them as they do the best they can.

On the other hand you have people like my self who need to get listed so we can get a reasonable chance of a google ranking. The most concerning thing for me from a user point of view is that because of the importance google places on DMOZ listings then it is essental a website is listed to become successful unless you have 6 months free to promote it everyday. We are in state now that something needs to be done, its getting worse and we need to find a middle ground solution that makes everyone happy. Currently this is not an efficient system for such a fast moving industry.

[ Message was edited by: webprod 03/10/2005 06:48 am ]

Since when has a DMOZ listing been needed to do well in Google?

It hasn't. That's another myth. A link is a link.

Get links from somewhere; it doesn't have to be ODP.

I think google places a lot more importance from ODP than from another directory that has a similar page rank. Well thats what Ive always thought. For instance If I submitted a site to 30 top directories and I submitted another site to ODP the second one would have its listings higher than the other site.

Plus the big difference is that many search engines and directories pick their listings up from ODP including google and Yahoo & AOL used to as well (I'm not sure if they still do?)

<It hasn't. That's another myth. A link is a link.>

Google treats links from high pr sites different than those from low pr sites. Also the relevancy of the site comes into play.

If you have a site listed in a Dmoz category, lots of other site use this info to propagate their own listings pages. Google picks these up as links to your site and this helps increase your google PR.

I agree totally that people should go and get links from other sites but they should ensure the relevancy of that site and check it's PR before doing so.

I have two sites for a business, from a DMOZ point of view they are fraternal mirrors, since the contents are essentially equivalent.

The one listed in DMOZ has a PR of 3, but that's because I have many more other sites linking to it.

The one not in DMOZ has a PR of 2, and has almost no other sites linking to it.

The bottom line of course is which one makes me money, and it turns out that 90% of my business comes from the one that is not in DMOZ and has the lower PR.

Same thing for another business - two sites with virtually identical content. One in DMOZ and one not. Google likes them both.

Lots of other sites I have that are not in DMOZ and rank well in Google.

Your DMOZ listing and the efforts towards getting it, should not take out more than 15 minutes of your life. If it does, you are wasting time. On the other hand if you do want to get listed - if you spend less than 1 minute writing a description and choosing a category [as many submissions I look at seem to reflect], don't expect an editor to be rushing to list it.

As long as I can remember.

Google shares the dmoz index and assumes that because a human editor has visited your website and deemed it fit for inclusion, your website is given a higher credibility rating.