Is anyone else finding it difficult to get their site listed? I have been waiting patiently, for over two years now, and find that it's impossible to receive any feedback or response as to why my site has still yet to be listed. The site is blackhawkcigarettes dot com. Thanks for any and all support on this issue.
Like I said in the beginning, the only purpose of posting is to create some sort of record that I have submitted my site to the ODP on this particular date. That is it. I totally understand that nobody is under any obligation to list any site within any given amount of time. If that were true, I would have had my site listed 18 months ago. Every webmaster knows that getting listed at the ODP is an extremely long process. However, that does not mean that category editors are free to do what they want. An editor can not, for example, use hype when describing a site. Mirror sites cannot be added. Sites that support hate and discrimination can not be listed. An editor cannot delete all sites from a category at will and leave only sites they own. Editors can’t take bribes or perform other acts of questionable ethics. An editor cannot do many things. The basic idea of being an editor is to make the ODP a better directory. Certain actions do harm. Those actions must be avoided. Therefore, it can be concluded that editors of the ODP are under the obligation to act ethically and improve the directory. (To say otherwise is to say that editors may act unethically and harm the directory). Editors therefore do have responsibilities and obligations to the ODP. Thus, the idea that because an editor is a volunteer and they are free to edit in any manner they choose (whether it harms the ODP or not) is clearly false. I am sure that “spectregunner†agrees totally with the sentiment that editors are obligated not to harm the ODP and have the responsibility to act ethically (not to add hate sites for example). It is true as spectregunner says that editors are free to review or not review a site as they wish. Nobody can force an editor to list sites if they do not want to do so. If an editor logs in for one second, once within any 4-month period, they are not technically required to do more. Volunteers are, after all, volunteers and not paid employees. However, I disagree with this idea because it harms the ODP and editors are under the obligation not to do so. The purpose of being an editor of the ODP is not to be a lazy, inactive editor with lots of excuses about how much time it takes to review a site. The spirit of being an editor, and thus the responsibility of editors as stated above, is to make the ODP a better place. By saying, “I’ll edit what I want, when I want, how I want and nobody can tell me otherwise,†an editor is clearly saying that they have no obligation to improve the ODP. This is false. Editors have the obligation to edit and the responsibility to make the ODP the greatest human edited directory. If an editor disagrees and refuses to maintain a category due to claims of lack of time, then they should step down and let somebody edit who has an interest to do so. By not editing a category in a timely manner, an editor is damaging the ODP and harming the community and the project as a whole. Spectregunner – please answer the following question. If an editor of a category does not edit it, only logs in and logs out every four months, is that person improving or harming the ODP? As for the steps outlined in my post, Kalena Jordan of SiteProNews recommended those as a possibility. As for “ulterior motives,†any Google search on DMOZ and corruption will provide a substantial number of articles of ODP editor corruption. That idea is hardly new to me. You will find all kinds of forum posts from people claiming to be editors for the sole purpose of blocking other people from being listed. Also, people bribe lazy editors because lazy editors can’t be motivated to edit in any other manner. If the ODP was working in a logical manner, this sort of thing would never happen. Lastly, I volunteered to edit this and related categories myself and was immediately denied. Claiming that there are not enough editors is a shallow argument. This forum constantly has people posting about wanting to become editors. As for me, though I am an expert on this particular category, I was told that there would be a “conflict of interestâ€. That assumption goes directly against the Editing Guidelines that state, “Everyone is welcome to apply to join the ODP, including those who own, maintain and promote websites. Editors may have business or other types of affiliations relevant to the categories they edit, and may add their own sites or sites with which they are affiliated.†We could assume from this: A) Adding an affiliate site (if it is worthy) is not a conflict. B) Denying a competitor’s site (if it is worthy,) is a conflict. Considering that no sites are being added now, the unacceptable conditions of “B†are already in effect. No worthy sites are being added. Under these circumstances, it does not make sense to deny a person with an interest in a category on the grounds of “conflict of interest.â€
Is “spectregunner†a member here? I'd be concerned that your submission was wiped out in the 2006 meltdown Other than that you are on your own with your baccy peddling site
I am not the editor named here, but perhaps I can address some of the issues. Though it has to be said not for the first time on this board. I doubt anyone would argue with you. But we are free to edit as we wish, provided that we act within the guidelines, but those do not tell us if we should spend our time editing in each category that we have responsibility for, if we should only use or use at all the public submissions or use sites we 'mine' ourselves and many other styles of editing ie spending most of our time developing editor tools or changing the directory structure. I will deal with the time issue later. Yes, if for any reason an editor does not wish to review a site s/he can leave that for another editor to review. Remember that there is always far more than a named editor who can edit in any category. All editors can edit in sub-categories in which they are named and editall's+ can edit in any category. No they have to do one edit in that time frame so the directory is better by that edit than it would otherwise have been. All editors have to perform a minimum of one edit in 4 months, that improves the directory. But how many would you have them do? 100, 1000, 10000? As an editall I have the whole of the directory that I can edit in, do I have to list all the submissions made every day like thousands? You seem to labour under the delusion that editors named in a category are responsible for that category, not true dozens of editors are. So what must be the minimum edit? Remember too that editors are named for many categories and sometimes it taes a time to get back to edit in a particular category. Editors cannot do that, they would time out they have to better the directory by performing at least one edit in each 4 month period. All that glistens is not gold, people "claiming" to be editors. Bribes get an editor booted and the site banned. I have nothing to do with new permissions, that is meta territory.
I'm an ex-editor. How has my leaving the Directory made it any better? I got tired of this kind of whining and resigned. What makes you think that while I was an editor, I had any obligation to you, BlackHawkCigarettes. My only obligation was to the Directory and it's Guidelines, and to the web surfer looking for information. Sounds like you expect editors, who work for free, and volunteer their own free time to fullfill some kind of quota, as if we were providing some kind of service to submitters. If that's how you see it, you'd be wrong, we're only interested in the web surfers needs, not yours. News flash. When you give something (like your free time), nobody has a right to tell the giver how much or how often to give it. (or they'll do as I did, and decide not to give anything at all). I edited the whole United States, which includes Palm Springs, CA , so had I stayed, it's very possible that I might have edited your site, if I hadn't got pissed off at the whiners and left. Now, I spend my free time playing WoW, instead of editing, and I'm enjoying myself. I did grow the Directory by over 20,000 edits, so I think I've done my part for the Internet community. What have you done for free?
I agree with the statement about being told what to do with ones free time, only that person can decide. But, and there is a but, organizations can put rules upfront which do demand that a person commits a certain amount of time to the project. The person then has to decide if they want to do that or not. I cook for 40 old people on a rota with others, we know the amount of time it demands and if we don't want to do it then we don't have to, but if we want to be involved then we have to commit to certain periods of our free time or the older people would sometimes only get soup and no main course. But ODP like many other organizations demands not a lot from its editor in time and accepts, given the minimum of 1 edit in 4 months, what editors can give. That gives rise to a vast array of editors, from those who never seem to sleep and spend 24/7 on the project, to the small editor who looks after his/her own village or town and does that with only a few edits a month (or less). Quotas would deter the last and also the former sometimes needs to take a break for family or business reasons and sometimes for months and years cannot do much more than the minimum. I notice an editor back posting in the forums and back editing, who helped me when I first started, but in the meantime took years away with little editing. I do not know why people are turned down, as I said above, its Meta territory, but we do have to be vary careful about who gets in (and I can hear the comments already from some posters on here) because there are people who simply would not be able to do the task but more importantly there are those who would abuse the task. That is not saying that BlackHawkCigarettes would but I suspect the Metas err on the side of caution. Remember they have the task of rooting out the bad apples they let in! So if they have any reason to believe that there is a conflict on interests, and using ones own site in the application, of itself does not show that, then they will refuse. Allowing people in who would have a real conflict of interests is not in the best interest of the directory. A meta may wish to clarify some of this, but I suspect not because some of the tools they have to look at applications would be made public and simply enable people with bad motives to be more cunning with their applications. We want more editors but not potentially abusive ones finding it easier to get accepted.
Actually, most Meta's who I have spoken with try and error on the side of acceptance. Unlike what is often said, we want as many good, new editors as we can find joined. The key is to be honest, if you can't even be honest in the application there is little chance you will be able to become a solid/productive editor. Be honest, don't hide anything, and make a good faith attempt to follow the guidelines and you will be successful with your editing application.
Only problem is honesty gets you removed at DMOZ so lying is much better way of getting and staying in - in other words by picking up boring topic and being as boring as possible success is guaranteed!
Don't hold your breath on getting a site listed in Shopping. My impression is that it's one of the least actively edited areas in the directory, at least relative to the number of submissions.
In the argument of "one's free time" in regards to volunteering, while I don't think there needs to be a quota (which in a way there kind of is, since editors are required to edit one site every 4 months or risk termination), but in any feasible good-quality organization, SLACKERS should be replaced. No matter how you try to word it, if you are willing to use your precious free time to volunteer for an organization that is trying to promote that they are doing good for the internet, then I think one must realize that if they can only do one edit every 4 months, then maybe they should take up golf instead. Do you think it would be acceptable, per say, that the organization 'Big Brothers and Big Sisters', devoted their volunteers, who also give their free time, to one section of a particular community, to where all kids in that section are the responsibility of that one volunteer. But, the volunteer only takes time out of his life to help one kid a month. Now, could you ethically argue that the person at that point is a responsible volunteer, and best for the position? And let’s even add another silly DMOZ rule to 'BB/BS' theory, that there can only be one volunteer per section. So now, you have this one person who only really wants to devote the minimum free time so they don't lose the social marker and not worry about all the other kiddies that are out there still. And, i will even argue that there could be adittional volunteers, that are MORE WILLING to help more than one kid, let's say 10-20, or even 100 kids a month, but, because 'BB/BS' already has their one volunteer which is meeting the requirements, they will not let this additional volunteer help, UNLESS, the current volunteer, 'voluntarily' (ironic) steps down. But hey, it's all ok, because you are DMOZ, you’re the hottest stuff on the block cause you got your little secret club, and you answer to no one. Well good for you. But before there is a civil war between submitters and editors (something along the lines of Star Wars would be cool), let's just realize that as much as DMOZ attempts to tell everyone that they have ethics and a sound organization of policies and procedures, this can not be true. If DMOZ editors want to clear the smoke, then they need to start realizing that the way the organization is running right now is not working, and if they don’t, it will always continue to get scrutiny over its practices. For an organization, you sure look and act like a dictatorship to me, your victim, the internet.
For the sake of clarification, there are scores of extraordinarily busy busy editor bees working in shopping, and fankly they go above the call of duty as far as time spent. Curt wasn't saying the shopping editors are lazy, he was saying their efforts are a spit in the bucket compared to the mountains of submissions (the vast majority of which are sites that dont come close to qualifying based on the stated guidelines and are submitted regardless for whatever reason, usually en masse to multiple places). There have been some tech fixes to weed some of that out, but most still can't be added or deleted until someone physically reviews them. Just the reality of the situation. As for all the comments about a vast civil war and all that, keep it in perspective, it's just a freebie internet directory we're discussing. You can get similar juice at several of the pay-for-review directories if you're in a hurry (BOTW, Yahoo, BizDir, et al). Gaining inclusion in ODP is good for a site, but it isn't life or death.
Where do you get this rubbish from? Many categories have several editors, but it is a little pointless putting 10 editors in a small village cat that only has ten web sites in the whole village. Just check here http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/ which offers 14 editors for the catergory and at least 3 of them post on here! But that one person might just make all the difference to that one kid, especially now that your analogy of that stopping anyone else helping in the same area is blown out of the water, and be just the right thing for both of them. We are one voluntary directory among hundreds of others. We chose to collect websites as a hobby and focus on the surfer, not on who can or cannot get listed. Sorry but that will mean that some good sites don't get listed, it also means many spammy websites that can buy themselves into some directories don't get listed. But if you listen to many of the regular non-editors on here, the link is not worth a bean anyway, so why the big argument?
And how would the submitters attack? Hurl insults? Already happening. Support rival directories? Already happening. Stop submitting? We'd be thrilled.
You were saying, Q, in the way you usually want to take things out of context and skew them, that the arguement was about if ODP was worth a bean or not, to which I responded that there was no arguement, most people are simply not interested. The context was that if the link is not worth a bean why argue about its editors, policy, if one can get in as an editor and even talking about war all futile if, as you, often say "forget to submit" (which means it aint worth bothering with), and others too on here. So why so much energy, mad idiots like editors who often spend hours a day editing and posting might be forgiven, but I can't understand people who have left or worse been booted wanting to waste any more time on a useless, can't keep up with submissions, out of date, waste of time directory. You must be dafter than those of us who edit there, at least we feel that the directory is how we want to spend great chunks of our time, like others collect stamps and as I said earlier I am not interested in if it is worth a light or not, but am glad to seek to answer any questions that non-editors have about how it works, as far as my knowledge extends and within certain privacy boundaries.
And, what if all editors decided to do something else with their free time, as I'm currently doing? How would that help you? That one edit that's required of an editor might be your site, would you object because it was the only site that editor added? I doubt it. Who would you replace "slackers" with? Do you really think signing up 100 editors in 100 small categories will make a difference when there are hundreds of thousands of submitted site suggestions, scattered over 500,000 categories? And more coming in daily? Scattering even 500 new editors over 500,000+ categories is just a drop in the bucket. A new editor is like starting out in kindergarten. It takes years to become experienced and knowledgeable enough as an editor to be granted access to wide areas of the Directory. Until then, the editor is restricted to very small categories while he learns, and doesn't get further access until he demonstrates he can be trusted and has the ability to edit properly by what he does in his current category. This is for the protection of site owners as much as it is for the Directory. There's is enough work now, without creating more work by allowing new people to create havoc, either purposely or accidently. You can't just let a new editor run hog wild, too much severe damage could be done, and there isn't enough man power available to lead him by the hand or follow him around. What's sad is that many of you speak out of ignorance. You really don't understand the amount of work that editors are faced with and what they actually do, and you seem to think it's some kind of great big social status being one. I'm doing just fine being an ex-editor. My social status hasn't changed one iota, and I'm just as powerful as I was when I was an editor (meaning there was no power trip). I know that I can be reinstated as an editor whenever I request it, but, I'm enjoying using my free time to play a MMORPG instead. I do have great sympathy for real world mom & pop businesses, and I got great satisfaction out of listing them, but, nowadays it seems like the bitchers are all people who want to sit on their lazy asses and make a living sitting in front of a computer. You want to know why Shopping is so hard to get listed in, go take a look in the mirror. You couldn't pay me to edit there. Nothing but garbage, get rich quick sites selling sombody elses product. Any moron can set one up, and many do, and then they come here and bitch about how unfair it is that their spammy, affiliate marketing scheme isn't considered a quality listing.