As per there statement it can be : Once your site has been accepted into the Open Directory, it may take anywhere from 2 weeks to several months
A few days to a few years. It's not controlled or even predictable because editors edit where they wish, when they wish and as much as they wish within the constraints of their permissions. There are no schedules or systems to force people to do work that they don't volunteer to do. Quite a lot of websites are listed without having been suggested at all of course .
The time line for DMOZ listing is still not decided. Because they do not sent mail for accepted or rejected links.
More than half the site that get listed in DMOZ were never submitted in the first place, so the time frame from them is "negative" or zero wait.
From personal experience, jimnoble is correct because I submitted my site 3 years ago the first time, then i tried again last year again with no luck! however i notice that some categories have more human editors while others (like the section i am interested) have none, so hopefully you are luckier than me!
There is no category without editors. Editors can always edit from further up the tree. We discourage editors from having their names on sub categories of the one their name is listed on. We do that to encourage new editors to take on those categories. Also we have over 200 editors who can edit anywhere in the directory. My name is on several categories and one or two I have only just returned to after quite some time, so categories with a name don't get looked at frequently sometimes. Remember we are all volunteers working in our spare time.
Average time frame to get listed .... If more than half the sites that get listed were never submitted in the first place, so they have a "negative" time to get listed - so lets give the time to get listed for these sites as the time before the webmasters submit to DMOZ - this could be 2 days to 2 years to never before they submit ...... Then there other half that get listed after submitting within 2 days to 2 yrs to never .... if we took an average of that, then its probably close to 0 .... this means that the AVERAGE time for a site to get listed is probably IMMEDIATELY!!
That makes 18 sites that did better with the FORGET 2 SUBMIT and only two sites that were awarded with time wasting in SUBMIT & FORGET Further proof that either it IS a waste of time submitting, or people are just not caring about the ODP these days...
It also proves that 2 suggestions were accepted, but I thought you did not believe I was an editor so why comment?