Somewhat, it's always been rather difficult to be approved in DMOZ and you'll find that a lot of people on this forum HATE it with a passion. I'm indexed by them, so I'm happy lol!
nope What do you mean by "early inclusion" ? ... more than half the sites that get listed in DMOZ are never submitted in the first place - is that "early"?
My cpanel data show that there were 4 searches from dmoz. Does that mean that my site is being considered for early inclusion in dmoz!?
No, only the sites content determines if a site meets the guidelines for inclusion. Popularity plays no part at all. Its not difficult at all. Build an original, unique, content rich site and suggest it to DMOZ. It may take some time for an editor to find it, or they may find it before even seeing your suggestion. The difficult part (it would seem) is creating unique, original content. There is no early inclusion, unless you consider what Secret Squirrel said, that many, many sites are included without ever being suggested to DMOZ. There is no way to speed up a review and/or inclusion.
It could mean any number of things: 1) editor looked and rejected 2) editor looked and decided to leave it for now 3) editor looked and moved it to wait in another category 4) editor looked and listed it 5) it wasn't really dmoz and someone spoofed it to play with your head 6) etc
or simply: Editor looked and you dont have a clue what else. Or you can start being parranoid and look at number 5
I don't think so. It's the content, usefulness of the site that counts. But, yea! It can take some good amount of time to get listed.
No, it's not something an editor actually looks at. We look at the kind of content that is on the site, and whether it will add value to the category itself, compared to sites that are already listed in that category. The web surfer who is looking for information values his time, he doesn't need or want to see the same information ten times, whether it's by ten different entities or not, and no, the ten site owners do not have a right to have their version of the same information listed in the Directory. If one of those ten sites has some unique content (information) that the other nine sites don't have, that's the site we want to list. Even then, early inclusion is a very random, unpredictable circumstance. There is no way to manipulate if and when an editor may get around to reviewing the site, it's totally random. (even for the editor himself) An editor may have editing permissions in very wide areas of the Directory, like every category within a country. The editor can only be in one spot at a time, and with hundreds of thousands of categories to choose from, where he works in each session can be very random. If he stays and works in one specific area for awhile, then that means none of the other areas get his attention.