An evil DMOZ editor?

I've talked with two of my competitors, and all of us have been unable to get listed in DMOZ - ever - and we're talking years. Our consensus is that an evil competitor became the editor of our category in the early days, in order to block everyone else.

Is this plausible? Anything the three of us can do about it? There should be dozens of sites listed, but there is only a handful, and all the major players have always been missing from the list.

 

This may not be much consolation, but if you're really concerned, report it as possible abuse http://report-abuse.dmoz.org/

 

Hundreds of editors can edit in any category, but it's possible one could get overlooked. If that's the case we'd like to take a look.

Which category? Any details you'd feel comfortable sharing?

 

If you're referring to http://www.briandunning.com/ , it's been listed since March 2004. That was less than three months after you suggested it.

 

Hi Jim - No, it's not BrianDunning.com. CompostAnnie - here is the category:
http://dmoz.org/Reference/Directories/Address_and_Phone_Numbers/Postal_Codes/
If you do a Google search for "zip codes" look at all the similar companies listed on the first couple pages. Only 2 or 3 of them are on dmoz, and I've talked with a couple others who aren't who both told me they've been unable to get listed for years. My site, Zipwise.com, has never been able to get in, and I've applied a half dozen times ever since I learned about dmoz however many years ago.

 

Does your site offer anything substantially different than the sites that are already listed?

 

The first thing I noticed was...did you read the category description?
http://dmoz.org/Reference/Directories/Address_and_Phone_Numbers/desc.html Your charging for this information..correct?

 

http://www.zipwise.com/free-zip-database.php is a deep link for a "free" download, but since it's a deep link, and most of that's site is payable and it requires a recip linkI doubt it's listable. On the other hand, no one has every refused it [assuming it has been suggested] or the main url for that matter.

As far as the category Reference/Directories/Address_and_Phone_Numbers/ - it would be hard to think any collusion is taking place there, there is a record of around eight different editors working in that category and it's sub-categories over the last three months.

Reference/Directories/Address_and_Phone_Numbers/Postal_Codes/ seems to have little activity, but since any of those editors or hundreds of others could have edited there, I think it's simply a matter of no-one wanting to review and add any sites. E.g a couple of years ago, I was doing a lot of programming that required postal codes, so I might have decided to ask to edit in that category so I could share the research on what was available. Right now I'm not the least bit interested in postal codes.

But the key point is that category is for free directories and from a 5 second look your site belongs somewhere else entirely - but we really do not seem to have a category for postal code software/databases.

 

I can tell you for sure that it's not a problem with an editor keeping you out. About 2 dozen different editors have worked on that category over the years.

 

OK, let's take this from a more proactive angle.

1. How many listings are waiting to be processed in that category?

2. By what date can this be accomplished?

3. Will each rejected site receive a rejection notice explaining why their sites were not accepted?

It's useless to simply state what you believe the problem is not. What is sought after is a resolution.

 

good info annie

 

I know you already know the answers, but here they are anyway.

It really has no relevance if it's not the right category. Even if it was the right category, I'm not sure what relevance it has. Some categories have hundreds of sites unreviewed, 90% of which are spam. Some have very few unreviewed all of which might be great sites. And the number of sites has no bearing on how fast sites get reviewed.

We have absolutely no idea.

No in almsot all cases. That has never been policy and never will. However any editor may choose to notify someone, usually they find that it's not a great idea.

 

I'm bypassing Question 1.

The only editor who can estimate what date something will be accomplished, is the editor who makes the decision to work in that area. No one has the authority to tell an editor that they will work in zip codes (or any other category) and keep working until there are no more suggestions. Not an admin/staff, meta, editall, editor, or noneditor - so the answer to Question 2 is we don't know.

Question 3 is much easier - no. Unless the editor who rejects the sites decides to write an email (and the same editor does all the rejecting), it'll never happen. The ODP does not make it a policy to notify anyone if their site has been listed or rejected.

 

1. I'm not going to tell you that but it's very close to the total number of fingers and toes I have.
2. This is just a guess, but I think I could clean that category and review the suggestion in about 3-4 hours if I worked on it.
3. None of them will receive a rejection notice. In the case of www.zipwise.com/free-zip-database.php I can tell you that it's submitted to the wrong category. They sell software, I don't know much about software so I wouldn't know which category would be correct but that's where it would start. If the poster wants to find the correct software category I'd be happy to move it over for him.

I apologize, I must have misunderstood. I thought the poster was asking if his consensus that an evil competitor became the editor of the category in early days, in order to block everyone else was plausible. I checked on that, and it was not plausible.

Edit to add: Sorry for the repetition, two answers were posted as I wrote.

 

Brian is a very good guy and I am certain he will appreciate that.

Brian isn't some sort of sleazeball web spammer, he is a legitimate business person.

I am sure that he didn't know that he was submitting in the wrong category. If he had not started this thread on DP, he may never have known.

With no feedback mechanism built into ODP, there is no means for improvement.

Brian wouldn't even know when to, and when not to, re-submit his site. It could have been deleted for being in the wrong category and he would never have known to re-submit it to another category.

It is good that DP is able to provide a means of communication between DMOZ and the rest of the world.

 

I agree. Several editors are trying to provide some sort of communication here, but there are a couple of very angry people who are making it difficult to stay. I'm trying though.

 

http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Business/ would appear to be the best suited category according to current listings within it. Just my .02 ...

 

Unfortunately submitting to the wrong category is probably the greatest delay in getting reviewed. In some of the categories I work in - I'm getting well over 50% submitted in error. In my case, it's totally the user's fault, all of these categories are extremely well documented with descriptions as to what belongs and what does not. However, 100% of those submissions get redirected the the correct place for another editor.

In the case in this thread, it's unfortunate [and not the site owners fault], since there appears to be no "ideal" spot where the site should be listed. We probably need a new categroy under computer software for this type of site, since I'm sure there are many more. But that requires someone to spend some time to get consensu from other editors about what and wher that categroy should be.

I'm not sure what we could do in the way of feedback, we can't tell someone that they submitted to the wrong catgory until someone reviews the site and at that point, it's getting moved somewhere else.

No site should ever be deleted for being submitted to the wrong category. It does happen with new editors, that they might make this mistake, but hopefully when they are starting other editors are monitoring their activity.

 

annie if you move it to: Business/Telecommunications/Software/ I'll take it from there.

 

Go get 'em Comdial! Now that's CRM - an ODP editor who gives a damn. That's not to say that there are more like you and some of the ones participating here at DP, it's just not often people get to see this side of DMOZ in action; very cool.