I like the idea of a long description. It's not too much of a hardship to write one, because there are a handful of directories out there that require one now. And as a submitter I know it will prevent spam and cut down on the review queue. I think I submitted a site just before you implemented this, because I don't remember there being a need for a really long description. But it's definitely a good move. Let us know how it pans out, won't you?
Just charge $0.50 that only covers paypal fees so basically it’s an almost free service, the submissions will go down to 30% of what they are now, and also put people paying before they submit.
What I would personally do is. Redesign Expand category structure and populate new categories with the pending submissions Clean the directory Get a new domain 301 this one to the new domain and make it paid
Implement self-moderation. Someone submits URL. "Sorry, current back log is 10 weeks". "But if you want to get listed fast, review these 10 listings." 10 randomly pulled listings get marked spam/ham and if 2 more submitters mark it ham/spam release/delete the entry automatically but tagged as 'user reviewed' so one day your reviewer might still want to check it but at no great priority.
Yes, I have thought about this earlier and even spoken about it on DP. Don't know why I forget about it in this thread. There are different methods of this and your idea is clearly good (rep given). Another way would be like DMOZ, making editors for different categories but that would be risky perhaps. Take a look at this stat: Yesterday October 14th even though I enforce an extremely long description (not possible to submit without it) I got 180 submissions, in 1 day. Take a look at the review que: Warning slow loading, your browser might crash: http://www.addurl-free.com/que.php Go to the bottom and you will see. But I think the idea from Tops is very good. Perhaps making something similar to http://www.hedir.com/ but maybe skipping the login and forum. Using IPs instead but I think login should be good. Ayone who wants to work with such a development project?
you can try to add some code which only allows 'x' free links to be submitted daily, and then if they still want to submit a link, they need to pay $x amount.