No longer in DMOZ?

I just searched for my domain name in DMOZ and it came up in the search results (the site has been in DMOZ for about a year now). However, having clicked on the category link, I do not se the site listed among the sites anymore.

Does that mean one of the editors de-listed it from the directory? Could it mean that it's in the process of being moved to some other category?

Thanks,
James

 

Has your site had any downtime recently?

Maybe dmoz thought your site had disappeared?

 

Ah, good point. It was down for about 6 hours two days ago cause my freaking hosting co. shut it down due to the site exceeding the bandwith limit. That could be it I guess...

 

It has got nothing to do with it, there are many sites that have been down for ever and they are still listed in DMOZ.

 

You could check the cache of the page to see if you where in that category, before the site was removed.

I know they have a bot to check for broken links, but 6 hours offline is not a long time.

 

Well, i just asked about this on resource-zone. After getting my doze of insulting comments from the editor (who viewed my query as a listing status request), I was told that "If you can't see a site listed in a category it is not listed there. The search will show you a situation from the past."

I love DMOZ more than ever

p.s. the site was in that category for about a year

 

It is possible that robozilla removed it automatically. Robozilla is a bot that checks to make sure sites are still resolving that are listed in the ODP. Did anyone actually check the domain to see if it is still in the ODP but temporarily disabled @ the resource zone?

 

James,

A couple of answers for you - the DMOZ search is horrible for finding anything other than categories (which most people aren't terribly interested in). It is only updated periodically and it can lag behind the actual listings in a category by quite a bit.

Second, a site disappearing could be one of several things:
* An editor is moving it from one category to another and doesn't have editing rights in the target category - then it waits for another editor to review it again (which should be fairly quick, since the title and description are going to be compliant with the ODP guidelines).

* Second an editor delisted it because the site no longer meets the ODP guidelines (and there could be multiple reasons for that - all of which can be found in the standard ODP documentation)

* Third Robozilla (the dead site bot) could have caught the site while it was not working. If that is the case, then the site will have been put into an area to get reviewed again by an editor. If the site is working when an editor checks it, then they usually relist it. When I go into a category that has such sites in, I usually do a quick check to see if any of them have "returned" before I actually do other editing.

 

See my post above. Looks like the site actually was delisted.


Now... I did request a modification to the site's description and requested to move the site to another, much more appropriate category about a month ago. The editor promptly reviewrd the changes but used his/her own description which was *extremely* generic and just plain bad (I can't believe that person is an ODP editor!). The site stayed in the same category so I decided to leave it alone before it's subjected to any other dumb revisions (courtesy of that editor) or being dropped altogether.


EDIT: Alucard, thanks. Your insight clears things up a lot. I appreciate the time you took to share your knowledge.

I am pretty sure that this is not the case with my site (although, I hardly know what to expect from DMOZ and its editors anymore). There is a chance the site will reappear in the category I requested. In a few years maybe...

 

It might have been moved to the new cat, but not yet approved. (is that how DMOZ works these days? A site moved to another cat needs to be approved by the editor of that cat before it goes live?

 

I believe any site moved/recommended to another cat will go into the unreviewed section of the new cat. This requires that the new Cat editor will have to approve it for their cat and make any changes to the description and listing that they see fit. But, I think that the META editors can do whatever they want, but will not just stick a site up in someone's Cat if there is an editor that oversees it. Hopefully, that makes sense.

 

That's what Alucard suggested as one of the possible options. Btw, there is no editor assigned to the target cat. So, it would be up to Meta editor(s) to deal with it.

I am skeptical though

 

This is how DMOZ has worked since before I became an editor. Nothing new.

But a subtle change in wording - I said that the site has to be approved by someone who has editing rights in that category. That could be the named editor in the category (if there is one), a named editor in any category "above" the category in the tree, or any one of the editors who can edit in all categories in the directory.