55 replies to this topic

[Jill]

One of the most prevalent questions I get via email and in this forum is what to do once you've submitted and submitted and submitted to DMOZ and never got in.

Your best bet is to visit the Resource Zone forum and ask the editors there if they'll check up on your submission for you.

Good luck!

Jill

[qwerty]

I'm afraid I have an unpleasant update to this thread. The Resource Zone's moderators have decided to discontinue submission status threads. See http://resource-zone...ead.php?t=39116

[Jill]

I've opened this topic back up, and have unpinned it so we can discuss.

I guess all good things must come to an end. They might as well shut down RZ then? Does it have any other uses?

[qwerty]

Their claim is that the submission status threads overshadowed all the other things that could be discussed at RZ. That's probably true, but IMO that's because those threads were the most important service they could offer.

[BryanP]

Is the likely reason a submission never makes it into DMOZ because there simply aren't enough human editors to review and accept submissions?

[torka]

I'd say the reason most submissions don't make it in is because they violate one or more of the site and submission standards. The reason most of the rest don't is because they simply get lost in the sea of spam.

I think they're going to find a big jump in volume in their "How to submit" forum, probably about equal to the volume of posts that used to show up in the "Submission status" forum.

Maybe they should bring on board a second group of volunteers who don't have editor powers, but who can let people know the status of their submission. Or even code an automatic status checker that will at least let people see where they stand.

Absolutely, no question, the best thing to do is what Jill recommends: submit your site and forget about it. That was the best thing to do even when you could easily submit a question to the status check forum and expect to get a prompt answer. And, yeah, getting a listing in DMOZ isn't really a "make or break" for any site; nice to have, for sure, but certainly never a requirement in any way.

But that's contrary to human nature -- the innate dislike of "unfinished business" is part of the psychological bag of tricks top sales professionals use all the time to convince us to buy whatever it is they're peddling. Most of us can't resist going back to check at least once or twice, just to see if we're in there.

--Torka

[qwerty]

For as long as RZ has been around, I've respectfully disagreed with the "submit and forget" strategy. I guess now I don't have any options, except for maybe the "submit and check now and then even though there's no way to find out if your submission's been moved to a different cat or lost altogether" strategy.

[Betty]

With the search feature broken and no way to check if they've moved you to a different category, as qwerty said, they've just added another level of frustration. If it weren't for so many other people using the dmoz results, it would be completely useless!

[Jill]

Funny thing. After reading a post of Qwerty's a couple of weeks ago about checking your submission status, I made my first status check over there!

Oh well.

[Matt B]

No one had any other questions for RZ than "where is my submission"?

I've submitted many sites that were in compliance with the standards. However, is was months and even over a year before anything was done. It would be nice to know if it were on the shelf, at least.

[Bernard]

Or even code an automatic status checker that will at least let people see where they stand.

This is a good idea IMO. Hopefully the programmer (is there more than one?) who AOL pays to work on the infrastructure can implement something along these lines without too much trouble. Of course, fixing the public search function would also be nice.

[cyoung35]

Maybe DMOZ should reward their editor's somehow and that would attract more people to start editing for them. Just a thought.

[wjcampbe]

Sorry, but I have to disagree with that last post. There is no shortage of volunteers to join the editors ranks.

Read a few of this week's editor/meta responses in R-Z and you will see that what they are doing is a good thing for the whole ODP. More time will be focused on building the quality directory that the whole Project centers on. The editor applications under review at the moment will probably be dealt with quicker too.

As a spin-off, quality sites with contents that the ODP charter defines as important to the Project will have a better chance of being found and included when the chaff that results from people like our 15 site link farm spammer in another section of this forum, no longer obscures the editors vision.

Bill

[Jill]

As a spin-off, quality sites with contents that the ODP charter defines as important to the Project will have a better chance of being found and included

Let's hope you're right. Didn't happen before there was an RZ though...

[leadegroot]

So, that leaves the only way to check if your site submission is to be an editor so you can see the rejection status of a site, whether or not it is in your cat.
Hmmm... I see a whole bunch of people applying...