What's the point?

[caprichoso]

What's the point of suggesting a site and being unable to know what happens with the submission?

I'm not talking about being able to protest about the submission result. But knowing at least if the submission was reviewed and, in case of a rejection, a tip about the reason.

Let's say a webmaster submits a couple of sites to dmoz which result in rejection for some reason. It would be useful for the webmaster to know what's wrong and prevent himself of repeating the error in future submissions.

My own experience with dmoz was awful. I submitted a couple of sites a couple of years ago, may be more, and never knew what happened with them. Of course, they don't appear listed today. And of course I read the guidelines before submitting and I know there is no reason for not listing those sites.

The more I read about dmoz (from dmoz community) the more I ask myself what's the point. And "there is no point" is not an answer unfortunately. Because competitor sites get listed, and Google uses dmoz as it's own directory. No webmaster can ignore dmoz —no matter what.

The first time I read that becoming an editor was the only way of getting your own site listed I thought it was an exaggerated point of view. Today I really think that, in most of cases, getting listed in dmoz requires you to become an editor. But that seems not to be the point of dmoz, I guess.

[pvgool]

> What's the point of suggesting a site
You are helping the DMOZ editors build the directory.

> and being unable to know what happens with the submission?
But you can know. If its gets listed you can see it in the directory. If you can't see it it is not listed.

> But knowing at least if the submission was reviewed and,
What could you do with that information.
> in case of a rejection, a tip about the reason.
>
> Let's say a webmaster submits a couple of sites to dmoz which result in
> rejection for some reason. It would be useful for the webmaster to know
> what's wrong and prevent himself of repeating the error in future
> submissions.
He could have known before he suggested the websites.
Just read the DMOZ guidelines. Site Selection Criteria tells you which sites we include and which not. For some types of sites there are Site Specific Guidelines
By reading them everybody can know if a site is listable or not.
If it is listable and not listed yet than it must be waiting review. See hoow simple it is to know the status.

> I submitted a couple of sites a couple of years ago, may be more,
If they were suggested in 2006 or before we most probably lost the suggestions in the great crash of 2006. You can suggest them again. If they were suggested in 2007 or later they are either still waiting review, listed or rejected.

> The more I read about dmoz (from dmoz community) the more I ask myself
> what's the point. And "there is no point" is not an answer unfortunately.
> Because competitor sites get listed, and Google uses dmoz as it's own
> directory. No webmaster can ignore dmoz —no matter what.
There is a point for DMOZ and you if you are willing to help building the directory.
If you only want to promote your website and gain better search results there is not much of a point. This is not what DMOZ is about.
And ofcourse webmasters can ignore DMOZ. Unless ofcourse they believe in the myth about the magical capacities of a DMOZ listing. Sorry to tell you but this myth is false. There is no big gain in a DMOZ listing. You will not see chances in your website's popularity. The only thing that can influence if and how your website is found by your visitors is you and only you. Promoting websites is much more than waiting for a DMOZ listing. And the nice thing if you have a great site which attracts many visitors you do not need to suggest it to DMOZ, great chance that a DMOZ editor will notice the website and list it. Websites that are not interesting to visitors are also not interesting for DMOZ.

> The first time I read that becoming an editor was the only way of getting
> your own site listed I thought it was an exaggerated point of view.
> Today I really think that, in most of cases, getting listed in dmoz requires
> you to become an editor.
Everyday we list many more websites than we get new editors so this myth also is not true.
Editors may list their own website if it is listable and if they have access to the category in which it should be listed. If they list an unlistable website or in the wrong category they will be removed as an editor and the website also will be removed.

> But that seems not to be the point of dmoz, I guess.
Correct. Listing websites is not what DMOZ is about. Building the directory is. Many people do not see the difference but there is a big difference for those who understand.

[caprichoso]

> I submitted a couple of sites a couple of years ago, may be more,
If they were suggested in 2006 or before we most probably lost the suggestions in the great crash of 2006. You can suggest them again. If they were suggested in 2007 or later they are either still waiting review, listed or rejected.

hehehe...
Since there is no way to know what would have happened —or when the submission took place— I can't suggest them again. Because, of course, if I do suggest them again and the original submission was after the "crash" they will end up in the last place.

You have spent some time writing after every line of the original message. But you didn't give a single argument about the need of such secrecy about submission status. Which happens to be the whole point of this thread.

What is the advantage? How does the lack of this information help the directory, the editors or the users in any way?

[motsa]

But you didn't give a single argument about the need of such secrecy about submission status. Which happens to be the whole point of this thread.

There's no secrecy, just a forum policy that is clearly explained in the forum FAQ that is prominently linked to at the top of each page here.

[caprichoso]

There's no secrecy, just a forum policy that is clearly explained in the forum FAQ that is prominently linked to at the top of each page here.

Not talking about the forum. I'm talking about dmoz

[hutcheson]

The big secret is -- we don't know anything about your site that you don't know better.

If we haven't looked at your site, we don't have any idea whether it's listable.

If we have looked at your site, we don't notice everything -- but you knew it all before you posted it.

So there's nothing at all that we can tell you, that will help you in any honest way.

However, if you're intent on being deceitful, then it's extremely important for you to know how we can tell when you're lying. If we tell you how we noticed, or even that we noticed, you will know how to tell more plausible lies next time.

Since both of these things are so obviously true, then ... you can draw the conclusions yourself -- we probably already have.

[sunfeye]

I think the honest is very important.

[pvgool]

What is the advantage? How does the lack of this information help the directory, the editors or the users in any way?

You can also ask the question differently

What is the advantage? How does knowing the status of a suggestion help the directory, the editors or the users in any way?

directory: it would not help at all
editors: we tried this before, instead of asking for the status people would ask "why is it not yet listed" and "why was it rejected" , it was not an improvement for the editors
users: it would not help at all, users see the websites we listed and if they can find the information they are looking they don't care here are more sites about the subject that are not listed yet.

Wait. Maybe you thought that people who suggest websites are our users. Well, they aren't. But I'll look at advantages for them. There are 2 types of poeple suggesting websites
Honest people: they suggest only websites that meet the DMOZ guidelines. It is very easy for them. The site is either listed or still waiting review. No need to tell them the status. They can see if a site is listed. And with only two options they know that when it is not listed it must be waiting review.
Dishonest people: these will suggest sites that we do not want, and they know as they try many things to hide and deceive. They need to know if we noticed their dishonesty so that they can change their tactics. Maybe next time they will manage to slip through and get their website listed.

Maybe in the future DMOZ will find a way to communicate about the status of suggestions that will be positive for the directory, editors, users and honest webmasters without providing information to the dishonest webmasters. I don't know if that ever will happen.

[caprichoso]

hutcheson: I think I missed the moment I became a liar. You say I didn't submit any site and I'm making the whole thing up? What am I lying about?

sunfeye: of course honest users are. And I must be a dishonest user because... hmmm. wait a minute. I know! I'm dishonest because I am telling something uncomfortable for you.

Pretty clear to me know. There is no reasonable argument for hiding the submission status. And there is no answer, not an intelligent at least, to be found here. I ask a simple question and what I get? Well, that I am a liar. That I should be asking questions backwards. I should be asking something different. And that's funny because I have a simple question and "ask something different" is definitely not an answer.

No matter what hard do you try. You don't look any honest when you pretend not understanding what submission status will be useful for. It would be very much honourable to say "we understand the need but we have other reasons for not doing so". If you want honesty you could start by practising it. And don't even try it now. It's a little too late.

My conclusion is: dmoz is a community effort where rules are above reason or need or even common sense. There is no light over the end of the tunnel.

[pvgool]

hutcheson: I think I missed the moment I became a liar. You say I didn't submit any site and I'm making the whole thing up? What am I lying about?

That is not what Hutcheson said.

He said that to know something about your website we would have to look at it (which is the review proces). Until we look at the website there is one person that is most capable of knowing if it is listable and that is you the owner/creator of the website. As a result there is nothing we can tell you that you do not know already. That is when you are a honest person (see my previous post about how honest people can know the status of their site without us telling it to them).

But when you are a dishonest person (we have no reason to think you are one, but there are many dishonest people out there) knowing the status would be of great help to you. And we are not willing to give dishonest people this help.

[nea]

There is no reasonable argument for hiding the submission status.

For several years, we did provide status reports here at Resource-Zone. Thousands of people came here to ask for the status. A vanishingly small number of people received an answer that led to them being able to do anything constructive (i.e. "your site suggestion was eaten by a bug, please re-suggest). The rest of them fell into one of these groups:
* People who were told that their site was waiting for review, and accepted that without discussion.
* People who were told that their site was waiting for review, and tried to start a discussion about why it hadn't been reviewed yet.
* People who were told that their site had been rejected, and accepted that without discussion. (Yes, there were a few of these, hard as it may be to believe.)
* People who were told that their site had been rejected, and started to argue about why that was wrong.

The overwhelmoing majority of the people who started arguments about their sites left the place in frustration. Not surprisingly, since many of their questions and accusations were impossible to answer, either because there was no answer ("when is somebody going to review my site? Who will review it?") or because the answer was something we couldn't give ("who decided to reject my site?" or "how did you find out that all fifteen sites were mine?"). There were rules about not arguing, of course, but human nature is what it is and of course frustrated webmasters who needed to vent did so.

The majority of people fell into the first category: people who were told their site was waiting for review and went away without complaint. Possibly for some of them it felt like a construcive thing, knowing for sure that the site was in the system. But for the directory and the editors, it was actually destructive in a couple of ways. First, there were a LOT of requests. And even though participation in RZ is of course voluntary and most editors have never set their virtual foot here, because we had committed to providing status reports, those of us who did spend time here had to spend a lot of time on it. Again, we each individually chose to do so, but it was a time sink all the same. Second, there was - and still is - a strong feeling in the editor community that status reports places the focus of our editing on the suggested sites, and that is destructive because it distorts the editors' view of what they are supposed to be doing. And since the only people who came here were the ones who were waiting for their sites to be listed, it created a negative image of what we were doing as well; instead of focusing on all the thousands of sites added every week, all the new categories springing up and all the other improvements to the directory happening all the time, we focused too much on something that, frankly, is not our responsibility, and which is not within our power to change, namely that many people consider the ODP to be a listing service for webmasters. And the people who were told that their sites were waiting for review were in reality no wiser than they were before, because there has never been possible to predict when a review will take place. (And there we get back to what hutcheson and pvgool have been saying - there really is nothing you as webmaster/site owner can do with the "it's awaiting review" information. Or with the "it has been rejected" information either, for that matter. And that realisation was what caused much of the frustration.)

So while there is no argument for actively hiding the status of site suggestion, there are plenty of good arguments for not providing status reports.

Hope that made sense.

[nea]

I just noticed this:

hehehe...
Since there is no way to know what would have happened —or when the submission took place— I can't suggest them again. Because, of course, if I do suggest them again and the original submission was after the "crash" they will end up in the last place.

Well, no, they won't. The way site suggestions works is that each suggestion goes to the category it has been suggested to, and waits there in a "pool" of site suggestions. Some editors order the pool by date order when they review, but my understanding is that most don't. So one single re-suggestion will not cause your site to end up "last", because there is no "last" -- there is no "queue". On the contrary, if you put a little bit of effort into providing a title and description that conforms to the guidelines, it is not unlikely that your suggestion will be noticed and picked up before the majority of suggestions where the person making the suggestion has provided a marketing slogan or string of keywords instead of a site description.

A single re-suggestion to the same category, to guard yourself against the possibility of a bug having eaten the first suggestion, is not a problem. Of course, repeated re-suggestions, and suggesting the same site to several related (or completely unrelated) categories is still against the terms and conditions, and doing that will lead to a longer time until review (not because the site is punished but because many suggestions create more work, which takes more time).

[jimnoble]

@nea: for having so much more patience with folks who demand that we change than I.

[arubin]

For several years, we did provide status reports here at Resource-Zone. Thousands of people came here to ask for the status. A vanishingly small number of people received an answer that led to them being able to do anything constructive (i.e. "your site suggestion was eaten by a bug, please re-suggest).

Actually, there was one other constructive response (I mean, type of response - no, I think actually it only did occur once).

You submitted to the wrong category, and the reviewing editor deleted it rather than sending it to the correct category.

Still, vanishingly small, though.

[hutcheson]

Vanishingly small, and ... there would be no point in telling the webmaster that, anyway. What would he do? Suggest the site.

But if an editor thinks a site has been deleted erroneously, he can:

Add it back to the unreviewed queue;
Open a discussion about the site with other editors;
Open an abuse report;
Or just list it.

It's less trouble, and more efficient, for the editor to just do what needs to be done.

And, having done the only sensible thing to do--what he knows needs to be done--the editor is back in the situation of having absolutely nothing constructive to tell the webmaster--because the webmaster once again has nothing helpful to do.