46 replies to this topic

[dogbows]

If your main purpose in applying is to get your site listed, then just don’t. Reviewing meta editors are experienced senior editors who can spot those a mile away. You must show a strong desire to edit without an underlying agenda.

Consider the application a performance test. Don’t just read the guidelines, study them.

Pick a small category usually somewhere between 30 to 60 listings that you would perceive to be a non spammy category.

Check the category description to make sure it is the correct category for the URLs you are submitting with your application. If no description is available, one or more of the parent category descriptions should give you an idea if the URLs are appropriate for the subcategory. Category titles can be deceiving. Just because you have pet websites to submit does not necessarily mean they would fit in Shopping/Pets or even Recreation/Pets. Some pet websites might only be appropriate for a Regional/Locality listing.

Titles can be the title of the website itself, however when listing business or commercial sites, the title of the company should be used regardless of the title provided on the site.

Descriptions should contain absolutely no promotional hype or keyword stuffing whatsoever. Tell what the site is about and what can be found on the site simply and concisely. In some cases descriptions in the category may offer some help so long as you consider the fact that some of them may have been written before possible changes in the guidelines. For this reason do not necessarily consider every single description as a good example.

If you perceive yourself as an expert or qualified for any particular field, another category might be best for your initial application. Otherwise, you might be sadly disappointed. An applicant’s qualifications or expertise in any given field is not relevant to becoming an editor. The application is strictly to determine if you understand site placement, can write guidelines compliant titles and descriptions, show honestly in reporting all site affiliations regardless of relevance to the category, correct grammar, etc. And in some cases your qualifications or knowledge could possibly diminish your capabilities as an editor. It's just best to stay away from categories that you have a strong attachment to until you get some experience elsewhere.

Save a copy of your application just in case something does go wrong with the application process. You must reply to the confirmation email in order for the application to make it through the system. If you do not receive the email, first check to see if it was caught by your spam filters. If not, you will have to reapply.

If English is not your native tongue, you must be very fluent in English to edit anywhere in the directory other than your own language in the World section. When in doubt, make your initial application to your native language. Perhaps you can apply to other parts of the directory in time.

If you receive a rejection email, do not expect a detailed outline of your mistakes. The standard rejection mail contains the most common reasons for rejection. One or more of those reasons will apply. You will only receive personal comments from the reviewing meta if none of the common reasons on the standard rejection letter applies. Consider all reasons given to see which one/s do apply. Many, many good editors applied several times before being accepted. It is up to you to find the reasons for rejection, correct them, and reapply. If you cannot find your mistakes, it’s possible that you aren’t cut out to be an editor. Many are not. Each of the thousands of editors who have contributed to the directory took the same test, so it would be unrealistic to expect special treatment over all previous or current editors.

My persoanl opinion is that a small Regional locality is one of the best training grounds for a newbie editor. Regional is much more easily defined than some of the other branches. And even what appears to be a small category in Shopping or some of the other branches can be quite spammy and not appropriate for an inexperienced editor. A small town for which you are familiar will offer you links to quality websites to list that others would never find, such as local newspapers, delivery trucks, billboards at high school sports games, etc.

If I can do it, anyone can! All it takes is a sincere desire to help build the directory and the ability to follow instructions. So go for it!

Edited by dogbows, 27 April 2006 - 05:01 PM.

[jjwill]

A couple of common mistakes to avoid -
1. Suggesting a site already listed in the directory: Even though you may not see it in the category you are applying for, it may be listed in another cat in the directory. So always do a search on dmoz.org leaving www out of the root url.

2. Using category titles in the listing description: Not all metas will catch this but many do. i.e. - if you are suggesting a site to Shopping/Sports/Golf avoid using the words shopping, sports and especially golf.

3. Always be sure that a regional listing actually has a building location in that locality. It matters where the location is not where they ship to. Also, if they have multiple locations you need to find the smallest region category that includes all the locations.

I hope that helps. I’m sure there are many others but those are the ones that came to mind.

[dogbows]

Wow! Thanks jj, those are great adds. Darn I can't believe I left those out.

[bwelford]

Welcome to the Forums, jjwill. :wave: Also hi dogbows, we haven't conversed as yet.

You collectively have set down some good advice for aspiring DMOZ editors. I had only one small question, jjwill. You said the following:

So always do a search on dmoz.org leaving www out of the root url.

Why does it matter? Don't they both lead to the same place?

[dogbows]

Thanks, Barry! I think jj has gone for the day, but I can answer it for you. The DMOZ search is not like a regular search engine. It was mainly put in place to help editors when adding sites. If you use the complete URL for some reason it doesn't work properly. So when searching there to see if a site is listed, instead of searching for www.cre8asiteforums.com use cre8asiteforums.com. Otherwise, you might get no search results found when in fact it is listed. Now why it works like it does, I can't answer. :rofl:

[podman]

1. I've yet to find out why leaving out the www. is important, sometimes it works with it, sometimes not. Sure would be nice if someone put a note to that effect on the search page. http://search.dmoz.o...ced_search.html

2. Another good category to start with is something related to a hobby, but not a money making hobby.

3. When looking for Regional categories to apply for, select a town/city, not a state, county, or metro area.

4. Note that most sites that sell things retail and online go in Shopping - though there are many exceptions (mostly in Art). Sites that are not US based and do not sell worldwide have special confusing rules - read all the notes in the Shopping categroy.

5. Sites that sell from stores generally go in Regional

6. Sites that sell Business to Business are usually in Business

7. UK based sites have exceptions to the rules, don't expect to understand them until you become an editor in Regional UK. I expect that reviews of editor apps in this area will be forgiving of these details

8. Regional sites get pushed down to the most precise physical location of the business, not the target market.

[dogbows]

It's a bird, it's a plane, NO, it's PODMAN! HeeHee, thanks podman. Those are more great tips. I really appreciate all the editors who are pitching in to help. However, I am looking forward to editor wannabes posting. If you have specific questions, then please ask. We will do our best to help where we can.

[Juliette]

Hey dogbows - thanks for the topic start and thanks to everyone else for the extra info.

I was looking at becoming an editor for a small section - maybe a single author in the literature section or something similar, but i am a copywriter for a group of online stores that sell health products and i thought that my application might be turned down because of that? Can you give me an opinion on that.

The editing job would be for my personal time so it would be an exercise to get these sites listed.

[jimnoble]

Just to add a few more words about ODP's rudimentary search system.

It was, and still is, primarily intended to help surfers and editors to find an appropriate category from a keyword. They can then visit the category and hopefully find a whole bunch of relevent websites, some of which might not use the keyword at all.

It's not intended as a tool to find out whether or not a particular website is listed. It can be used that way if the www is omitted, but that's a side effect, not an objective. I'm not aware of any plans for change.

[bragadocchio]

It's not intended as a tool to find out whether or not a particular website is listed. It can be used that way if the www is omitted, but that's a side effect, not an objective. I'm not aware of any plans for change.

A shame, actually.

I would think that looking to see where a site is listed would be a useful, and helpful ability for anyone using DMOZ who wanted to try to find similar sites to one that is listed.

Say I want to find other authoritative sites similar to the Economist. I could go to DMOZ and type in economist.com and find out that it is in this category:

http://dmoz.org/News...is_and_Opinion/

Once I'm there, I have some excellent choices of sites that provide thoughtful analysis of news.

Now that topic might seem fairly obvious, and my search to find similar sites might seem a little lazy, but it's a nice way to find information quickly without having to try to guess the hierarchy of the directory.

Say I wanted to find some good project management software, and I knew of one vendor. I search for their name, and I get this category:

http://dmoz.org/Comp...AP/Consultants/

Wouldn't have guessed that nor looked there.

Dogbows,

I really appreciate the time and effort that you put into your initial post, and the great responses that it has received from other folks who have offered suggestions about applying as an editor of the directory.

If I weren't so busy with many other projects, I would seriously consider applying. Though I would guess that there would be aspects of the culture and bureaucracy that I might find maddening.

Wonder what the DMOZ would look like if it allowed editors to use tagging. Now that might be interesting.

[jimnoble]

@bragadocchio:

You already can do all that you're suggesting - just search on the domain name without a www. Also, most businesses are listed with the company name as the title so you can search on that too if you don't know their domain name

[Jean_Manco]

Sorry to take this thread even more off-topic, but bragadocchio has pointed to one of the best uses of the ODP. Apart from browsing the directory itself, you can get the benefit by using ODP-fed 'similiar sites' tools, such as Alexa and http://www.ucmore.com/ and clustering engines such as Exalead.

[bwelford]

Off Topic

If you think that was off-topic, Jean_Manco, how about this!

Rant !

Sorry but sometimes I can't stop myself. I'm sure we all appreciate the inputs from DMOZ editors here. Anything that helps us interact better with such an important entity on the Web can't be bad. However sometimes it's a little mind-boggling.

What caused this emotional outburst was your explanation about search, jimnoble, and the correct way to check out whether a domain is included. I have been making all sorts of mistakes in the past because I wasn't aware you shouldn't include the www before the domain name.

It isn't mentioned in the Help page on Search Results for Your Site. That seems to assume that I will want to check that my domain is in DMOZ correctly for its keywords. So within the Help page it directs me to a Search Engine Watch page on How To Use HTML Meta Tags. That's a little surprising since it was written by Danny Sullivan on December 5, 2002. If you keep going, you'll find a link on the keyword metatag in another SEW item, Search Engine Features For Webmasters. What it says is the following:

Crawling Meta Keywords The following do - Inktomi, Teoma. The following do not - AllTheWeb, AltaVista, Google. (Teoma support is "unofficial")

That's all very disappointing.

This domain name without the www is of critical importance to a large number of the DMOZ customers. Yet there's no mention anywhere. This thread seems to imply we shouldn't be using DMOZ this way. But we're the customers, aren't we?.

My image of DMOZ is that it is seen as a magnificent cathedral by its builders. It's intended as the best cathedral ever by the members of the DMOZ faith. OK folk may wander in through the front door and be impressed by the architecture, but it's not really intended for them.

If only DMOZ had a marketing department. Marketing is about defining a group of customers and making the best possible product or service that meets their needs. Of course the product/service package is ideally defined by what the customer needs. That's called being customer-centric.

Well perhaps that's too much to ask for. At the very least perhaps DMOZ could make a big thing about using the non-www version of the domain to check whether a website you're interested in is included in DMOZ.

When you can get around to it, you might also figure out who the Help is meant to help and modify it accordingly. As the dear departed Peter Drucker said, Help is defined by the recipient.

[dogbows]

Thank you, Juliette. No, being a copywriter for online stores will not prevent you from being an editor if you declare all the websites for the online stores on the application. For you that may be quite a few, but it is critical that you declare them and any others that you are affliated with. I do suggest that you do not use any website that you are affiliated with on the initial application. And in your case I also suggest that you apply to a category entirely set apart from the Health or Shopping categories. Your literature/author category sounds like it might be a very good start for you. Once you prove yourself as an editor in a totally unrelated part of the directory, you can later add other categories to your editing permissions.

It's important to note here that it is ok to own or be affiliated with websites as an editor. And it is even ok to list them if they are listable according to the guidelines. But you must show complete impartiality between sites you are affiliated with and their competitors. It is always best to prove your honesty and integrity in this situation before adding any of your site affliliations.

I hope this helps!

Edited by dogbows, 28 April 2006 - 08:25 AM.

[dogbows]

Jim, thanks for clarifying DMOZ search, I think...... :flowers:

Barry, unfortunately there is much that was written in the beginning of the directory that needs to be updated drastically. The problem is that it requires a volunteer who has access and who is willing to do the work. Obviously it is not something any one has been willing to put part of their spare time into doing, yet. It would be nice if someone did.

[shadow575]

dogbows,
Thanks for inviting me to this thread. I am not sure how much more I can contribute to the thread that hasn't been discussed. Going back to your original post (which I think is why you invited me ) I might add the following few oppinions:

• Spelling and grammar should be checked before submitting site examples. A minor mistake probably wouldn't be a hinderance, but poor grammar or an abundance of spelling issues might be.
• In Regional-unecessary repetition of the locality in the title or description should be avoided.
• Refreshing yourself with the Guidelines for Descriptions prior to submitting an application is a good idea.
• Many rejected applications receive specific "Reviewer Comments" but many don't as well. There are always reasons given for rejection of an application. Recieving the general rejection letter isn't a bad thing. It means that whatever caused the rejection is (are) very common, and can easily be fixed. Look the application over carefully and make sure not do those common issues again.
• Don't be discourage with a few rejections. It happens to many of us. There is something to be said for persistance Unless your rejection letter indicates that further applications won't be necessary fix the issues you had and reapply (paying special attention to specific review comments if given) and keep trying.

Hopefully that helps to some extent.

Regards.

[dgeary9]

There was another thread on this a while back, and I was the "editor-wanna-be" (the thread was on the problem of a shrinking DMOZ editor population). The short version is that I followed all the rules I could see, applied for a small, non-commercial category, and got rejected.

Let me say that arguments like "you shouldn't get special treatment (reasons for being rejected), the current editors didn't" or "just fix the mistakes you made and try again" don't sway me to try again. I was willing to contribute a few hours a month to help edit some categories I care about, especially given the editor shortage.

The problem, I think, is that I felt like I was offering DMOZ something - and that most of the replies, here and elsewhere, make it sound as if DMOZ believes it is offering me something. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but if you are truly needing editors, you may need to figure out ways to woo, rather than putting up barriers to entrance.

I've managed volunteer organizations from the inside, and it is really hard to figure out how to balance a welcoming exterior with very real resourcing shortages. I'm not saying it's easy - but I'm one of the people that walked by your door, took a step or two towards the entrance, and didn't feel welcome enough to stick around. It's like marketing - you don't have long to make a good first impression and entice me to more actively engage.

[dogbows]

Thanks shadow, I appreciate your input. :thumbs:

Dgeary9, editing isn't for everyone. Every editor I have ever met considered editing a hobby. No more, no less. So yes indeed it does offer them something. Finding and fixing mistakes is part of being an editor, so if you have a problem finding and fixing the mistakes on the application, then most likely you wouldn't enjoy editing anyway.

When I applied, I didn't apply to help the directory. I applied to build up my home town in the directory. I had a lot of local sites bookmarked on my computer that I did not see listed in my home town. As a matter of fact I wanted to build up my home town enough that I spent days on end studying everything I could find that would help me do a splendid application. I dare say, it fell way short of splendid, but at least it was good enough that I was accepted in less than five hours.

Editing is not about being willing to spend a few hours on a category you care about. It's caring enough about the category to spend the hours necessary to get accepted so you can edit there.

[dgeary9]

I hear you, dogbows - that jives with the message I felt like the DMOZ editor submission process was sending. All I wanted to say is that my response to that message was to walk away.

If you're getting all the editors you need with your current process, then my feedback is easily discarded. If you're not getting enough editors, then perhaps there are other decent candidates out there who responded the way I did to the "admissions process".

Just my two cents .

[jjwill]

I can understand how you feel about the response that is sent. It is a sweeping responce on purpose and can seem kinda cold. The problem is that editors have to be self motivated in order to be affective in building the directory. Nobody is going to help you in that area and really cant if you think about it. The applications process is set up to weed out those who aren’t going to take the time to really read and follow the guidelines and able to find sites on their own. The ability to follow the guidelines is very important in maintaining quality control for the directory without the need for a meta editor looking over other editor shoulders. Hope that makes sense.