There is a strong misunderstanding of when sites are allowed a listing in more than one category.

First, a site that has a physical location is in many cases allowed a second listing in the most specific Regional category that matches the location. For multiple offices, in two cities they might get two listings in two cities, or for mopre than teo, they might get one listing at a higher level, such as state or county. The regional listings are in addition to a Topical (non-Regional) category listing. An address that is only a mailing address generally will not qualify.

This is not always true - for example, real estate sites only get a Regional listing.

Second, sites that are in multiple languages (not machine translated) can be submitted for each language - in fact twice - one for Topical and once for Regional - but this must be done to the section of World for the language. Do not confuse Language and countries - World and Regional, World is non-English, Regional is English by geography. Within each World- Language are Regional subcategories for that language.

See also Multiple Languages

Regional: Europe: Portugal Portugal specific sites in English
Regional: South America: Brazil Brazil specific sites in English
World: Português Sites in Portuguese
World: Português: Regional: Europa: Portugal Portugal specific sites in Portuguese
World: Português: Regional: América do Sul: Brasil Brazil specific sites in Portuguese

DMOZ does not allow multiple submissions and a site owner who does so, might be considered to be spamming. Submitting to one Topical category and one Regional category, and submissions for multiple languages are permissable.

However, editors may decide that certain websites justify additional listings, or for some sites such as IMDB or Wikipedia, a consensus may be reached that very large numbers of pages may be used and in those case, editors are encouraged to list as many pages as they wish. It does not mean that IMDB is allowed to submit thousands of sites.

In the earlier days of ODP, it was often encouraged for editors to extensively use some sites and list thousands of pages for them. As the directory matures, some of the sites will get re-evaluated, and may no longer be considered as good sources of information or the listings may now be considered redundant as other better sites are found. So some of these multiple listings may in fact disappear.

In addition some multiple listings are in fact not. Sites like Angelfire are free hosting services, and each individual listing is a separate entity. They just share a common root URL.

Here is a recent posting in an SEO forum complaining about ODP multiple listings and showing this as an example of abuse at ODP. A not very well thought out post and I feel sorry for anyone who uses SEO info like this.

1 231,774 CNN.COM - currently used a a source of news pages
2 99,391 GEOCITIES.COM - shared hosting
3 34,923 TRIPOD.COM - shared hosting
4 30,450 ANGELFIRE.COM- shared hosting
5 20,530 AOL.COM - shared hosting
6 20,508 TOPIX.NET - massive source for RSS feeds
7 15,605 YAHOO.COM - shared hosting
8 14,202 FREE.FR - shared hosting
9 13,508 NEWADVENT.ORG - Catholic Encyclopedia used like Wikapedia,
10 9,411 IMDB.COM - used as a master source for movie information

I sometimes wonder why people waste their money. I get to review today a site for a performance artist. Big fancy with lots of music and all Flash. So what is wrong?

1. The flash is flashy - but tells me nothing much - just a lot of hype - no content - no info.
2. It has an option to skip the intro - but it does not work.
3. At the end of the flash intro it says “Coming January 2006″ - and nothing else

What a waste of time - I deleted it - and I guess if they ever get the site working they can submit it again. What a waste of money - someone actually paid a web designer for this.

The question about ODP using the Nofollow tag has been raised recently in various places.
For example in this SEO forum thread: Should DMOZ switch to nofollow

What is nofollow? In normal circumstances a link from one site to another is used by search engines, such as Google, MSN and Yahoo as a “vote” for the validity of the other site. Most people agree that in the case of Google, it contributes to page rank, and helps to make the second site more visible in searches. It has been suggested that search engines will now pay attention to the nofollow tag, when present, and ignore that as a meaningfull link. Thus a webmaster can downgrade the importance of a link by adding that tag.

Those who are upset at the fact that DMOZ does not list their sites in a timely fashion (whatever that may mean), and do not like that Google pays attention to DMOZ, want the ODP to add the nofollow tag to all it’s listings, so that those sites that are listed do not gain advantage over sites that are not listed, and to cause the DMOZ listing to be less important to Google.

What’s wrong with this concept?

• If Google is doing the wrong thing, then you should complain to Google, not get DMOZ to try and manipulate Google
• Adding nofollow only affects the DMOZ directory and very few referrals come directly from it
• Many more referrals come from third party users of ODP data, and those users get the data from the RDF dump, which is a formatted XML file. This file does not contain any HTML code, so the nofollow tag would never be in there.
• Why should the ODP add the tag at all. Since sites are put in the ODP because editors think they have relevance, putting nofollow is a contradiction - saying in effect - the site has no validity.

Other links related on nofollow

googleblog - Preventing comment spam

Six Apart - Support for nofollow

SEObook

SearchEngineWatch

Wikimedia - a discussion of whether they should use nofollow

padawan.info

Just ran through a small category relating to job placement that had been a bit neglected and had a few sites in unreviewed. Here is what happens when I go through the sites in date submission order (note the original submission dates):

1. 2000 - Site is not in English. It’s been submitted numerous times to numerous categories, and who knows how many it’s waiting in. Several editors have moved and/or rejected it over the last few years. Does not look like it has too many jobs. Moved to the right language for review again - but it will probably get deleted.
2. 17/Jun/2000 - Wrong category, which would have been obvious if the submitter has read the description. Moved to a more general category.
3. 18/May/2004 - Not in English and also the wrong category. Moved to my best guess about where it should go so someone who speaks German can review it.
4. 2004/2005 - Three sites that belong is a more specific sub-category, moved to the correct place, and I will review them there later. I could review and move them at the same time, but it’s less error prone to do it this way.
5. 08/May/2005 - Reviewed and published. Also since the site is in two other languages, sent two copies for other editors to review in those categories. It probably should get three listings.

So seven sites get reviewed ranging from several years ago to a couple of weeks ago. But the most recent one gets accepted, and the others get postponed. Hopefully this helps to explains the constant complaint - why don’t sites get reviewed in order.

From a post in a forum I’m reminded of this wonderful category

Recreation: Outdoors: Wildlife: Bats

Here is the forum post

Sometimes editing has special rewards. A few days ago, a site was submitted on a rare medical problem, only two or three children have survived.

Sirenomelia - a very rare congenital disorder in which the legs are fused together, giving the appearance of a mermaid.

ODP did not have any good information or other sites on this condition, and the site by itself would have been placed in Health: Conditions and Diseases: Genetic Disorders

However by searching around, a number of other sites were found - enough to create a new subcategory - Health: Conditions and Diseases: Genetic Disorders: Sirenomelia

The other point of interest was that a child in Peru was scheduled to have an operation to correct the problem, and I was delighted to read a few days later that the operation was successful.

BBC News: Doctors hail ‘mermaid’ operation

Must be my lucky day - I got three really annoying reviews in a row. They were all in a category that is subdivided by country and then by state. Most sites have to be listed at the state level, and a site can only be listed in one state.

1. This site has been listed in ODP for several months in the correct state. Earlier this month it was submitted to the USA level and denied. Today a page within the site was submitted to the world wide level. Deleted again. This is just plain annnoying - and could be avoided by reading the category description.

2. Site has been listed for a while. Earlier this month, got an update request to change the URL and confirm that state it was listed in. No problem. But today, he wants to be listed in a different state. Please, guys, one state per customer. Deleted.

3. New site submitted to a state. Now in fact, it ’s the wrong category, but I can understand the confusion, and normally I would move it the the right place for another editor to review. But then I see in big red letters - This site is under construction some of the information may be incorrect. Then why do you submit the site? You want us to put in the directory this confusing and incorrect information about your organization, you want this glaring example of sloppy web site to be shown to the world? Deleted - and the next time it’s submitted - it will be looked at very carefully before it’s allowed in. (You really should thank us)

I look at a shopping category I edit, which has seven sub-categories. It currently has four sites awaiting review. Why would I not just review them in order, and possibly publish them all today?

1. Site submitted in mid-April
2. Submitted a week ago
3. Submitted two days ago to the wrong category, but another editor already sent it here

The first one bothers me, something about it is suspicious, it feels like a branch of another company, and needs more work to check it out, I’ve looked at it before, and just don’t have the energy to deal with it today, so I skip it.

The third one is in the top category so I get to it before I see the second one. It has two problems, it is inconsistent in how it displays prices, and it’s unclear whether it’s retail or wholesale, so it may be the wrong category. I’ve also seen a lot of site of the same kind, and often they have mirrors, so skip it for now.

The second one is in a sub-cat. One of the pages does not display correctly, but it’s a minor problem. The supplied description is not bad, if I remove one sentence of hype and promo, and edit the rest a little bit. The title is wrong, fix that and publish it. The whole thing took less than five minutes. If all reviews were like this, then I could get most new sites published in a week. But as with the other two, sometimes sites take much more work.

Open Directory Project Bans Objection to New Policy

This is a response in Resource-Zone - now what is the problem here? (Quoted below since like any moderated forum - off topic post get deleted)

I am going to submit a press release to all the major news sources, regarding the events that have taken place here this morning.

.

For those of you who do not know. I have been kicked off and my postings have been erased because I wanted to start a protest to the DMOZ.org’s new policy of not allowing their users to submit site status requests.

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I feel that a truly responsible and “open” organization would ALLOW dissent from their members if they considered one of their policies irresponsible or controversial. I feel that a responsible organization would listen to feedback of the people who submit quality websites, people who make their Directory so important and prominent in the world.

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Lastly, I feel strongly that is irresponsible to shut people out about the status of their site listing requests. Especially, when it is those people who have made the site so strong from the beginning.

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Protest the Policy, start your own thread.

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Regards,
Mike

He just plain does not understand - it’s a forum run by volunteers, and like any forum, the people who run it can decide what is allowed and what is not allowed. Try going to other moderated forums, and decide to post against the TOS, and see how far you get.

Resource-Zone was set up a couple of years ago to try and help those trying to submit sites to ODP and those wanting to become editors. One of the features was the ability to ask about sites suggested to ODP for review. However, over time this feature has become more of a hassle than a help. It seems that most of the people asking question are unable to follow simple guidelines.

It really should have been very simple. Provide the site URL, the clickable category and the date suggested, making sure to wait a month before asking. Then get an answer - yes or no the site had been submitted - sometimes be told, resubmit. Simple - one question - one answer. Didn’t seem to be that way most of the time.

Instead there were insanely long threads like this:

Tell me why my site has not been reviewed, why did you reject it?

What site, you didn’t give the URL.

The one in my profile.

You don’t have one in your profile

Oh, my url is this ……

That URL does not work.

Sorry I mispelled it - its …..

But you forgot to give a category

It’s Society Religion

We need a clickable category - please read the guidelines

It’s http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/

We are not Google - we need an ODP category

Top: Society: Religion and Spirituality

That category is not clickable

Sorry it’s http://www.dmoz.org/Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/

That category does not accept submissions

Ok, it must have been http://www.dmoz.org/Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/Shamanism/

The site is not waiting in that category

Maybe I submitted it to Top: Society: Religion and Spirituality: Shamanism: Psychoactive Substances- anyway I just resubmitted it.

Why did you do that, we haven’t told you to?

Ok, give me the status then.

Now we can’t, since you just resubmitted, you have to wait 30 days.

Why are you refusing to list my site - it must be my competition, trying to stop me getting listed.

But the site has not been reviewed, no-one has refused to list it.

You are an idiot and I’m going to sue you.

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It’s too bad, it really should have worked, but it just go totally our of hand, too much frustration on both sides, too many arguments, too many accusations.

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Anyway, as of 21 May, the Site Submission Status forum will be closed - see Discontinuation of site status checks

The other forums will remain open. Expect confusion for the next few weeks as old posters come back for their six-month status and post their requests in the wrong forum.