I'm Baaaak....with a few Dmoz/ODP tidbits.

OMG! I cannot believe how long it's taken me to get around to posting again. I've had this post hidden away for awhile waiting for the right time to publish. Yeah, yeah, I've been that darn lazy that I couldn't find that time to publish a post that has been waiting for about 6 months, haha. I might begin to take interest in blog once again and post regularly. I already have some post waiting in the wings for me to push that "publish" button. I'll start this post off with a few things I finally want to mention.

Firstly, I receive e-mail from submitters, and non-submitters alike. In fact, my editor profile used to encourage feedback. Hey, if I had a question then I'd want to find someone who was willing to answer them, or, at least, point me in the direction in which to find them. I don't mind getting feedback from the public and will answer any questions as best I can with my editor-dedicated e-mail address, but I don't answer them all. In fact, I might post another round of the feedback I've received.

The most type of feedback I get is regarding status checks. Is my site listed? I submitted 4 months ago, did I do something wrong? I've submitted my site several times, and I'm just wondering if it was ever received. Well, I'm happy to provide status checks. If I were in their shoes then I'd want to know whether or not my site was received also, especially when submitters most likely do not know what causes the long delay before listing/rejection/no action; sometimes I also take the time to explain this. Keep in mind that many editors don't like to be contacted, so if it says in their profile not to contact them or that e-mails go unread, then heed the warning.

The second most type of feedback I received caught me a little by surprise when I started receiving them. Where is the submit URL link? Huh??? Oh, they must be trying to submit to a category where the submit URL function is turned off. This happens when most sites would easily fit into a subcategory. Lets take a look at a random category that does not accept submissions: Games: Video_Games: Shooter. Now, if you go to this category in the Games section and look at the top then you will not see the submit URL link. Why? Because a majority of sites should be submitted to a letter/number category, or one of the other categories available. So, to keep submitters from wasting editors' time from having to find the proper category for their sites, this actually forces submitters to make the choice themselves. And, please, follow the guidelines!

An uncommon type of feedback I get is by the directory users asking that I create a subcategory, not because they have a site to submit, but because this is the type of information they are looking for. I'll be honest, I have no interest in their subjects, but I do let them know that I will look into creating the category if there are enough sites to be added there; I also let them know that I'm not interested in finding such sites. But, hey, if you ever feel a category should be created for your favorite subject then by all means find some sites on that topic and submit them to the most relevant area, an editor might come along and create the needed category. Unfortunately, there is no official way to request that a category be created.

Editor Notes:

I've gained some additional categories lately, some spam prone, hmmm, might be the topic of my next post, and others that I applied to because I was bored out of my mind. Some categories that I've had for about two years and haven't edited in for the last year I decided to drop. Also, after 2 1/2 years of editing I have finally made it over the 5,000 edit mark. Yey! Took a heck of a long time to achieve this. In fact, I've had some kind of renewed energy in editing over the last month. Before this I felt burned-out where my number of edits was slowly dwindling from over 200 to less than 20 per month. Hmmm, whatever.

Editing Stats

I'm very close to three years as an editor, so here are my stats. I swear, I think I saw an editor whose been editing for a whole two months have more than 10,000 edits, haha.

5774 [total edits] / 1765 unique adds / 1543 deletes / 1087 unreviewed