At the risk of sounding like I'm sucking-up, *yes* I'm tired of the bashing. I'm not a DMOZ editor, and probably never will be. But, I've spent a fair amount of time in the resource-zone, and have come to understand ODP reasonably well.

It is a project with a very respectable social goal, but obviously the project has been overrun by spam and affiliate site submissions. This is what has destroyed the submission process for us all.

From what I see at the forum, it is clear that very few editors even look at the submission list because it is now like my 8 year old email box. . . nothing but spam. So, editors are doing what editors are supposed to do, find good sites on their own and list them.

If it’s any consolation, webmasters would be wise to submit and forget it. If their site is in fact content rich and at least somewhat unique, it will one day be discovered by an editor and listed.

Like everyone else, I’m ticked that my competitors are listed, and I’m not. I’m also upset that the Looksmart directory is closed to submissions. Between the two, I’m out probably 100 -200 valuable links. Is it fair? No. But that’s life. So, I work everyday at getting at least two new links. In 3 months, I’ve replaced what I would have received from ODP and Looksmart. What else can you do?

If I can restate one point: the reason few editors work on submissions is *spam and affiliate site* submissions. So blame the web-marketeers who have bombed the submission process, not the people who refuse to wade through the garbage.

/*tom*/