Editor Accounts
- One Editor Account, One Person
- Expired Accounts and Reinstatement
- Resigning Your Account
- Account Removal
One Editor Account, One Person
ODP editor accounts are issued solely for the use of the person who applied for it. Accounts should not be shared with a relative, co-worker, or friend; encourage them to apply for their own accounts instead. Accounts discovered to be shared among multiple people may be removed.
Only one ODP editor account per person is permitted. Former editors, whether they timed out due to inactivity, resigned, or were removed, should submit an account reinstate form. Former editors who have rejoined the ODP under a new account, or persons with multiple editor accounts, may be returned to their old ID, reduced to one account, or completely removed, at the discretion of ODP meta editors and staff.
For technical reasons, and to preserve the editing records and audit trails, we are not able to change a person's editor ID once it has been issued.
Expired Accounts and Reinstatement
Your account will remain active as long as you make an edit within a four month timeframe. Accounts expire if an edit has not been made in four months, even if you have logged in during that time period. You may request account reinstatement by filling out the account reinstate form. If you were an editor in good standing, your account will likely be reinstated. If your account was revoked or you had received warnings for poor or abusive editing, then we may decide not to reinstate your account. In all cases, we reinstate editing privileges (in full or in part) at our sole discretion, and we may choose not to reinstate an expired account for any reason. Editors should contact either ODP staff or a meta editor if they have questions about account reinstatement.
Resigning Your Account
If you decide to leave us, you may either let your login expire, or remove yourself. To remove yourself, click on the "Resign as editor of a category" on your editor dashboard. Check the box next to "Editor Account." Go to the bottom of the screen and give your reason for resigning, then hit the submit button. You don't need to resign from the categories you edit. Unchecking the box next to "Editor" takes care of that. The system will ask you to confirm your request. Once you resign, you will not be able to log back in. If you decide to rejoin the ODP at a later, you may submit your request reinstatement using the account reinstate form.
Account Removal
In addition to the instances noted elsewhere in these guidelines, we may remove editors or revoke their editing privileges (in full or in part) at our sole discretion, for any reason. Such reasons may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Failure to comply with the editorial guidelines
- Inability to function well within the Open Directory community
- Poor editing
- Uncivil behavior toward submitters, other editors, or ODP Staff
- Violation of ODP forum and email privacy
- Self-promotion (such as site cooling, and title or description manipulation, and adding/promoting only one's own sites)
- Discriminating against or tampering with competitors' listings for the purpose of harming a competitor
- Spamming the directory
Editor accounts may be removed by meta editors only after careful discussion, evaluation and consensus agreement. ODP staff review all account removal decisions made by the meta editors. Meta editors and ODP staff may revoke an editor's privilege to edit one or more categories or otherwise limit an editor's editorial privileges at their discretion. They may also remove an editor from the ODP entirely. Editors may submit feedback about any such decisions to ODP staff.
