ChefMoz Guidelines

Introduction

ChefMoz editors and staff are working to build the largest and most useful restaurant directory on the internet. These guidelines are meant to help you contribute to this project and to make your participation enjoyable and rewarding.

Not every detailed aspect of editing is covered here and you are encouraged to regularly read the ChefMoz fora, explore the resources available in the ODP Tools for ChefMoz Editors section and to contact other editors directly for advice and guidance.

This is a living document and will be modified from time to time. Please make it a habit to check back periodically for any changes.

Editing Basics

Getting Started

Click the "editor login" from the home page of http://chefmoz.dmoz.org/. You will then be taken to the editor dashboard. This page includes a linked list of the categories that you edit.

There are several ways to add reviews and restaurants to the cities that you edit in. You can review those submitted from the public and you can gather the listing information on your own to add to ChefMoz using a phone book, your own notes or another source like a directory, website or guidebook.

Submitted Listings
Click on 1. Hidden and New Restaurants at the top of the city edit screen. You will then see a page that looks much like the city edit page except that it is labeled something like
Top: Canada: BC: Kelowna: Hidden and New

The new submissions are marked with a red exclamation mark. Click on the EDIT button and you will be taken to the Edit listing for [restaurant name] page. This page has quite a bit of information that needs to be checked for accuracy and completeness. You should complete as much of the information as you can. More about this later. If there is a description, you may need to edit it; see General Editing Guidelines below.

If the restaurant has a review submitted, it will show up in a red box. Existing, publicly visible reviews show up in purple boxes. You will need to uncheck the hide review box for each review in order to show it on the public side. Please check the spelling and grammar of the reviews, but do not change the basic content. Never alter the ratings or change anything in the Reviewer Information section; that is considered abuse of the directory.

Submitted Changes
A member of the public can also suggest changes to existing listings. These will show up similarly to new restaurant submissions in the unreviewed section with the restaurant name highlighted in green. Click on the EDIT button and you will be taken to the Public Suggestions for [restaurant] page where you can accept or reject the individual changes. Again, try to verify all the information being submitted.

Adding New Listings
You can add new restaurants from the city or regional edit page by clicking on the add restaurant link at the top. The interface fills in the current country, state, and city information. Fill in the name, the city if necessary and the other information required and click Go. In the US, ChefMoz will look up the restaurant in the telephone directory for you. If the restaurant name and location you have chosen is already in the database, it will send you to the review form; if it is a new listing, you will get the Edit listing for [restaurant name] form where you can fill in the detailed information.

The same rules that are mentioned above regarding completeness and accuracy apply here. Fill in as much as you can, but don't guess. More information about this can be found below. To aid reviewers in gathering the necessary information, a printable version of the detail edit page can be found here: http://chefmoz.dmoz.org/printme.html. You can take this with you to a restaurant to fill out.

Writing Descriptions
Whenever possible, write a description, even if it's short. Use proper sentence structure and be sure to check all spelling and grammar. (An integrated spell checker is on the features wish list, but not yet in place.) You can use html code in descriptions and reviews, but this should be used sparingly.

Whether submitted or written by the editor, descriptions should be free of personal opinions. A well written description will give the public a good idea of the type of food, ambiance and the size of an establishment. This is also the proper place to convey details about kind of service, cuisine, the extra features of the restaurant, specialties of the house, location specifics and any other useful facts. For examples of good descriptions, go to this thread in the ChefMoz Culture forum.

Even if you haven't visited the restaurant, you can often gather enough information from a submitted review, website or outside review to put together a useful, basic description.

ODP Note Field
Use this field to communicate pertinent information about any changes to a listing to your fellow editors. Leave a note every time you edit a listing. Examples of some of the types of comments appropriate for this field are:

• Hiding review by A. Reviewer; may be inappropriate
• Remove editorial comment from description
• Changing hours and parking information

General Editing Guidelines

What to List
Although ChefMoz is a restaurant guide first and foremost, any establishment that serves ready to eat food may be listed, as long as it's properly described. That means that if an establishment is for members only, does not have seating, is only open in the summertime or consists of a cart on the street you can still list it, but these facts need to be mentioned in the description.

English Language
Although future non-English versions of ChefMoz are planned, the current version of ChefMoz is meant for English language users, so all content should be in English, including descriptions, reviews and linked reviews. When creating cities and regions in non-English speaking areas, use the anglicized name if there is one.

Copyright and Outside Reviews
Descriptions and reviews from outside sources should not be copied verbatim to ChefMoz listings; this could be copyright infringement. You are encouraged, however, to find and link to appropriate restaurant reviews on the internet in the Outside Reviews section of the Edit listing for [restaurant name] page.

Editorializing
Descriptions should be non-judgmental. They should not include the submitter's personal likes or dislikes, although phrases like "large menu", "warm atmosphere" or "impressive view" are acceptable. It's important to remain impartial about the restaurant listings that you edit. If you have an opinion about a restaurant, write a review.

Price Indications
The ChefMoz default pricing scales are based on the cost of a meal for one person including main course, half an appetizer, one non-alcoholic drink, tax and usual tip, if applicable. Different countries may have agreed to vary from this standard, please check the link from the pricing key in each area. The pricing ranges are also country specific and may change from time to time, based on forum discussions.

Rating System
ChefMoz has a 5 point rating system, from 1 to 5 stars. The reviewers are asked to rate the restaurants on this scale for the Food, Service, Ambiance aspects as well as an Overall rating. The rating examples are linked from the review screen: http://chefmoz.dmoz.org/rating.html. All ratings are then averaged and displayed on the listing page with a ½ star accuracy.

Chain Restaurants
Multiple listings under the same name in one city work fine. They can have different detail information and descriptions. There is a feature under discussion that would allow for a national or state level master listing, but this is not yet in place.

Editing Tips

Listing Information
Try to fill in as much of the information as possible. The postal code or fax number may not appear important to you right now, but it could be exactly what a user is looking for.

Cuisine List
Pick the main cuisine type from the leftmost scrolling box. If the restaurant falls under more than one cuisine category, you can choose up to two more from the second and third boxes. If the cuisine type is too broad a term, put the exact cuisine type in the description. For example, to describe a restaurant offering Panamanian cuisine, choose Latin American from the list and put a phrase about the Panamanian cooking in the description box.

Hours Parsing
If you type in the restaurant's hours, ChefMoz will try to parse them. You can check the parsing by submitting the restaurant with the hours string, then pulling it up again for editing -- it'll tell you what its best guess is.

It recognizes words like 'weekends', 'weekdays', 'every day', 'midnight', 'noon', '24 hours' and 'to', but not 'lunch', 'dinner', or 'breakfast'. It will not recognize lunch and dinner times listed separately. For example, it won't parse

lunch M-F 8 am - noon, weekends 10 am - 2 pm; dinner M-F 5 pm - 10 pm

because it has the words 'lunch' and 'dinner', and the lunch and dinner times are listed separately. It would be parseable if it were written

M-Friday 8 am - noon, 5 PM - 10 p.m.; weekends 10 A.M. to 2 pm

Be aware that if a restaurant is open until 2 am Sunday night, the parsed hours will show that it's open until midnight Sunday, and from 0-2 am on Monday. It's supposed to be this way.

If you don't know the hours but know that a place is open for lunch and dinner, entering "Lunch and Dinner" is better than not entering any information.

Web Sites and Pictures
Click on the different search buttons in the Web Information section of the Edit listing for [restaurant name] page to find a restaurant's website. If a URL is already listed, you can open it directly with the link next to the URL. If the website has a separate menu page, list its URL in the appropriate box.

For added visual appeal in the listing, you can add links to a picture and the restaurant's logo.. In Netscape the easiest procedure is to click View>Page Info to open up a new window with the information you need. In Internet Explorer 5, you can right click on the image to get the same information. Copy the logo and picture URLs to the appropriate boxes in the Web Information section. To get the sizing right, you may have to adjust the width and height pixel dimensions. A good maximum width figure is 180 to 220 for both logo and picture. Adjust the height accordingly, based on the original dimensions. If you do use a logo, make sure it shows the name prominently, since this will replace the ChefMoz generated name. Check the finished listing to see if the graphics show up properly.

Hiding Reviews
Reviews that are over 6 to 12 months old may have lost their currency, especially if the restaurant has undergone large changes. There is discussion of eventually hiding old reviews automatically, but until this is in place, you can do this manually. You should always check with a country level editor, editall or meta, though, before deleting a review.

Features
Most of these sections are self explanatory. Some features are clicked automatically. For example, if you click 'vegetarian menu', it will automatically include the feature 'vegetarian dishes'.

You are encouraged to search for and link to outside reviews. They should be labeled with the source and possibly the date.

Notes and Editing Commands
Always include a note along with an edit (see ODP Note Field above). The editing commands allow you to submit the changes or leave the listing as is. With either choice, you can move to the next restaurant in the list or back to the city edit page.

Sorting Reviews
To change the order in which reviews appear, click the sort reviews button from the editor side restaurant listing page (not the Edit listing for [restaurant name] page). The instructions are self explanatory.

Editing Access
If you edit in a region or a country, you will also have editing access to any category below this level. Before editing in a city or area that lists an active editor, however, you should first establish contact with him or her. Teamwork is very important at ChefMoz and you should cooperate with your fellow editors, not work against them. If there are listings that need fixing, a courteous reminder will often do the trick; there is no reason to be impolite. If there is a persistent problem, you should contact a country editor, editall or meta-editor.

You may notice that you are able to get access to many of the editing screens in areas that you don't have editing privileges in. This does not mean that you can do any actual editing there.

ChefMoz Structure

The ChefMoz structure is strictly based on a regional system. Countries are usually divided into states or regions and then into cities. Cities have a neighborhood feature that allows further sorting of restaurants. You can also list nearby cities.

Countries

Countries are listed directly under the root directory. The continent categories visible on the ChefMoz main page are simply a way of listing nearby countries and making them easier to find. For example, you can find Ireland listed in http://chefmoz.dmoz.org/Europe/, but the actual path will be http://chefmoz.dmoz.org/Ireland/.

Countries may have their own pricing guideline, pricing ranges, currency symbol and other, language dependent settings. In the future, further country level features may be established.

States, Provinces, Regions

In most countries this structure is in place already and will not need to be changed. If you are working in a country that doesn't have this structure but may need it in the future, please consider establishing this now. A meta-editor can provide further details.

There are a few features that are contemplated for this level, like master chain restaurant listings and links to regional descriptions and other resources, but these are not in place yet.

Cities

This is where all the restaurant listings are and where most editing activities take place. The city edit page will have the path name at the top, for example:
Top: United States: CA: Mountain View
which will not change in most cases.

When accepting listings from Hidden and New, make sure that the establishments are actually located in the named city. This can be confusing, especially in larger metropolitan areas. It's generally safe to go by an official directory, like a telephone book. If several cities make up greater Seattle, for example, you should set up separate cities for Seattle proper, Tacoma, Redmond etc. Some metropolitan areas may require special treatment, however. If you are unsure, ask in the ChefMoz fora.

If a submission is accepted at the regional level with a city name that does not yet appear in the directory, a new city category will be created. It's therefore important that the spelling of any new city is correct before accepting the listing.

You can move an incorrectly placed listing by changing the city name and press Accept listing. If you don't have editing privileges in the new city, the listing will stay in Hidden and New Restaurants until another editor reviews it.

An incorrectly named city category can be renamed by meta-editors or staff if the correct one does not already exist; you can request this in the Meta-editors forum. If the city category already exists, simply rename the listing(s) to move them over and then ask an editall or a meta to delete the empty city category.

Other Online City Guides
This city level feature allows you to link to and briefly describe other guides that cover this area. These guides are also good tools for you as a ChefMoz editor. They will give you information about listings to add, restaurant websites and outside reviews to link to.

Nearby Cities

Each city edit page has a Nearby Cities feature that allows you to list other towns in the area. List all cities that are within reasonable driving distance from the one you are editing in. If a restaurant patron in city X is likely to drive to city Y for dinner, it should be listed.

Click the Nearby Cities - edit button and enter the pathname of a city. The links will not appear on the city listing page until that city exists in the directory. You should check that the cities you have listed also link back in the same way. If necessary, get in touch with an editor for the affected city and request this change.

Neighborhoods

Each city has a list of neighborhoods you can set up. In very small towns this feature may not be necessary, but in most cases it will be a very useful way to sort restaurant listings. Especially in large cities, take care to ensure that the neighorhood names are correct, descriptive, in common usage and small enough to be able to properly subdivide that city's listings. A change in the neighborhood structure is always easier to make before too many listings are added.

To edit the neighborhoods, click 3. Edit List of Neighborhoods for this City in the city edit page. Enter them in title case, for example: "Granville Island"

Additional Information

Spamming

Spam occurs if a reviewer submits reviews and ratings that are biased by something other than the actual dining experience or if they knowingly submit inaccurate information. The likely scenarios are:

• Owner/employee/affiliated person submits one or several reviews highly praising the restaurant.
• Disgruntled customer/former employee or competitor submits one or several unfavorable reviews or inaccurate listing information.

Spotting and Dealing with ChefMoz Spam
Editors are encouraged to be on the lookout for bogus information submissions and reviews that may not be legitimate. The submitting IP address or submitter information is logged with each review. The reviewer may also enter their name and organization on the submission. Check for duplications and multiple reviews with similar styles and ratings, especially if they are very positive or very negative. Try to verify changed information like hours and phone numbers, or a restaurant closing altogether. If you suspect abuse or spam, contact a meta-editor or editall.

Censorship
If a review is inappropriate or you suspect it is unfairly biased, it should be hidden. If you're unsure, ask another editor for an opinion. Do not delete it without consulting with a meta-editor or editall, unless it is an empty or unintelligible review. Tampering with legitimate reviews to change their intent or deleting these is considered abuse of the ChefMoz directory.

Editor Affiliation
Editors with restaurant affiliations are welcome at ChefMoz. Their experience in the trade is very useful to the directory. An affiliation with any restaurant should, however, be declared in the editor's profile. Tampering with an editor's own or a competitors' listings or adding spam reviews to the directory will be considered an abuse of ChefMoz.

Meta-Editors and Staff

You can get a list of current staff, meta-editors and editalls by clicking the List of meta-editors link on the right hand side of your editor dashboard.

Editall Editors
An editall can edit in every city and region without being listed and they can delete empty city categories.

Meta-Editors
Meta-editors can accept or decline new editor applications as well as new category permissions requested by existing editors. They cannot remove editors or their editing privileges. They can move city categories. In addition, they have the same privileges as editall editors.

Editalls, metas and country level editors are good resources to turn to if you have questions or concerns. Many of them will have signed up to offer their services in an unofficial mentoring program to help out new and less experienced editors. You will find the details of this service in the New Editors Forum.

You will also find a current list of the preferred areas of activity for editalls and metas in the Meta-Editors forum. This is useful if you are looking for someone with expertise in a particular area.

Staff Editors
Staff editors are listed on the Meta-editor Report mentioned above as having "root" access. These are Netscape employees who manage this project. They have all the privileges that meta-editors do and the ability to remove editors and editors' privileges. Staff editors can also make other changes to the directory such as creating regional structures. The staff programmer working on ChefMoz is Autumn Looijen.

Communication, Privacy and Conduct

E-mailing Editors
The Open Directory Project respects the privacy of its editors, and we ask that the editors treat each other with the same respect. We encourage editors to work with each other as a team, and to keep in good communication. There are two ways to do this, by e-mail and through the fora. If editors wish to contact one another directly, they should use the editor feedback feature located in each editor's profile. To go to an editor's profile page, click on their name in a category they are listed in or type their name in the light green Go to an editor's profile page: box on your dashboard.

To edit your own profile, change your e-mail address or displayed name, click the Change Profile - change e-mail here link off your dashboard. You can use html code in the Editor Profile box.

There are other feedback tools available; check the ODP Tools for ChefMoz Editors section.

Using the Fora
You also can use the fora (forums) to communicate with the other editors in your category. One way to gather feedback from other editors is by creating a forum thread and then e-mailing your coeditors with the thread's URL, requesting that they to reply in the thread (not by e-mail). This way everyone can participate in the discussion. Other editors browsing the fora can also contribute their suggestions.

We strongly encourage editors to e-mail others regarding a forum topic if they wish to solicit a lot of response or if the topic being discussed is a large scale change which would affect a number of different editors (some editors don't read the forums regularly).

There are six general purpose fora:

• General - Issues of interest to all editors.
• ChefMoz Culture - Editing techniques, style guidelines and category building strategies.
• Bugs & Features - Bug reports and editing software feature requests.
• Meta-Editors - 'Big picture' discussions and issues affecting editalls and meta-editors.
• New Editors - Questions and answers, issues affecting new editors.
• The Social Club - A fun, informal place to take a break and chat.

Posting to the Fora
Before you start a new thread, use the Forum Search to see if your question has been asked and answered in another thread or if there is an existing thread that your question could be asked in. The subject of any new thread should be specific and explicit. Readers should have a good idea of what the topic is about by reading the subject, even before they read your post. The thread should relate to only one topic. When posting a reply to a thread, stick to the topic. Consider whether your reply would be useful to the many readers of the thread. It may be more useful to e-mail the few affected editors instead. Keep your comments concise. Post your question only to one forum.

Hypertext Links in the Fora
If you are referring to a specific category or listing include the URL. Try to use the public-side URLs (the ones without the "/editors/" part in it) since they are shorter and is less likely to expand the horizontal forum display. If you type in anything beginning with "http://", the Forum software will make everything from that until the next space into a hypertext link. However, this also means you don't want to type http://chefmoz.dmoz.org, that comma will be converted into part of the link, and will lead nowhere. Leave a space before and after any hyperlinks before punctuation.

E-mail and Forum Privacy
The content of the ChefMoz Editor Forum, Editors' Notes, and Editor-to-Editor e-mail or Feedback are intended for internal use by ChefMoz editors only, and direct quotes should not be published outside of ChefMoz. Rephrasing is allowed only if the communication as rephrased could not be attributed to a specific editor and disclosure would not violate any editor's clear expectation of privacy, with the understanding that a diplomatic choice of words is the rephraser's responsibility. It is never appropriate to disclose the identity or e-mail address of a ChefMoz editor without the consent of that editor.

Communication Abuse
For time to time, users and editors may contact other editors through avenues outside of the editor feedback function. This is a function of the public nature of the directory, and by using ChefMoz, users are acknowledging that possibility and waiving any claims against ChefMoz. ChefMoz does not support such contacts, nor do we collect any personal information on our editors. However, please note: that the contents of editor profiles are viewable by other editors and the public. If you believe that your privacy or personal rights have been violated as a result of your association with ChefMoz, please notify ChefMoz staff and provide a detailed account of the incident(s). While ChefMoz has no control over such contacts, in some situations we may be able to discourage them.

Editor Conduct
Editors must exercise care whenever they contact owners, management or staff of the restaurants being listed. You should not ask for or accept any special treatment. If you identify yourself at all as a ChefMoz volunteer editor, you should do it in such a way as to reduce the chances of any kind of conflict arising. If you are visiting an establishment to review it, you should not tell the restaurant staff that you are doing so until after you have paid the bill. At this time, you can ask for more information to complete the listing.

A more complete guideline on editor conduct is being developed in the ChefMoz Culture forum.

Forum Conduct
ChefMoz editors are trying to build and maintain a friendly, supportive atmosphere and flaming in the fora does not fit with their vision for this community. Please be considerate and respectful in your communications with others.

For more information on this, please see The Unofficial Chef Moz FAQ.

Editor Name
The editor nickname you signed up with is yours for the duration of your ChefMoz tenure; it cannot be changed. Having more than one editor account / nickname is not permitted.

Requesting New Areas

As a new editor you will probably have started out editing listings in your home town or a city you know well. After gaining some experience there, you can apply to edit in other cities or at the regional level. Before you do this, however, you should check your work and the area you are taking care of to see if they meet ChefMoz guidelines. Asking your mentor or a higher level editor to check your edits is also a good idea.

As ChefMoz grows, the guidelines for how much experience you need in order to be approved for new areas will change. It's best to read the appropriate forum threads to get an idea of the standards expected for new applications. If you think there are unusual circumstances that might affect your application, read the "Special Circumstance Category Requests" thread in the Meta-Editors forum.

Once you've decided to apply for a new city or area you put the path name of the city or region (without the http://chefmoz.dmoz.org/ part) in the purple Request to be editor for another category: box and press submit. This puts your application into the New category permissions requested by editors queue that the meta-editors see. A meta will then review your application and either accept or decline your offer to edit in the new area, based on the work you have done at ChefMoz. There is no hard formula by which this decision gets made, but in general metas will be looking for overall experience, good quality editing work, recent activity level, communication ability and forum participation, among other things. If it should be obvious why your request was declined, the meta may not send a note explaining the decision. In many cases, though, a note will accompany the decision. If, after some reflection, you disagree with the decision, you can have a look at the "Complaints" thread in the Meta-Editors forum.

The Other Directory (TOD)

The Open Directory Project's first and main venture is DMoz, the largest human edited internet directory. Here it's often referred to, somewhat tongue in cheek, as "TOD", The Other Directory. While ChefMoz is a separate venture from TOD, the two projects share a similar structure, culture and volunteer editor base. Editors who are active in both directories should not assume that everyone at ChefMoz is familiar with TOD, however.

Special Notes to DMoz editors
DMoz editors will be able to log on to ChefMoz using their username and the password that was current in November 1999. If you cannot log on, send an e-mail to autumn with this information and a few words about why you want to edit at ChefMoz.

Your ChefMoz password is not kept synchronized with your DMoz password. If you want your passwords to match, you'll need to change them in both places. Editor names are reserved between directories. If you are a new ChefMoz editor and would like to sign up for the DMoz directory project, you should use the same editor name and send an e-mail to staff rather than applying as a new editor. The same holds for the reverse situation.

Beta Testing

ChefMoz was opened to ODP editors on December 1, 1999. After two months of alpha testing, staff programmer Autumn Looijen announced beta status on February 2, 2000. This means that ChefMoz is now welcoming members of the public to apply as editors at ChefMoz.

The number of bugs editors are encountering is dwindling rapidly, but ChefMoz is by no means "finished". Technical, user interface and functionality issues are still being worked out and we need everyone's cooperation and helpful suggestions in the fora to do this successfully. If you think you have found a bug, please check the "Known Bugs" thread in the Bugs & Features forum and do a forum search before starting a new thread.

There are a number of ongoing discussions about ChefMoz design and functionality. Your input here would be very welcome. If you think you have a way to make this directory better, the other editors want to hear about it in the ChefMoz fora.

last updated 00/03/28