Posted with permission of, and request by, ebbandflo.
I’m just going to replicate her post, from this thread. I’m too flabbergasted to post any commentary; perhaps my fellow editors will be more articulate than I.
ebbandflo says:
this is probably going to be my last forum post for a while but for all of you curious about the warnings handed out by admin for forum infractions, here’s mine as an illustration.for saying this on Page 7 of this thread;
ebbandflo says:
relax peeps! i’m sure a new set of “guidelines” will be in place within a day or so(said with every ounce of sarcasm i can muster while caffeine-free first thing in the morning)
Posted at 10:52 am, April 10 2007 ESTi received this in my email inbox this afternoon.
“Dear ebbandflo,
This is just a head’s up to let you know you have broken a rule in the Etsy Forums. Please familiarize yourself with all of Etsy’s DOs and DON’Ts, as they will be in affect April 22nd. They are posted on the site under the Help tab, linked in the left sidebar. These are our community guidelines, and we’re very serious about enforcing them to keep Etsy a friendly place for everyone.
The forums and chat rooms are spaces for discussing ideas, asking for help and building a social community within Etsy. If you consistently post negative and destructive posts that do nothing to serve the community, we will remove your forum privileges. Fights, bad feelings and intimidation are results of this type of negativity. We want the forums to be a place where people looking for help and progress can thrive.
Here’s how and where you broke our forum guidelines:
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5076014&page=7
If you break the rules of the Forums again, we will suspend your privilege to post there for 2-4 weeks (length of time is dependent upon the severity of the violation).
Please keep in mind that creating another account for the purpose of posting in the Forums while you are suspended is not allowed and will lead to termination of all your Etsy accounts.
Thank you, ”
bye for now!
Posted at 5:17 pm, April 10 2007 EST
April 11th, 2007 at 1:52 am
WOW.
ROB,
In which of those categories is etsy then?
I think it’s responses like that which make people like me (who posted sympathetically to you above) want to just go away.
Good luck. I think I am done here.
April 11th, 2007 at 1:49 am
Excellent point, Tammy. I’ve made the mistake many times in my life to just about kill myself through over-working to achieve something, even if that ’something’ is never-ending. I’m slowly learning that it’s no way to live my life and it’s not going to help me get anywhere in the long run because there’s always a backlash, whether it’s my health falling apart or bad decisions or mistakes I’ve made because of lack of sleep and stress.
It’s very hard to break the habit when you’ve been in that mindset for a while, but maybe those overly hard working Etsy staff need to try for the benefit of everyone, including themselves.
April 11th, 2007 at 1:47 am
One way to run a business is to maximize profit for the sake of anything.
Another way to run a business is to focus on building community and sustaining growth organically.
Another way to run a business is to exploit poor countries and make rich people richer (Shell and many others).
It’s up to the consumers to decide what they’d like to support. we’re going to keep growing and going through growing pains, I’m sure of that. If we can have your support, we’re very grateful. If you’re going to be part of th Etsy community, your support is doubly appreaciated.
Telling us this is “no way to run a business” is not helpful to me, per the above ways to run a business. We’re learning, we’re growing, and we hope you stick around.
April 11th, 2007 at 1:43 am
(((( Karena ))))
I wish admin understood more the loss of “good will” when mistakes of that magnitude are made without any sort of gesture :(
BTW - does someone have a link to the thread page re: tinymeat’s comment to hyena? I missed that as well.
April 11th, 2007 at 1:35 am
katkrafty…despite lots of emails & a long distance phone call to NY, I STILL don’t know how it happened! It still doesn’t make sense to me. Let’s just hope it doesn’t happen again to some other unsuspecting seller!
April 11th, 2007 at 1:32 am
Thanks Soap & Serena.
Soap…yes, I felt some small gesture of compensation would have been appropriate & would have been a wise business decision on admin’s part. As it stands I have an apology & some contradictory & confusing explanations. I feel really disappointed.
ebbandflo…I know how you feel. Stick with it though…it’s beneficial/profitable to you, so don’t let the whole experience embitter you too much.
April 11th, 2007 at 1:27 am
“I was banned as a seller the other day.”
holy carp Magic Jelly! I had no idea. wow, how does that happen? So sorry to hear that happened to you. I hope you are able to recover your loses.
April 11th, 2007 at 1:24 am
Soap, great post. And Karena, I’m sorry to hear about what happened you you!
Okay, I’m going to bed, and as a warning, I likely won’t be able to make it to a computer until next evening.
April 11th, 2007 at 1:22 am
Stepping back from the personal feelings and issues, and looking at the picture as a whole, I have to say that what I see here appears to be a case of panic, chronic sleep deprivation, miscommunication and gross over-correction on the part of the admin.
Etsy is not properly classified as a “project” anymore, Rob. You’re chose to leave beta stage behind. It’s a business. It’s a community. It’s a corporation. It is not just a project anymore.
It might seem like I’m playing a semantics game, so let me clarify. It *looks to me* like you’re still approaching Etsy as you did when you first started. It seems you had this great idea and wanted to make it happen, so you gathered a team and started working as hard as possible to pull it all together. It was a project, and you put everything into it to get it finished. Once you got it up and running you saw improvements that needed to be made, the site took off and traffic boomed and there was more and more to work on. The project scope kept getting bigger and bigger and you set V2 as the end-in-sight.
Only v2 caused more problems, and instead of getting to an end-point that you could mark as the end of the project and the beginning of the longterm business, you have been forced to continue in the ‘project’ mindset.
This cannot work. You (and the programmers and the rest of the team) cannot continue to put everything into Etsy non-stop for the duration, because this isn’t a project with an endpoint. You need to make a shift from the project mindset to a more long-term mindset. You need to find a way to set schedules and clear job descriptions and feasible timelines and a clear management hierarchy of some sort so that everyone (yourself included) can work more efficiently long-term.
You need to get to a point where no one is operating in a constant state of over-stress and sleep deprivation, or you’re going to end up burning out, or worse. People make mistakes when they’re tired and over-worked, and diplomacy and good customer service gets exponentially harder when there is stress or lack of sleep involved. It honestly looks to me like this might be the biggest part of what’s happening.
Sorry for the long post.
-Tammy
April 11th, 2007 at 1:21 am
(((( Karena )))))
WHOA! I am sorry that happened to you :( If it were me, I’d give you credit or something to make up for a mistake.