Update December 11:
The missing gift guides are back, along with a few new ones! The only one still missing is “under $15.”
Luxury (I think this used to be the “over $100″ category)
Environmentally Friendly
Pets and Pet Lovers
Art collectors
Jewelry Addicts
Book Worms and Writers
Bag Lady
(new) Crafters
(new) Gourmets
(new) Gag Gifts (Warning: Mature)
December 10:gift guide changes
These categories have been removed:
environmentally friendly
Pets and Pet Lovers
art collectors
Jewelry Addicts
Book Worms and Writers
bag lady
under $15
$100.00 and up
new category under occasions:
everyday
Edit: (by quirke)
These categories are not gone for good, just being moved around, according to this thread.
kfarrell says:
The missing guides will return, no worries! We’re just moving them around a bit :)
January 8th, 2008 at 1:30 am
To be honest, I have some serious problems with staff selling on Etsy in the first place. It seems like a huge conflict of interest, and is something that is just not done in serious businesses. It really skeeves me out, but maybe I’m weird.
December 15th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
2) No Esty employees. Please see my post above for how unethical I think this is.
8) Proper announcement, and an explanation of purpose, rational, and method to the Etsy community.
———
these i think are the 2 most important problems with Etsy, and they’re fixable!!! Admin need to exhibit standard business ethics and practices, and they need to communicate with their sellers.
unfortunately i’m not sure that’s possible under the current management
December 15th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Good ideas, Sandra, though at this point just thinking ‘Gift Guide’ makes me want to reach for the advil, valium or take a nap.
yes, they totally could have done all sorts of things with the Gift Guide. It strikes me as a completely simplistic idea, and even the technical implementation is not overly impressive. it can’t have taken nearly as much work as they suggest. The weird thing is they trumpet it as this big feature that we are all supposed to be excited about, and put on the top titlebar.
“8) Proper announcement, and an explanation of purpose, rational, and method to the Etsy community.”
They clearly don’t understand this one - the recent mention in the forums of the ‘50 super secret projects’, and then, recently I’ve heard more of the ‘we’re working on this or this, but I can’t tell you more now because it’s top secret ;)’ or something.
Surprises are great when someones giving you a gift. When someone is transforming the way your job works, it’s not really that fun to be ’surprised’. These Etsy people don’t seem to understand, most of us are not in this for cutesy fun. People sell on Etsy to make an income, and this is quite serious. The staff seems to be in it to have a fun fling.
December 15th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
I can knock of of the items from my list above.
This is now on the GG front page:
“The Gift Guides are hand picked by Etsy staff from hundreds of thousands of items available. Please see our Categories or other shopping tools for more gift ideas.”
December 15th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
A very few simple rules could have been instituted that would have avoided most of the Gift Guide problems.
1) No duplicates. If a seller is in the GG anywhere that’s it. One slot per seller period.
2) No Esty employees. Please see my post above for how unethical I think this is.
3) Three day limit. All items are changed out every three days. This is much easier that it sounds. All selections can be cued up, and the change is automatically done every 3 days.
4) No redundancy. A seller is only eligible to be featured in the either the GG, the Storque, or on the Front Page once in a given period of time. Say 3 months.
5) GG selections vetted. This would eliminate mass produced items, masquerading as hand made.
6) Statement declaring, “This is only a small sample of the amazing array of wonderful, handmade goodies to be found on Etsy.”
7) A seller/buyer advisory panel to help select items. This would broaden the variety of styles, and make for a better fit of items in the appropriate categories. (also help with 5 above)
8) Proper announcement, and an explanation of purpose, rational, and method to the Etsy community.
December 15th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Thanks for the welcome :) I’m very glad that I’m not the only one who is disgruntled. There’s LOT that I’m unhappy with on Etsy. It’s just too hard to leave though, ya know?