BooksandZines-ShowcaseBug
Originally uploaded by thekateblack.
This screenshot shows a site bug which has an item listed in Supplies showing up in the Books & Zines Category Showcase. This link will take you to a screenshot that shows the seller had the item affected by this bug in the Supplies category.
RevolvingDork shut down the forum thread I started to try to figure out how this was possible.
January 26th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
I’m sure they do work hard.
The main problem with that angle of things is the people deciding WHAT is going to be worked on seem to make very poor decisions - how much work went into the gift guide? Especially since they chose to develop it on some strange framework that doesn’t seem to be used by the rest of the site (cherry py), thus making it even more complex? A technological marvel that performs a useless function is not helping anyone, though it may have been the result of hard work.
The article explained some stuff, but really came off like more of the same excuses and explanations that we get in the forums from RD and his ilk about how difficult it is to do anything and how we just need to ‘be patient’. True, they’ve done lots of work behind the scenes - Etsy’s traffic is very high and that takes a sophisticated network and so on. Sure, I’m sure their database requires lots of care and attention, and we’ve had very little data loss over all. They are doing a fine job overall on that aspect. However, now we have a high volume, robust infrastructure serving the same outdated tools that have been badly in need of updating since the day they were released (listing forms…). Etsy has had various developers working for them that could easily have tackled lots of the projects customers declare as being important to them but we have seen very little in the way of real improvements, and everything they do tells me the future projects that are being worked on are probably not quite what I was hoping for.
Experience (the lousy survey, the idea of the gift guides + how it was not even able to keep up the initial load, the overall poor design and usability of the Storque) tells me that any upcoming features are not likely to be very well thought out in either intention, design or execution.
January 26th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Poor photo choice notwithstanding, that was actually one article that shed a little bit of light into what goes on behind the scenes when it comes to developing better solutions for the site.
January 26th, 2008 at 11:26 am
I do think it was a very unfortunate choice of image for that article, but I don’t begrudge them a bit of play time. I’ve never had the impression that they don’t generally work hard. I see a lot that indicates the time could be better spent or a lot more focussed and that certain areas could do with a big boost in skills and knowledge (including in customer relations, clearly!), however.