In this Storque article, admin gives a preview of upcoming changes to site policies and rules.

Dear Etsians,

One of the things I love most about working at Etsy is that, as a company, we strive to work with our members. We actively engage in discussions with our community, listen to your concerns and use that insight to help us shape the site.

The DOs & DON’Ts of Etsy have been in place for about a year now, and during that time, we’ve gotten a lot of feedback from our community on these site policies, through the Forums, Virtual Labs and emails. Internally, we’ve spent several months gathering that info, discussing and reworking our policies to make them clearer and more balanced — and we’re now ready to share that work with you in a sneak preview.

Why a preview? As I mentioned, it’s important for us to get feedback from the community, to build the site together with you. We’ll be taking a few days to get your reactions and make any necessary final tweaks before we go live with the new DOs & DON’Ts.

For the most part, the policies remain the same, though we’ve reorganized things a bit. There are a handful of substantial changes, which I will highlight below. We’ve also published a special page where you can preview the updated DOs & DON’Ts in their entirety.

Reformatted: The most notable difference in this version is the format, and this is one of the key things we’d like your feedback on. The DOs & DON’Ts are no longer literally “Do/Don’t” statements. It became clear to us that this rigid format was not as helpful as we had originally anticipated. We’ve also added direct links to Help resources for each section. (Although the document isn’t literally “dos” and “don’ts” anymore, we’re keeping the name “DOs & DON’Ts” because our members already know this as the name for our site rules.)

Collective shops: The definition and requirements for collective shops have been clarified. (These are the rules for shops with multiple people involved.)

Conversations: Sending a Convo to notify a seller that they are featured in a Treasury list will no longer explicitly considered “spam.” Instead, common sense prevails — do not use Convos for advertising or promotional purposes.

Shop Policies: With the updated D&D, we’ll be launching a new feature; each seller will have a dedicated page in their shop to outline personal policies on payment, shipping, returns/exchanges and more. Please note that your shop policies may not contradict any of Etsy’s site-wide policies. (More info on this to come soon!)

Non-payment time frame: We’ve removed the site-wide “three days to pay” policy. We trust our sellers to use good judgement in developing their policies and provide excellent customer service.

Feedback: We’ve outlined the specific situations and time frame in which Etsy will consider removing feedback. We will also be tweaking the feedback system’s functionality: Kiss and Make Up will be available for neutral feedback and the ability to leave feedback will now expire 90 days after the transaction date.

Rules for listings: We’ve clarified a few of the long-standing gray areas, such as: defining vintage and supplies, conditional listings/upgrades, graphic design services and explicitly prohibited items.

Community: We’ve added an official anti-spam rule for the Forums and a policy prohibiting solicitation for donations in community spaces.

Teams and Storque: Making a first time appearance in the DOs & DON’Ts are specific sections for participation in Teams and The Storque. Nothing here is really new; these polices just have a new home alongside all the others now.

The Terms of Use, Help Guides and FAQs for the site will also be updated to reflect the changes in the DOs & DON’Ts. Those pieces will launch along with the final version of the DOs & DON’Ts. Once we gather your feedback and make changes (if needed), we will launch everything together. At that time, we will send an email notice to all members. We will also allow a grace period for all members to comply with the any changed policies.

You can see a preview of the revised D&D on their own special page here.

The accompanying forum thread is here.