May 19, 2007 at 7:20 pm · Filed under Site Terms · By GreenMamba
In this thread, Dillinger (an Etsy Admin) provides guidelines for vintage:
Dillinger says:
If there are any that are 20 years or older, and have a collectible/charming quality, they can be sold on Etsy in the vintage category!
Posted at 2:37 pm, May 19 2007 EST
Dillinger says:
The general idea is, that it be 20-25 years old, and collectible/charming/special in some way. Basically the 80’s is the most recent era we really embrace for the vintage section. From there it can go back all the way to including antiques. I would encourage people to sell stamps, old books, records, retro furniture, housewares. The items should really be collectible or capture the feeling of the time period they are from. Hmmm…lemme know if you have any items to discuss! You can always email support to check on this sort of thing too.
Posted at 2:54 pm, May 19 2007 EST
(Thanks to quirke for the tip!)
EDIT: May 22 by Soap
Emily just posted another minimum age for “vintage”:
emilybidwell says:
We ask Etsy sellers to list items that are generally over 15 years old, and have a quality that makes them unique or collectible.
Are these definitions in the DoDs?
EDIT: May 22 by Soap
Who needs a bright line? Another Admin “clarifies”:
Chillionaire says:
Emily said “generally”.
There is no cut-in-stone definition for “vintage”, so it’s is just as hard for us to make an exact rule. Also, it can be difficult to date a lot of items.
Posted at 6:29 pm, May 22 2007 EST
Chillionaire says:
I think I mean cut-and-dry or set-in-stone :)
—->Lori40
Posted at 6:44 pm, May 22 2007 EST
Like I revised the title to read - take your pick or your guess is as good as admins’ because it seems to get less and less clear what might be allowable:
Dillinger says:
Well, there are many definitions for vintage, which is a different issue than what is appropriate for our category. For various types of items, the age restrictions might differ. I would say for most items, 20-25 years is a good number, but for some things 10-15 years may be enough. We will discuss this and get back to you guys! The age is not the only thing we are having to define, as you can see by the concerns raised here.
Posted at 8:23 pm, May 22 2007 EST
EDIT: May 23 by Soap
Earlier Emily (Admin) alluded to a definition of vintage as anything at least 10 years old. We didn’t report that here because it seemed clear etsy was not using this standard and Emily mentioned that boundary in passing. In reiterating etsy was not using 10 years as part of the criteria for etsy “vintage” inher locking post to that same thread, Emily also said:
*Etsy does not subscribe to this definition, but our definitions are based on research of the term*
*Etsy reserves the right to act as curator when reviewing listings and will act with common sense based on the basic definitions of Vintage*
[editor-added bolding]
But the question remains, what IS the definition they are applying and expect everyone to adhere to? Clarity, please?
edit Nov 2 by JB
a more clearcut answer about “how old is vintage”?
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5300789&page=2
RobWhite says:
Vintage items are allowed on Etsy, and we define the term “vintage” as 20 years old or older.
May 18, 2007 at 7:23 pm · Filed under Bugs, Site Maintenance · By starrydesigns
The site was down for approximately 10 minutes today. It has since been fixed.
RevolvingDork says:
We had a little hardware failure that rendered the site inoperable for roughly 10 minutes — our failsafes kicked, in, and everything is running normally again.
We’ll be monitoring the site extra-closely for the rest of the day to ensure that everything stays operational.
Posted at 5:46 pm, May 18 2007 EST
[source]
May 18, 2007 at 6:08 pm · Filed under Bugs, Treasury · By Serena
The treasury is in a tough patch and needs an intervention. Admin jared responds in the forums to a bug that causes treasury lists to lose views:
jared says:
It’s complicated, but what we’re beginning to see here is the Treasury totally boiling over.
The Treasury needs a major overhaul. It’s something we’ve had planned for a long time. There is even a significant amount of code work done towards this goal. Unfortunately, other, more pressing matters are commanding our resources.
We’ll do our best to see the Treasury gets it’s due attention soon. Thanks for your patience.
Source: Forum thread
May 16, 2007 at 3:46 pm · Filed under Contests, Miscellaneous, Seller Opportunities · By Elizabeth
Etsy and Instructables have partnered to launch the Sew Useful contest to celebrate our two communities. Entrants will bring their skills to practical projects that make life easier, then share the how-tos.
Because Etsy is a community marketplace for independent artists and craftspeople and Instructables is a web community of makers who share homebrew how-tos, we figured this contest would be an excellent endeavor. Etsy is all about bringing your ingenious creation into the world. When you add the Instructable tutorial, you further help out human kind by passing on the know-how. What better way to live the handmade lifestyle and sharpen your competitive edge?
Complete info in the blog and on the contest page.
May 16, 2007 at 1:22 pm · Filed under Site Maintenance, Treasury · By starrydesigns
jared says:
Hello all, I’ve asked the Treasury to meditate while I perform some routine maintenance.
The down time should be no longer than one hour. All lists should remain intact during this time. This down time will help the Treasury in both speed and reliability.
Thank you!
Posted at 1:18 pm, May 16 2007 EST
EDIT
jared says:
The Treasury should be fully restored now. Thank you for your patience!
Posted at 1:37 pm, May 16 2007 EST
May 16, 2007 at 7:57 am · Filed under Miscellaneous · By Elizabeth
If you’re in Brooklyn, NY or San Fransisco, CA, check out the opportunities:
http://blog.etsy.com/jobs/index.html
Please note:
stellaloella says:
As a company, we currently have several people who work remotely (myself included). However, that’s a pretty challenging set-up.
So moving forward, we prefer all new hires be based in Brooklyn (or San Francisco, if appropriate).
Posted at 11:30 am, May 15 2007 EST
May 16, 2007 at 2:09 am · Filed under Features, Search · By Elizabeth
In this thread:
jared
Etsy Admin says:
This weekend on my own time I started work on an idea inspired by a particularly excellent searching technique using tags.
Basically you begin with a very general tag search, ‘glass’. Thousands of results come back. You refine your search slowly by adding more tags, ‘glass cubed’. Then ‘glass cubed retro’. You also remove unwanted results by adding negative tags, ‘glass cubed retro NOT vintage’. Until finally you arrive at a fairly small set of listings resembling almost exactly what you’re looking for.
Many of you use this technique. I was inspired when I heard office legends of Stellaloella’s marksman searching abilities using this method.
If you have some time, help me test an implementation of this idea:
http://www.etsy.com/tag_fractal.php
Quick instructions:
* click a tag in the fractal, listings will come up below
* click more tags in the fractal, the search is refined
* hold down CONTROL (or Command on Mac) to exclude a tag ie. ‘NOT clowns’
* scroll through listing results using buttons similar to the Time Machine 2
* click ‘All Categories’ to restart your search
It requires Flash. The work is unfinished. This is just a test and not an official supported feature. It may be modified or removed at any time.
I need your feedback to help make this something really useful for finding great stuff. Please post all comments and critiques here in this thread.
Please keep in mind this is just a fun project while Etsy engineering continues to work on some exciting new developments.
Posted at 2:52 pm, May 15 2007 EST
I’m in favor of anything to improve the search, although I sure wish they would make fixing the main search a priority.
Anyway, give it a whirl, and if you don’t mind, let us know what you think.
May 15, 2007 at 1:28 pm · Filed under Bugs, Site Maintenance · By starrydesigns
MikeH says:
One of the servers involved with listing and relisting items was down for a period this morning. The problem has been resolved at this time. If you were unable to list or relist items, please try again.
We are sorry for the inconvenience.
Thank you,
Mike
Posted at 8:59 am, May 14 2007 EST
[source]
May 15, 2007 at 11:34 am · Filed under Bugs · By starrydesigns
Users are experiencing site slowdowns and error pages. RevolvingDork (Chris) responds in this thread.
RevolvingDork says:
Some sleuthing has determined that there is a laggy step in the between our servers and some ISPs… we’ll call some folks up about it now.
Posted at 11:30 am, May 15 2007 EST
EDIT
RevolvingDork did some investigation and further explains in this thread.
RevolvingDork says:
After hearing reports of users having connection issues, we’ve determined that there is an issue with one of the backbone ISPs that route traffic to the Etsy servers.
This is sporadically causing some users to see pages slowing down or not loading at all.
Unfortunately, this matter is out of our hands, as we don’t control the networks that route traffic to our servers. We are attempting to get more information from the ISPs to find out when they plan on rectifying the matter. Hopefully, the issues will cease on their own shortly.
We’ll post more as it comes…
Posted at 11:42 am, May 15 2007 EST
EDIT
RevolvingDork says:
The issue, unfortunately, is still occuring. It seems to be happening during a hop directly in the middle of the route ( at least between philadelphia and our servers in jersey. )
If you are curious and want to see the step at which your connection to Etsy is being thwarted, here are the steps (for those running windows):
Go to Start -> Run
type “cmd”, press enter
At the prompt, type “tracert www.etsy.com”, and press enter.
You’ll see each step as it happens, along with the time that steps takes. Any step that appears with an asterix is timing out, and slowing you down.
Posted at 10:31 pm, May 15 2007 EST
May 14, 2007 at 12:18 pm · Filed under Showcase · By starrydesigns
Admins have listened to the pleas to have Showcase go on sale at different times to be fair to global users. Here is a summary of the info provided by Admin in the blog:
Spots for May 16 to 29: Sales start May 14 @ 6pm EDT
Spots for May 30 to Jun 12: Sales start May 15 @ 12pm EDT
Each person is only allowed 2 spots for the entire 4 weeks.
Please proceed to the Showcase Gateway to purchase your spots at the correct time.
