October 18, 2007 at 4:57 pm · Filed under Forums, The Storque · By starrydesigns
stellaloella says:
The Etsy community has grown a lot over the past couple years and in that time an unwritten code of conduct has emerged in the community. Some of these things have evolved into actual rules for the site, but many just remain part of the invisible fabric of our culture.
Like an Etsy version of Miss (er, Mister!) Manners and Emily Post, RobWhite & I have recently started a new column in The Storque on Etsy etiquette. Each week, we’ll discuss different tips for avoiding a social faux pas in the Forums and elsewhere.
If you missed ‘em so far, you can find the articles here:
http://www.etsy.com/storque/search/tags/Forum%20Decorum/
Here’s where you come in! We’d love to get your questions and suggestions for future articles on this topic. What are your best tips for making the most of your Etsy community experience?
(We want to keep this positive and light, so please refrain from listing your pet peeves of posting. Thanks!)
Posted at 2:27 pm, October 18 2007 EST
October 18, 2007 at 12:52 am · Filed under Categories, Listings · By Lis
Sellers listing new items today were confronted with new and, in some cases, seemingly unrelated suggested tags. Below is a screen capture of the suggested tags for the “jewelry” tag in the Glass category.
In this thread, RD explains,
We’re experimenting with increasing the number of suggestions to see how it goes.
All of the suggested tags are either children in the category tree or siblings — meaning they’re in the same parent category.
October 16, 2007 at 4:39 pm · Filed under Treasury · By starrydesigns
The chat and Treasury has been rebooted twice today.
jared says:
The Chat and Treasury server was rebooted a few moments ago for performance reasons.
Everything should be back to normal in 60 seconds or less.
Thanks for your understanding!
Posted at 3:08 pm, October 16 2007 EST
jared says:
Sorry friends, I just rebooted the server again (4:10pm EST). This time without warning!
It should be back up in a matter of minutes. It’s a bit painful to see that ‘disconnect’ but we’ve made some important configuration changes for the win!
Posted at 4:05 pm, October 16 2007 EST
October 13, 2007 at 8:11 pm · Filed under Treasury · By starrydesigns
jared says:
The server the Treasury and the Chat run on was rebooted this evening for performance reasons.
It appears that the people with faster connections are more likely to grab a list during these times when the server starts to lag. We are working on a system to make it more predictable when grabbing lists.
Thank you for your patience!
Posted at 7:56 pm, October 13 2007 EST
October 12, 2007 at 7:05 am · Filed under Categories, Site Use, The Future · By Kate Black
Rokali says: This is an interesting discussion and one we’ve been following closely.Etsy is first and foremost a place to buy & sell handmade goods. Any changes we make to the site will support this.
It is also Etsy’s mission to enable people to make a living making things, and an important part of this is sourcing supplies.
There are two distinctly different audiences for the supplies & finished goods. As Etsy grows, the ration of buyers to sellers keeps growing. In the beginning it was pretty much 1:1, as the people who bought were crafters themselves.
But as we grow, this ratio is now closer to 5:1, with 5 buyers for every 1 seller (we have about 500,000 total members). On a daily basis, looking a new registrations, it’s about 8:1 (about 1500 new reg. per day).
These buyers have no interest in supplies. When they search for things, they want finished products. As such, supplies will be excised from the default search, and we’ll create a special Supplies section on Etsy.
The people who want supplies tend to know far more about the website as well, because they’re most likely sellers here. The beauty of a website is that we can create new space for things as needed (and as we have the engineering resources to do the coding).
As for commercial vs. handmade supplies, this strikes me as a recursive scenario to supplies vs. finished goods. Inside the supplies section there would be a clear delineation.
Ideally such separations will help everyone: buyers looking for finished goods will not have their search results full of supplies; sellers looking for supplies will have a specific place to find them.
source: forums
October 12, 2007 at 1:50 am · Filed under Front Page · By Lis
Etsy admin Jared has created some interesting (and pretty!) visualizations of front page featured items that sold during two weeks in September. This one shows the sold items separated by category:
Jared uploaded this image to Flickr, where he gives more details:
Art is number one seller on the front page of Etsy, followed closely by Jewelry. Accessories and Paper Goods are nearly even, with the fifth most popular category being Bath & Beauty.
The most multiple quantity purchases are in the Toys category. Supplies is found at no. 8. Supplies is currently the number one selling category on Etsy but is ranked low in this graph probably because Supplies are seldom featured on the front page.
Jared has also made a graph of front page featured items that sold in 24 hours sorted by price.
October 10, 2007 at 5:09 pm · Filed under Customer Service, Editorial, Email Notifications, Etsy Communications, Listings, Site Use · By The Janitor
This is an update to our prior coverage.
In a nutshell, Erin previously explained Etsy planned to
use a special tool that was just developed to help us work on tag abuse cases.
She further explained in that same thread
But we thought we would use this tool to see if it is more efficient. We still send an e-mail and an explanation for how to handle things in the future, but the job gets done right away.
(editor-added emphasis)
Around the same time, the Etsy reported via a Storque post on the same topic that they wouldn’t notify sellers of any changes:
Due to the extraordinary volume of mistagging, Etsy will be correcting tags without email notification, but we are happy to assist you in any way if you have questions. Simply email support@etsy.com. We will email you if there is a problem.
(editor-added emphasis)
Erin’s posts and the Storque entry are saying 2 slightly different things. Maybe someone from Etsy can further clarify officially whether sellers will or will not receive prior or after-the-fact email notifications a tag has been removed from their listing.
Here’s the full Storque entry:
Hi everyone!
We have great news. Etsy has responded to the community need for an improved search by developing some tools that will allow us to correct or remove tags that either don’t qualify or that confuse the search engine.
Searching on Etsy will now be more efficient due to Admins’ ability to crack down on tags.
We receive a huge volume of emails about items that have been flagged because they are tagged incorrectly. We understand that most mistagging is a mistake and that when you are tagging your items that you are attempting to get the widest exposure possible for your item. There is no fault in that line of thinking.
However, mistagging items, albeit accidentally, is making it difficult for buyers to search for things. For example, an item tagged as “stocking stuffer” (that is actually a bar of soap) makes the search for handmade stockings impossible. The buyer looking for a stocking finds soap and gets exasperated — and they might leave and not come back.
Due to the extraordinary volume of mistagging, Etsy will be correcting tags without email notification, but we are happy to assist you in any way if you have questions. Simply email support@etsy.com. We will email you if there is a problem.
As we improve this system, we should be able to provide resources that help people learn how to tag. Best of all, we are all going to see a highly improved search function just in time for the holidays.
(editor-added emphasis)
EDITORIAL follows: The part I found a little confusing is the sentence emphasized in the last quoted block. The way the Storque article is written, it sounds as if the tag “stocking stuffer” is meant to apply to “handmade stockings”? I assumed the tag would apply to anything gift-appropriate in the size which would fit into an Xmas stocking. Consistent with my understanding of the term “stocking stuffer,” I’d expect many small items - spanning a range of diverse categories - to be pulled up with that tag and NOT handmade stockings. Using Etsy’s example of the soaps, yes, I’ve used the tag “stocking stuffer” in my listings because based on past experience with retail buyers, including retail outlets, many of my smaller soaps indeed are bought, considered and marketed as stocking stuffers. If a search for “stocling” is pulling up items tagged with “stocking stuffer,” that seems to be a definitional problem (read: search engine parameter) with “stocking” and not with people who are appropriately using “stocking stuffer” for items which are bought for that very purpose.
Maybe someone from Etsy can further clarify officially what is considered a “stockingstuffer” (do they really mean “handmade stocking”?).
October 10, 2007 at 3:22 pm · Filed under Categories, Listings · By Lis
In this thread, Etsy admin Iheartmoustaches gives an update on restructuring supplies category:
We are still working on the category restructuring and are focusing on the supplies section to be the first to undergo the reorganization. … It is not definite, but we are planning on combining both handmade with commercial supplies, and are working on a special filter to separate them while browsing or searching. …
[T]his new category structure will also include a few changes to the item listing process that will prevent commercial and handmade from bleeding together. We are also working on a way to filter commercial and handmade as well.
It is unclear if this is a change from previous admin statements:
* In the near future, commercial supplies will be separated from the handmade items and will not appear in default search results (”opt-in” search status).
October 9, 2007 at 3:48 pm · Filed under Street Teams · By Lis
In this thread sarawearsskirts has asked for email addresses from street team leaders for a new updates email list:
are you an etsy team leader, coordinator or perhaps an etsy teams superstar?
if you’re the head of an etsy team, please email me at teams [!at] etsy.com with your email address and the name of team you’re representing so that we can get you updates for team leaders.
October 8, 2007 at 7:32 pm · Filed under Front Page · By starrydesigns
Here’s another fun activity for you.
EtsyLabs says:
So are you up for another round of the poster sketch challenge?
You want your Etsy picks on the front page you say? I have a little project for you and you gotta go through all the hoops and whistles to get a chance!
Here’s what we’re looking for:
Your best product picks for Girls or Boys ages 8-11!!! What would you pick if you were shopping?
1. Use this poster sketch tool to create the best looking collection of products you might pick for a Boy or Girl age 8-11: http://www.etsy.com/poster_sketch.php
2. Take a screenshot of the poster/collection you just made. (Most computers have a prnt scrn button to get a screen shot)
3. Post a link to the photo of the poster/collection in this thread and specify if the list is for a Boy or a Girl. (you’ll have to host your screen shot in a program like flickr or photobucket first)
4. Post the corresponding items numbers (found at the very end of the listings) in your collection underneath in the thread.
EXAMPLE OF WHAT YOUR POST SHOULD LOOK LIKE:
(this is an example from yaelfran, who made a Dad themed collection in the first challenge. Notice she has the photo link and then item numbers listed below)
——————————————————-
Here’s mine:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yalu/1486022421/
7192848 7313042 6753691 5985467
5980323 7074987 7318501 7277660
7272823 6851696 7315984 7024786
6816825 6806880 7123334 7222194
——————————————————-
Okay go! Don’t forget the Boy or Girl age 8-11 product theme! You have until tomorrow (Tuesday) at 1pm and then we are going to go through all of the entries and post 1 or 2 of our favorite collections on the homepage tomorrow!
What are you waiting for??
Don’t want to make a whole collection? Feel free to just post a few links of your favorite items for Boy and Girl age 8-11 (just remember to specify)!
xoxoxo,
Mary
Posted at 7:18 pm, October 8 2007 EST
