Done With Ravelry (Again)

I have been interacting with Ravelry again. Ravelry is a website with a huge database of yarn and a bunch of other things. Lots of people have yarn stashes which they list there and some of the yarn is for sale.  I am pretty much done there now. Just for fun I posted a suggestion for yarn sellers there on the community forum today. The title of my topic was Suggestions for Ravelry Yarn Sellers.

Here is what I posted 7 hours ago. I received 13 responses and I did not get a chance to respond. The thread has been marked: This discussion has been marked as resolved. Ha ha, what a joke they are. 

Hi,

I have been wanting to share a suggestion. I am not sure if this is where it needs to go. Anyway, I am finding that there is a problem with communication between yarn sellers and yarn buyers. I have sent many messages to yarn sellers. I rarely get a response. My suggestion is that yarn sellers all have their emails linked automatically to messages they receive here on Ravelry. This way they will automatically be alerted by email when a buyer is interested in purchasing yarn from them. So when they list their yarn for sale, they know they will always receive email messages. This would surely help a lot.

I know it is optional now but I want this automatically done for buyers when yarn is listed. This seems like a very good thing to do. Alot of people don’t realize this option even exists. I have set my profile to receive emails when a message is sent to me here on Ravelry. This is how it is done on eBay, Etsy, etc..

Thanks for allowing me to share my feelings about all of this right here. 

I decided to post their responses. I was not there to answer any of them. I am glad I wasn’t. This is a place that needs a lot of healing. Ravelry has good information but it is full of highly negative people. Yarn stashers are very negative people. I am not one of them. I just wanted to find some hard to find yarn and I did what I could. Oh well. Moving forward and away from the darkness of Ravelry feels very good. I will continue to purchase yarn from eBay and Etsy and a few other places. 

First Response: (posted 7 hours ago)

If you’re talking about sales between members, that has nothing to do with Ravelry, except that they’ve made it possible.

A lot of people that have listed yarn for sale or trade have moved on.

As a moderator and active member in a few groups, I’d go crazy if I received that many emails. It’s not something you can set for just stash listings.

Before I send a message inquiring about a yarn for sale, I check when they last posted or added a project. When it’s been a few years, I don’t bother to contact them.

Second Response: (Posted 7 hours ago)

I think you will find many disagree with that idea. The idea of sales of yarn between Ravelry members is supposed to be a convenience, not a store function. Many people move on from yarn crafts for many reasons – I mean, sometimes life happens. And honestly, I think that would discourage people from posting their yarn for sale. Just my experience and thoughts after hanging out here for over a decade.

Third Response: (Posted 6 hours ago)

But this isn’t eBay or Etsy. They are sales sites, set up specifically for that purpose. Ravelry allows members to say they will sell their stash if they wish to but it is not primarily a platform for selling. There’s a massive difference between saying, “I’m willing to sell my spare stash” and actively being a yarn seller.

Fourth Response: (Posted 6 hours ago)

Fwiw, categorizing a stashed yarn as “for trade or sale” has really never been understood as “affirmatively looking to sell this yarn”. It’s more along the lines of “willing to consider selling this yarn” (As of the moment it’s categorized as such. And there’s no “requirement” that a price be listed or updated over time, that shipping terms be stated, etc, which most people who are in fact looking to sell a yarn usually will do….)

Assuming I was trying to get in touch with a potential destasher within a reasonable period of time after they’d posted, I’d be annoyed if someone who had posted a definite offer/desire to sell yarn in a “destash” thread or group didn’t in turn reply within a reasonable time (which for me would be more than a couple of days), but apart from that, I’d just give a non-responder up as a lost cause and move on….. (And I would absolutely check the date the stash entry was last updated, and whether the member had any publicly visible activity any time at all recently. You can’t necessarily tell whether someone has been online without “doing” something, but if they hadn’t done so in a long time, I’d be figuring there was a slim chance they would in fact respond to my inquiry….)

Lastly, while I think they really won’t even consider putting the suggestion into practice, Ravelry Staff has only (very) rarely interacted with the membership publicly in several years, and there’s no indication that any of them even regularly reads this board, so if you do want to affirmatively bring your suggestion to their attention, you need to use the Submit Feedback form to submit it directly to them. (And as one is advised there, they may or may not respond to it directly at all.)

(ET fix typo)

Fifth Response:  (Posted 5 hours ago)

I don’t know where you are finding yarn sellers — by doing Stash searches?

There is a stickied thread for about the sale/search for yarns on the Yarn board. There’s also the ISO and Destash of Yarn group where people who have posted fairly recently are more likely to respond quickly although not too long ago I responded to someone’s sale post in that group and never heard back. Possibly they never returned to Ravelry and didn’t realize they needed to check their Ravelry mail box.

And sorry for calling names but some people are just flakes about things that are peripheral to their main life activities.

Sixth Response: (Posted 5 hours ago)

But this is not how it is done on Ravelry, which was built as an informational database for fibre enthusiasts. Buying and selling are adjuncts to the site, not the original purpose.

ETA slight rephrasing.

Seventh  Response: (Posted 5 hours ago)

I see in your profile that your main reason for joining was to locate hard to find or discontinued yarns. While the founders have made it possible to trade and sell our yarn, the primary purpose of Ravelry is a database of yarns, patterns, and projects. This will not change. I think you’ll find most users aren’t here for a buying/selling experience. There is a reason that the option to receive emails when you get a PM is just that – an option. I like the way that we can customize our experience on Ravelry to our own preferences, and I think most other users do as well. Ravelry isn’t a storefront.

Eighth Response (Posted 4 hours ago)

If you are looking for active sellers, that is what the destash threads are for.

The rest of us are mostly trying to keep track of our personal stash. And, if I remember correctly, I think you have to opt out of “trade or sell”, so it may get overlooked by people.

Ninth Response (Posted 4 hours ago)

And, if I remember correctly, I think you have to opt out of “trade or sell”, so it may get overlooked by people.

Actually the opposite is true; stash listings default to “in stash (not for sale).” The owner of the yarn has to intentionally add it to the “will sell or trade” tab in their stash area.

Tenth Response (Posted 4 hours ago) 

You opt in to trade or sell. The default position is that unless yarn has been marked as such, it isn’t.

Eleventh Response: (Posted 3 hours ago)

Here’s the information from the Wiki on your Notebook >Stash:

Yarns that are marked all used up, will sell/trade, or traded/sold/gifted will not show in the yarns tab area with the other yarns. Yarns that are your handspun and listed as finished in the separate handspun section will show up in the stashed yarns area. Fiber that is all used up will show up with the yarn that is all used up.

The will sell/trade option is a personal feature; stash is not meant for a business operation. All transactions are, as explained in the terms of use, between Ravelers and Ravelry isn’t responsible for them.

Regarding request for stash that isn’t marked as ‘will trade/sell’: From posts made by Ravelry’s programmer and co-owner: Unsolicited requests for yarn that is in people’s active stash will never be encouraged. Stash not marked as “will trade or sell” has always been “not for sale”.

Also: We’ve never treated yarn that isn’t marked as “Will sell or trade” as up for grabs and any future changes or improvements are not going to support that use. Yarn that you are willing to part with should be marked as such.

Twelfth Response: (Posted 3 hours ago)

Places like eBay and Etsy are set up specifically for selling stuff. They’re designed to be storefronts and people run actual shops out of them

I can’t imagine trying to do that with my Ravelry stash listings. Stash isn’t designed for that at all. Sure, you can mark an entry as being willing to sell it, but everything is handled informally. You talk over dm and come to an agreement, share whatever compensation method you’ve agreed on, and then mail it. There’s no built in systems for it, it’s all manual. If anyone is genuinely trying to run a business this way, I feel like they’re gonna have a bad time

Thirteenth Response: (Posted 3 hours ago) 

I see that although you’ve been on Ravelry for a couple of years, you don’t seem to be very active–not posting your projects, joining groups, chatting, etc. So this may be why you’re not familiar with the way Ravelry is used by most members and why it was set up the way that it is.

I politely suggest you become more familiar with Ravelry culture before suggesting any changes. You may become much happier with how Ravelry works!

To underwrite what others have suggested: I have at times put some of my yarn in the FSOT category. A few years ago I had a sudden, prolonged hospitalization. If I were in the business of selling yarn, I’d indicate a hiatus in the business. As I’m not, I was simply silent on Ravelry for that period and would have been pretty disturbed by any messages in my email system.

End of responses.

Most responses were given several checks up. Practically no one agreed with me. Only the last response, #13,  did I see 3 down votes for what the commenter said. 

I also want to say that this highly negative place is run by LGBTQIA+ people. On the first page of their website is a tribute to “Pride Month”. I see this is disgusting and gross as they are infiltrating children into the acceptance of this extremely negative event.

“Every year in June, Ravelry proudly celebrates Pride Month and makes Pride Flag flair available for decorating your profile pages.”

OK, enough said. I am done with the freaks on Ravelry. I just wanted to buy some yarn that’s hard to find and it was there. Now, I am done trying to find hard to find yarn. I am displaying this negative place on the Internet for what they are: a bunch of stupid freaks who do not get what I was trying to say and will all eventually die with their precious and deadly yarn stashes intact. Goodbye Ravelers. I’m definitely not one of you. 

Goodbye Pride Month too. That whole thing is being purged during Universe Time.