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Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

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Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#201

Post by saurik »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #120
blhack wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is tougher than it seems on the surface. A few years ago, I was involved in planning and running a maker "fest". We invited makers, and artists to the festival to show off their projects, and some of them wanted to sell things. A not-insignificant number of participants who wanted to sell things were just reselling things you could buy at Michaels, or buy online (in bulk) for cheap. Sometimes with just a little…

> I think they're in a really tough spot. When they weighed the options, my guess is that they realized that it would be best to let the consumers just decide what they want to buy. ...but then the problem is, what makes them better or different from any other storefront? If there's a ton of mass-produced product on Etsy, why would I want to shop there rather than on Amazon?

It isn't really possible to sell a handful of random handmade things on Amazon, and that was clearly something you were interested in: it might be annoying as the stuff you want gets buried, but at least it is there?

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#202

Post by semi-extrinsic »

roel_v wrote: post #188
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's quite a few examples of invasive species that have constituted significant threats to human, animal or plant health, for instance. Like malaria, the bubonic plague, minor nuisances like that. For some examples from more recent times, the US timber industry has spent tens of millions of dollars fighting the Asian long-horned beetle, the citrus industry has an extensive quarantine program in place fightin…

Diseases are just that, diseases, not invasive or not. 'Invasive' is about competition, not direct attack. Goes for all your examples. So if you're saying 'don't import diseases' - well yeah. But that's not the point here. Please tell which fungi, bacteria and insects spread through the vector you propose. Where do you think the seed you buy in your local garden center comes from?

I already gave several examples of bad stuff that spreads through the proposed vectors. If you would like some literature to back this up, here you go.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/070151/full

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800904...

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/vbz.2011.0814

The second one of those estimates the economic damage caused by invasive species in the US as $97 billion during the 20th century.

If you would rather like something written for the general public, here is an info page from the Australian government - or you could just try taking your imported seeds with you in your hand luggage when flying into Sydney, and see how well that goes.

http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/invasive-species/...

The seeds you buy at your local garden center are subject to national and international laws, regulations and agreements specifically written based on work of hundreds of scientists to prevent as much as possible the introduction of diseases and other bad things that don't exist where you live. The garden center has to follow these regulations (and document compliance) or they get fined. When you buy seeds on eBay or AliExpress or wherever, there simply are no regulations on the sellers. Do you dispute this simple fact?

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#203

Post by Joeri »

blhack wrote: post #98
mustacheemperor wrote: post #2

The conversion problem on mobile does seem like an issue, but speaking as a former customer of Etsy what drove me away was the selection. Not that it's too small - rather, Etsy is now flooded with thousands of storefronts selling "artisan" pieces that are actually bought on AliExpress or similar and marked up. If they're trying to apply ML to managing customer recommendations, they should figure out how to identify w…

This is tougher than it seems on the surface. A few years ago, I was involved in planning and running a maker "fest". We invited makers, and artists to the festival to show off their projects, and some of them wanted to sell things. A not-insignificant number of participants who wanted to sell things were just reselling things you could buy at Michaels, or buy online (in bulk) for cheap. Sometimes with just a little…

This is exactly the same problem as fraudulent goods in any storefront. You solve it via a combination of policy and user flagging.

Etsy should put it in their terms that you're not allowed to resell goods there acquired from somewhere else. Then they can have a user form where people can file a tos violation with link to the original store.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#204

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

roel_v wrote: post #188
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's quite a few examples of invasive species that have constituted significant threats to human, animal or plant health, for instance. Like malaria, the bubonic plague, minor nuisances like that. For some examples from more recent times, the US timber industry has spent tens of millions of dollars fighting the Asian long-horned beetle, the citrus industry has an extensive quarantine program in place fightin…

Diseases are just that, diseases, not invasive or not. 'Invasive' is about competition, not direct attack. Goes for all your examples. So if you're saying 'don't import diseases' - well yeah. But that's not the point here. Please tell which fungi, bacteria and insects spread through the vector you propose. Where do you think the seed you buy in your local garden center comes from?

Some facts:

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10...

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#205

Post by semi-extrinsic »

roel_v wrote: post #186
verinus wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this change should occur naturally and not be man made- we don't understand complex eco-systems enough to make such servere changes. there is a reason why certain things are native- I would suggest a more humble approach!

Right, because apple trees took a stroll across the Mediterranean to settle in Europe?

No, obviously humans brought them over. Those same humans also brought the rat all over Europe, and with it the Bubonic Plague aka. the Black Death - which killed a third of the human population - full stop. Think about that one for a while.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#206

Post by coredog64 »

chx wrote: post #75
danso wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had forgotten that Etsy changed its policy on allowing mass manufacturing several years ago: https://www.wired.com/2015/09/etsy-embraces-mass-manufacturi... http://abcnews.go.com/Business/etsy-ceo-ipo-mass-production-... Alibaba-resells has had a detrimental effect on Kickstarter and Indiegogo-type platforms too. Many of the things submitted to r/shittykickstarters seem to be resells. Indiegogo doesn't mind them, a…

Indiegogo doesn't mind? That's way too funny, I emailed Indiegogo a few weeks ago before starting a group buy from taobao. I still can't find a platform to organize something like that. Since, this is HN it might interest you all: the top six on https://shop57714512.world.taobao.com/ . Tripod mountable 10"-17" travel monitors.

Why not MassDrop? They are optimized for group buys of things that already exist. Sometimes it is short production runs of niche goods, but I have also seen (and bought) goods available elsewhere.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#207

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

roel_v wrote: post #187
sbov wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Invasive species tend to be a term used for things that thrive and choke out all competition and ultimately come to dominate and severely alter the landscape. Ultimately they tend to be bad for diversity. Sorta like humans, except in plant/other animal form.

Strawman. GP was saying 'don't buy overseas seeds because they are species that are not native to wherever you are importing them to'. Which doesn't make sense - whether a species out competes another doesn't depend on where it's from. Sure, when you introduce some species into certain ecosystems, those ecosystems will change. Nobody's saying you shouldn't think and/or manage. What I'm saying is that the whole 'exoti…

Exotic is bad when it costs the US economy $167bn a year, which is a realistic estimate of the amount lost because of the effects of invasive species of all kinds.

If you think that's a "naturalistic fallacy" perhaps you need to brush up on your economics.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#208

Post by Arnt »

cat199 wrote: post #194
Arnt wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and when the median number of labelings for a given article is near zero (as it will be for handmade artisanal articles), it's very easy to spam in a few five-stars. The crowd you want isn't the crowd you get. So you have to filter or supplement the user ratings/labelings/reviews using either software or inhouse people, which runs into the second problem I mentioned.

Ebay seems to do okay with their buyer/seller ratings..

Yes. And so could etsy for rating buyers and sellers. You can't spam easily if you have to spend money to do it.

But the grandparent suggested crowdsourcing saleable articles, for the kind of articles that are meant to be (simplifying) handmade.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#209

Post by accountyaccount »

vostrocity wrote: post #175
duskwuff wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "other direction" is much more significant, at this point. For every Kickstarter/Indiegogo project that's cloned by a Chinese manufacturer (e.g, Fidget Cube), there's probably at least 10 or 20 "projects" created to resell something that's already available. It's a huge issue for the credibility of both sites.

What's truly fascinating is all of these innovative products made in Asia which aren't officially marketed in the West (thus allowing people to market it in smalltime ways, like Kickstarter). If you go to the right parts of Asia now you will see a wild array of amazing, futuristic products that you can't find anywhere in the US.

A lot of them are kind of misleading junk though.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#210

Post by coredog64 »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #142
mustacheemperor wrote: post #2

The conversion problem on mobile does seem like an issue, but speaking as a former customer of Etsy what drove me away was the selection. Not that it's too small - rather, Etsy is now flooded with thousands of storefronts selling "artisan" pieces that are actually bought on AliExpress or similar and marked up. If they're trying to apply ML to managing customer recommendations, they should figure out how to identify w…

For someone who is into vintage design and handmade interior design pieces, Etsy is still top notch, though. There are some emerging competitors such as Chairish (overpriced), AptDeco (very little worth collecting), 1stDibs ( hilariously overpriced) etc. And there's still eBay. But Etsy is still beating all of them. I have also yet to come across a bad seller there. Everyone I have bought from have not only provided…

I miss regretsy.com. It had the ability to shame some of those vendors while being entertainment.
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