Tuesday, February 9, 2010

A word about Treasuries, repetition, and curators

From the editorial desk in response to emilybidwell

If you make claims about faults in the member curated treasuries, then as an employee you should seek out means by which to correct those faults.

If etsy has a policy about not promoting treasuries to the front page that lack alternates, then it should be stated at the bottom of the treasury with the rest of the rules.

If etsy has a policy about not promoting treasuries to the front page that contain items from the curator, then it should be stated at the bottom of the treasury with the rest of the rules.

Why isn't it?
If etsy is misleading its users about a feature, then the fault lies with etsy. Only a total coward with no integrity whatsoever would place the fault on it's users.

So, while this here is a strictly volunteer endeavor, I am fortunate to have a savant at my disposal.
Having read the comments that emilybidwell left in the thread -- I sent The Savant to the treasury. The Savant is the one who generally supplies The List. Yes, I'm capitalizing these things to be An Asshole. It just sounds more official that way, anyway The Savant approves, just like Mikey.

So, The Savant went to the Main Treasury. Mind you, The Savant is a generic run-of-the-mill etsy user. So, The Savant has no admin powers, and therefore cannot see your alternates. But well, fuck it, because The Savant is a savant. You know, one of those phonebook reading "Rain Man" types.

The Savant took some statistics based on the groupings:

category 1: no repeats / no curator featured in the treasury
category 2: front page repeats
category 3: curator featured in treasury

There is no bleed between the numbers compiled in The Savant's assessment. Curators who featured themselves in their own treasuries were treated as their own grouping which negated any qualities of repeats or lack of repeats.

Total number of treasuries sampled: 293 in 1 sitting of the Main Treasury.
category 1 - there's nothing wrong with this treasury: 200 treasuries
category 2 - front page repeats: 51 treasuries
category 3 - curator featured in treasury: 42 treasuries

The Savant looked at 293 treasuries; 200 of which contained no front page repeats or curators featuring themselves. Of those 200 only 4 were blatantly Christian-only, 1 was Jewish. There were no Hispanic, Arabic, Indian, or Asian themed treasuries in the Savant's sample. There were no treasuries involving nudity or Nazism or racism.

So, if you disqualify the 5 religious pandering treasuries from the mix, then 195 out of a sample of 293 is 66.55% of treasuries that ought to be usable with no repeats or crossover or curators featuring themselves. And those were just samples from the Main Treasury.

If there are currently 195 treasuries with no repeats, why then, are there all the repeats? This doesn't square.
It doesn't square more when you consider that 12 front page treasuries per day are specifically selected by the staff. If the etsy staff who are paid via the listing fees of the etsy users have the time to "browse through etsy's categories" to find things, then you should easily be able to come up with 1 to 4 items to use as alternates in the instance that a member-curated treasury does not contain them.

What is the justification for having the ability to select items for etsy curated front page treasuries while not possessing the same ability to add potential alternates to member curated treasuries that don't have alternates? You have the unbelievable ability to compile your own treasuries, but you are suddenly incapable of finding 1 to 4 extraneous items to potentially add to someone else's list? Really? That seems contradictory and mendacious.

The only way that it's believable that etsy employees are incompetent when it comes to generating fresh alternates is if the "search" function is completely useless or your employees are in fact all comatose.

And moreover, the curator featured treasuries: why don't you just use your own policy about promoting a whole or partial list to the homepage? Again, etsy is capable of cobbling together approximately 12 front page treasuries per day, has a policy about promoting whole or partial lists to the front page, and yet will not take a few minutes to edit a treasury simply because the curator put one of their own items in it? How fucking lazy are you motherfuckers? That has got to be the most incompetent pool of humanity on the planet. A cat running across a keyboard could generate alternates and replacements, and probably without repeats.

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Now, because The Savant sat there and stared at the computer for 2 hours reading, observing, tabulating, and otherwise being savant-like, The Savant wrote down some treasuries of note.
It does actually feel kind of wrong to feature these people here, but, what the hell, if it keeps my emotionally dead quasi-autistic number cruncher happy...
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=111757
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=111759
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=111749
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=111735
and The Savant recommends this replacement after 1 minute of searching
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=39101681
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=111905
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=111904
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=111938
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=111937
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=111805
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=111722
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=111667
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=111569
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=111638