In her new movie Meek’s Cutoff, Michelle Williams plays an 1880s woman who can knit, sew, cook, and shoot a gun. The knitting part, however, wasn’t something that Williams relished in:
“I thought I would just have to play the character as if she was a bad knitter. Eventually I did get better and kind of enjoyed it but it’s not something I’m looking to carry on.”
Update: Adam from Etsy commented, and stated that the privacy settings are now automatically set to “unpublic” your info. Unfortunately, your real name (unless you’ve changed it; see below) and your email address are still publicly searchable and can appear on search engine results.
In a rather Facebook-like move, Etsy has defaulted your privacy settings to include a public listing of your favorites and your purchases, as well as make your account searchable by your email account.
To change your settings, log into your Etsy account, and then go to Account -> Settings, and then click the “Privacy” tab at the top of the form. Here is what you will need to change:
In the pic of my account, I’ve already clicked the radio buttons to hide the info, but Etsy defaulted them all to “YES.” While I don’t really mind people seeing my purchases or my faves, if I’m selling a handmade glow-in-the-dark knitted thong as a personal request listing for a good friend I don’t need THAT public. Unless, that is, they’re going to be requesting one at a significant markup. ;)
To change your “real name” on file, click “Profile” in the left sidebar and change from there.
If you didn’t get a notification from Etsy about this, you’re not alone – Etsy did NOT notify its members of this. Even more disturbing is the fact that your real name AND your username are publicly searchable – not only on Etsy, but apparently on general search engines like Google and Bing as well (please note that these links head to some frank-yet-non-titillating discussions about more, ahem, mature items listed on Etsy):
“I just found a woman who’s Etsy profile comes up on Google as the 5th link. I was expecting 6 or 7 pages down, but it’s on the very first page, right after her online resumes,” wrote one concerned user on the Penny Arcade forums. “She signed up a year ago, under the old privacy policy, and hasn’t logged in since 2010. And now I know what [adult item] she uses…”
Whups. Wow, I hope she logs in, and fast!
Anyway, go change your privacy settings … especially if you don’t want your purchases listed on Google!
A hooker (to you non-yarnies: a crocheter, not a Lady of the Evening) writes in and gives her four cents in regard to the pattern demographics on Ravelry. When I say “four cents,” I mean that the amount of analyzing and computing that this senior in high school does shows that she is either A.) extremely passionate about crocheting patterns, B.) too smart for her own good and should immediately head for med or actuary school, C.) has waaaaaaaay too much time on her hands, or D.) a combination of any or all of the above.
She not only analyzes Rav, but looks at the demographics of a few different crochet sites. She notes that “A young person, like myself, can just sort of tell that a site like Crochet Pattern Central was made by someone over 50, and that’s a turn-off.” That’s pretty ageist IMO, and I would argue that the site suffers from a lack of design aesthetic update rather than being built and maintained by an altercocker. The earliest entry I could find for CPC was back in December of 2003; you know, when Geocities and Tripod dominated the free website scene (pre-Blogger, of course).
Some of her more notable observations were that there were very few patterns given a “poor” rating on Rav, there are nearly 3x the number of knitting patterns vs. crochet patterns, and that most knitting and crocheting patterns were listed with a difficult level of 2:
While her observations aren’t going to be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, they do raise some interesting considerations in regard to pattern sites in general and Ravelry. Do be sure to check out the comments as well, which give a little more insight to Sarah’s thoughts and Rav in general.
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