Anecdotal comment: I've been a buyer of Etsy sourced things since around 2011 (roughly 160 purchases? hard to tell without manually counting, 16 pages of about

Anecdotal comment: I've been a buyer of Etsy sourced things since around 2011 (roughly 160 purchases? hard to tell without manually counting, 16 pages of about 10 per page) - I have watched the features of the site degrade over time around the community aspects, usability features and whatnot - the way making and sharing interest lists was drastically changed, for example, and is now frustrating and non-intuitive. Certain other features were introduced with no way to edit or disable them, such as their Notifications fiasco. I rarely visit the site anymore - even Instagram has better handcrafted makers who are easier to find than Etsy. (contrary to many popular memes, IG has a lot of healthy small communities for collectors and aficionados) Etsy's movement as a site and company drove me away as a frequent buyer of goods - they don't listen to real user feedback (well, mine :)), they're definitely trying to engage the mass market buyer now with quantity not quality and craftsmanship even in search results. Recently. I wanted a silver ring; it took a _lot_ of work to find actual, real handcrafters who bang out the silver bar, solder it into a ring and polish it (I did find two great ones though, a guy in Greece and a gal in Thailand - beautiful rings, bought one from each). But it took me a lot of time and effort just to locate these two actual crafters buried amongst an overwhelming number of pretend crafters selling pressed rings they probably bought in bulk and are just reselling.