The Link Rally: 23 April 2012

Editor’s Note: We’ve amended the interview below with additional information from Mariana about her Malibu, CA-based operation. Ecologica Malibu is a collective shop, run on Etsy by Mariana with help from a local staff. In keeping with Etsy’s rules, that collective should have been disclosed within the shop; this is now corrected.

At Etsy, we believe strongly in transparency, and we should have done more in this case to live up to that value. As editors, we should have ensured that relevant details about the people and processes behind Ecologica Malibu came through clearly in this interview. In that regard, we failed and we apologize.

We know you expect to see the best of Etsy in the Featured Seller series, and so our Marketplace Integrity team reviews every shop prior to selection. Based on information Mariana provided us, we were confident that Ecologica Malibu fit our criteria. Our policies on member privacy prevent us from disclosing details of Mariana’s sourcing and business relationships; each seller on Etsy benefits from this protection of privacy. However, we can assure readers that we’ve thoroughly investigated all the questions raised publicly over the last two days with Mariana, including sales on other websites and related business entities. Mariana has documented that the furniture sold on Etsy through their shop is constructed in their Malibu studio from raw materials sourced in Indonesia.

Please remember that discussing a specific member, shop or item (either by name or with identifiable hints) in a negative way is not allowed on Etsy, as you can read in our community policies. The community is the heart of Etsy, and there’s a real person behind each name here. Some of the reaction to this feature has really crossed the line and doesn’t live up to our shared standards. For that reason, we’re taking the rare step of removing all comments, negative and positive, from this post. You are always free to share criticisms of Etsy and we encourage you to do so; if you have a concern about another member, please email Etsy Support directly. We are listening. You can leave your further feedback about Etsy and our policies in this forum post. Thanks.

So, Mariah, what do you think of Etsy’s revisionist history and refusal to admit that they promoted a rule breaking shop?

That’s what I thought. Disgraceful.

At least we have amazing videos to distract ourselves with. Here are selections from Alloy Orchestra’s scores to the latest Ebertfest selections. The arranger/musician commentary on why they recorded these tracks for these films is very eye opening. How would someone talk if they had a clarinet stuck in their head? Kevin B. Lee does great work with this kind of video content.

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This entry was posted on 23 April 2012 at 8:22 PM and is filed under Links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.