Etsy is becoming VERY user unfriendly, at least as far as the seller goes.

Up until now, Etsy has had forums, Announcements, Site Help, Business Topics, International, Ideas, Bugs, Critiques, Techniques & Materials, Teams and Events, Promotions, and Etc. You could browse the threads or search for specific info. Well, Etsy has announced that they’re closing the Forums and if you want to discuss anything, you have to join a Team. This is part of Rob White’s announcement, “International and Techniques & Materials are two incredibly broad topics which we have decided are best served not with umbrella teams created by us, but as a myriad of individual communities in which community members can take part. ”

Unless you join, you won’t be able to see the posts. So if I want to find some information, say, about coral, I would have to join a beading team, a jewelry team, and maybe I want information on setting coral in silver, so join a metalworking team and a PMC team, and then maybe a marketing team. Then I would have to search each team’s posts to find any information. Right now they have over 1,100 teams (and that’s before migrating the forums!). Sounds like a colossal waste of time. My personal opinion is that they’re tired of getting bashed in the forums, so they’re shutting them down.