Ravelry and their letter – my thoughts about it

Jessica, who, along with Cassidy, co-founded Ravelry, posted a letter last Thursday regarding the recent Ravelry site updates and events which have unrolled since then. Before you read my thoughts about it, I strongly suggest you read the letter. It’s on the home page of Ravelry and on their blog. Aside from their logo, the blog contains nothing from “New Rav” and should be safe for anybody to read.

So… here are my thoughts, as I break down the different topics the letter from Jessica covers, in the same order as the letter. Apologies in advance for how insanely long this is, but I had a lot of thoughts about the letter, and didn’t want to assume everybody reading this post had been following events closely.

Opening Apology & Delay in Response:

The apology from Jessica was, to use one of my husband’s favorite phrases, “weak sauce”: “I first would like to apologize for any stress and uncertainty that the Ravelry site redesign has caused”

There are a couple issues here. “Would like to” is round-about and less direct that simply saying “I apologize” – it suggests you want to apologize, but can’t quite do it. Secondly, “any stress and uncertainty” again creates ambiguity. If there was stress or uncertainty, they would apologize for that, but it’s existence isn’t quite proven. What would have been better: “I apologize for the stress and uncertainty that the Ravelry site redesign has caused to many”

Direct, unambiguous, and recognizes that there’s zero doubt that many people felt stress and uncertainty as a result. But even this would have been too weak, because people haven’t just reported stress and anxiety. They have also reported that the site is inaccessible to them due to fears of harm it could cause (migraines, and/or seizures). I mean, sure, this causes anxiety. But it’s not unfounded anxiety. This lack of acknowledgement continues with the statement “It pains the whole team and myself that Ravelry… caused any additional anxiety to anyone at all.”

Now, I know in the highly litigious nature of U.S. society that there might be genuine anxiety about coming right out an apologizing for causing migraines and seizures (it’s also really hard to prove any particular migraine or seizure was the result of the website. Correlation doesn’t equal causation, but a pattern raises real concerns).

But I’m pretty sure there had to be a better way to acknowledge that people weren’t just stressed, uncertain, and anxious because the aesthetics were different. For example, adding “especially anxiety anybody experienced and continues to experience regarding their ability to use Ravelry safely.” This would show she understands the safety concerns people have and that these continue.

I do appreciate the commitment to include all new updates going forward on the blog, so people don’t need to log into Ravelry to get to them. But with such a weak start to the letter, it’s not setting people up to have much faith in the rest of what Jessica says. A much stronger, more encompassing apology is still greatly needed.

Forum Threads, Social Media, and Cassidy

First, as somebody who has worked in Technical and Customer Support, and business owner of a web property at the company I work for… I completely get Ravelry’s need and desire to funnel all feedback through a narrow number of channels, especially with such a small team to cover them. I am sympathetic with those who feel their ability to express themselves fully has been reduced, but there are still channels to discuss with fellow Ravelers inside Ravelry (dedicated groups) or outside Ravelry. In posting to the main “For the Love of Ravelry” board, people expect Ravelry to be able to read, process, and respond to their posts. And in the past, at the normal volumes, this mostly worked. The launch of New Rav increased the volume immensely.

Every time I’ve worked on a project in which we needed to get feedback before and after roll-out, we always created designated channels for that feedback. This was never an open chat forum, and it was a big mistake for Ravelry to roll out the updates without a better plan in place than “use the forums like usual.” So when Jessica states that “email has proved to be the only way that we can actually take in and track the flood of input and be able to do the real work of improving the site” I absolutely believe her, but I also get why externally it looks like Ravelry was shutting down open communications. Ravelry pivoted too late to do the right thing from a project and case management point of view, setting themselves up for failure in the public eye.

Now, regarding the news that Cassidy has been asked to step back from Social Media, and otherwise engaging in Customer Support type inquiries – I think this is the right choice for Ravelry. For those not aware (and I don’t think I know the full extent either), Cassidy has posted some cruel social media posts as well as sent emails suggesting that specific people are liars or otherwise deliberately trying to harm Ravelry, when they are deeply concerned about accessibility and the fact that they cannot use Ravelry right now.

Cassidy has shown she is not currently able to fulfill public facing and customer support roles and manage these tasks constructively, so it is quite logical to pull her away from these responsibilities. I think a lot of us conflate Cassidy with Ravelry, because she has so often been the public face, and I think that’s been harmful to everybody here. While Jessica indicates that Cassidy is “ashamed and sincerely sorry”, no person can truly apologize on another persons behalf. With regards to those who have been hurt by Cassidy, I’ve seen comments along the lines of “She says she needs to protect her mental health, but what about ours?” and it sucks, but that’s part of the problem with mental health. No amount of wishing for an apology is going to make it happen until she deals with her own issues, anymore than you can tell somebody with depression to just stop being sad, even if their sadness is hurtful.

I’ve seen and experienced multiple times in my life where somebody’s personal struggles reduced possible outcomes to “bad” and “worse”. When my mother was first diagnosed with breast cancer, one of her closest friends more or less dropped out of my mom’s world. A long time later, my mother received a letter in which the friend explained she hadn’t known how to deal with my mother’s life threatening illness. It was a sort of apology, but never the less, my mother was deeply hurt. Afterall – she was the one at risk of dying. But I wonder – if her friend had forced herself to stay in contact, would it really have been any better? If she wasn’t in a place to deal with the thought of a close friend dying, might she have done more harm by trying to stay in my mom’s life? I don’t know… but I don’t think there was any nice solution.

This feels so so much like that to me… where one party is in a place personally where they can do harm… or less harm… Cassidy stepping away for a while may be the “less harm” option. Maybe in time Cassidy will be able to provide a genuine apology, and maybe she won’t. Just like nobody can make her apologize, she cannot make anybody forgive her, nor does anybody owe her forgiveness.

Jessica can, and does, apologize that Ravelry as a whole didn’t realize sooner what was happening. I feel like I just have to take her at her word for this. It may feel incredulous that she didn’t know… but I don’t know how involved in social media she’s been historically, and people really can miss a lot when focused on something else (like figuring out how to improve the platform) and believing somebody else is handling that particular task. However, I think there is evidence that Jessica is taking responsibility because of the decision regarding Cassidy’s role going forward. This is Ravelry prioritizing their need to be able to constructively interact with their community over Cassidy’s pride or “tradition” regarding who does what.

Lastly, I feel like it’s too soon to see if Ravelry is using the excuse of Cassidy’s mental health as a scapegoat. Frankly, we’ll have to see in the next couple weeks if the tone and approach to responding to people does change. People who are struggling deserve sympathy, help, and a bit of grace, but they absolutely can do harm, sometimes immense harm. It’s not scapegoating to recognize that.

Why not return to Classic Ravelry

Oh man… I think we all wish somebody from Ravelry had said this sooner:

“We have also been searching for a consultant with a specialization in visual web accessibility that we can work with on an ongoing basis, as the people we have spoken with so far were only available temporarily. We are continuing to research, and this is a priority for us.”

I also wish Jessica indicated more clearly how long they have been conducting this search, but I am glad it’s happening. Since the rollout, I’ve felt much more affinity with the people calling on Ravelry to bring in a professional than those saying that website accessibility is easy, because it isn’t.

One part of the letter which I expect some won’t believe is regarding why they won’t roll back the whole site to default to the old Ravelry. I know plenty of people believe that Ravelry is being stubborn, or doesn’t want to waste their investment. Jessica asserts that they didn’t roll back because, despite all the negative feedback and comments, on the balance, more people found the new site design easier to use. Again, we aren’t talking aesthetics – we’re talking accessibility and usability. She specifically indicates positive responses from people with disabilities and vision issues.

And, well, I think this really could be true… first, because it’s true for me. The longer I use the new site, the more I’m aware of how much I curtailed my use of the old site, especially forums, because it was hard for me to use if my eyes were fatigued. I was attributing my inability to stay focused on topics and painful eye strain to long work days, but now I realize how much the old site design contributed to that. The new site (especially with the further improvements over the past month) is far easier for me to use. Secondly, as I indicated in my last post on the site changes, you can actually measure some of the improvements to things like color contrast, ARIA, etc… and the new site performs better than the old on these measures. These standards were developed specifically to help websites improve accessibility.

Jessica also states the truth when she says “We are also finding that specific elements of the new design that some folks say affect them negatively are, to others, improvements compared to the old site.” For example, high contrast is critical for some, and detrimental to others.

Again, none of this dismisses or invalidates the concerns of those who find the new site hard or impossible to use. It just explains why, when faced with the decision to keep moving forward or go backward, Ravelry decided to keep moving forward. Nor does it mean that the work is done. Those who are working hard to keep the discussion going and pushing Ravelry to continue improvements deserve our support, and everybody should be speaking up for more accessibility.

Hiring more People

Its been pretty clear from the introduction of the new Ravelry and ensuing fallout, that Ravelry is a very large website for such a small team. As Jessica explains, while they are a for-profit business, it’s important to them to allow people to use the site for free, which means that they have to have other revenue sources, such as ads. But it’s also important that the community be for all, so they don’t want ads to be so expensive that only the biggest players can buy them. So this limits revenue again… and leads to a team of four full time workers… with a tight budget. A for-profit company doesn’t always mean a company trying to maximize profits.

I’ve seen a couple people cite an “estimated worth of the website” from WorthOfWeb.com of over seven million as evidence that Ravelry totally could hire more people, and expensive experts, easily. I pulled up the site too, and in scrolling down and looking over the information in more detail, this estimate (and it’s an automated estimate based on easy to pull web stats) also indicates that annual revenue from ads is estimated at $738,000. Again, this is almost entirely based on public Alexa Traffic Rank data and their idea of what ads would be sold at. So really… only Ravelry knows if this number is anything close to what they make.

But assume it is… let’s give our 4 people working full time a nice wage of $70k per year on average (about the media wage for a web developer in the US)… that’s $280k… so now they have $458k for all their operating expenses – storage for all of our photos, forums posts, projects, etc… Bandwidth for the 800K + visitors per month… Backups of the site… As individuals we’ve gotten used to the idea that this stuff is cheap, and it really is for most of us at a personal scale. But at the scale of a website like Ravelry? I expect the bills are rather higher than you realize, unless you work at a large company budgeting for these sorts of things. And again, this $738k in ad revenue is a hypothetical from a free web tool that uses the free Alex Traffic Rank data and their own estimates of what an ad is being sold for.

Basically, Ravelry is running into a conflict between their desire to keep the website accessible to all no matter their income (users and small designers) which means forgoing potential revenue, and making their website more accessible to all, no matter their disabilities or limitations, which requires more revenue to hire people. Right now, they are trying to make the most of what they have under their current revenue model.

What Comes Next

First, I know a lot of people who took (or tried to take) the survey will have a knee-jerk reaction to the statement “We are working on more customizations based on survey results” because there is a strong feeling out there that the survey was a load of baloney. I had some issues with the survey: enough people complained of drop shadows, they should have removed those or drastically changed them; the opening instructions didn’t clearly indicate that they wanted responses based on readibility/useability, not pleasing aethetics (this goal was referenced in the name of the survey only); and the image file names didn’t correspond with the answer names.

But as for the complaints about length or seemingly repeated questions – unfortunately this is what is needed to try to get at how small changes to the site can have a big impact on how people can use it. It’s like getting your eyes checked for a new pair of glasses, not taking a quizz to learn your fiber animal. I asked my husband, who has a PhD and background in survey methods, to look at it with me when I took it. He said it was clear that whoever designed it had some knowledge of good survey design for their purposes. In other words, it wasn’t a fun or enjoyable survey experience for us respondents, but it probably netted Ravelry some valuable data, especially when combined with the qualitative data they’d already received from the emailed feedback people sent in.

All in all, I feel like this letter brought some clarity to what has been going on, but is really only the first very small step towards their goal of helping “folks to enjoy Ravelry and gain trust in us again.”

For me, it demonstrated Ravelry is taking some steps down the path towards even more accessibility, more transparency, and listening more closely to the needs of a community which is trying to make itself more visible. Proper review and roll out of further changes may take time (perhaps months), and I’m willing to give them that time if they continue to demonstrate they are on the right path.

But, I know trust is far more easily lost than won, and so I understand those hesitant to extend any trust just yet. I will keep watching what Ravelry does, and sharing my thoughts and feelings as I’m able to put them in words.