I’m not obsessed with Ravelry - no, seriously, I’m not
Um. Am I the only one? I think I might be. I received my invite to Ravelry weeks ago and, while I think it’s a cool idea (I was really excited about it when I first read about it on her blog way back in the middle of April) and I think that it’s quite well designed and well made and that they’re doing an amazing job handling the demand of the masses (who knew there were SO MANY knitters online?), I’m just not sure that it has a place in my life except as a research tool. I very well may change my mind about this later but: I really like my blog here and I do understand that Ravelry only gets better the more its users participate, but right now I don’t know that I can justify the time it would require to double-post both here and there. Had Ravelry existed before I started blogging last year I may have just gone that route as I was merely looking for a place to catalog my knitting, but now it’s too late for that!
There are a few things I really like about the site: searching for a pattern I think I might want to try to see it done in other yarns by other knitters, and… well… I like the “UGHs!” Sometimes it’s just more satisfying to see things that didn’t work out right! ‘Cause I have a couple of those hanging around (but well hidden for the time being)…
And here’s my major complaint: Flickr. I’m already hosting all my own photos - so why can’t I just link to them? Maybe it would take a lot more programming to allow that… I don’t know how that works well enough to guess, but I do know that I don’t particularly want to upload all my photos to Flickr just to play along. Apparently this will be changed before they actually officially “open” to the public and maybe I will revisit how I feel at that point.
Please understand that this post is really not intended to be a criticism of Ravelry itself (as I said, the site is really well done) but merely how I feel about where the site fits into my online life at this point. Maybe there are others who feel the same…?
September 13th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Although I’m a Ravelry addict, I can tell you that you’re not the only non-addict. I know of a few people that are annoyed with the Flickr issue. Since I’ve used Flickr for eons it wasn’t a problem for me, but I know what a pain it can be. I hear that they’re going to try and fix it so that people can use photos from other sites, but I’m not sure what the timeline is on that.
October 9th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Here is a tip: search the forums for “beta-phototest” if you prefer not to use Flickr.
February 9th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Yo have a right to criticise Ravelry you know. I have many not so much the site but members .