On Databases and Building Community

On August 18th, Ravelry reached the 8,000,000 member milestone. For the eight years I have been blogging, I have been referencing my crafty life on Ravelry. To say it has touched many parts of my creative life would be a vast understatement.

Ravelry started out as, and continues to be at its heart, a big, whomping, database. While it has morphed into a place where many indie designers also sell patterns - that is its side hustle. I thought some historical numbers might be in order, taken from and inspired by the thread that monitored the countdown to the 8 million member mark. I also need to add that the watch commenced in May of this year, and I didn't check it out until July. Some historical Ravelry member numbers:

10,000: Sept 9, 2007
100,000: Mar 21, 2008
500,000: Nov 5, 2009
1 million: Nov 13, 2010
2 million: Feb 29, 2012
3 million: Mar 8, 2013
4 million: Feb 28, 2014
5 million: Feb 1, 2015
6 million: Feb 7, 2016
7 million: Mar 20, 2017
8 million: Aug 18, 2018

I am Raveler #389,797. I joined the database of awesomeness July 11, 2009. At that time, one had to request to be a member and then wait until a confirmation email was sent. As I recall, it took perhaps a day or so for it to come. I was not bothered by the wait, although I had no idea the degree to which my life would change with that simple confirmation. 

While writers have tried to understand and comment on the phenomenon that is Ravelry, the database gathers members together through, arguably, its most vital function - a keeper of member projects. As of this morning, Ravelry members have created 18,431,442 project pages. Yes, you read that correctly - over 18 million projects! That's a whole lotta yarn, folks. The database this morning also told me that 14,171,198 projects were actually completed, 2,087,967 projects were in progress, 421,668 projects were ripped apart (or more affectionally known as "frogged" in the yarny community), and a final 389,259 projects were officially in hibernation (a designation for projects that one just does not want to face, for a whole host of reasons). 

All Ravelers use the database differently. This is the beauty of Ravelry and its community - one can partake as much or as little as one wishes. I record (most) of my projects; I can get inconsistent about creating pages for design samples and, quite frankly, that's something I want to change so that I can more accurately record what I've made. Since I am also a designer, I create design pages for many of my designs (although designs published by third party publishers fall within that entity's purview to create). Design database pages, however, contain different information than project pages, and thus my willingness to get it together and add appropriate project pages. Project pages can be a wealth of information if the member kept (and is willing to share with the community) notes on project creation and completion. In fact, Ravelers can leave a mark indicating whether a project's notes were helpful. It is that type of feature that makes community-building so relevant and easy on Ravelry.

Those almost 500,000 frogged projects I noted above can also be a great resource for some Ravelers; however others (myself included), do not necessarily want to keep a record of things we've unraveled and/or otherwise taken apart, so of course there are a certain amount of deleted projects that after the initial page set-up, never get recorded in any category. 

My project page for The Festival
Shawl has been viewed almost
5,000 times and has helped at
least 20 Ravelry members.

Then there are times when designs leave and/or otherwise are retired from the database. One in particular, I learned this week, affects my own personal design history: the designer of the Festival Shawl, one of the first designs I worked on and the project page from which the design's sample originates, retired it, along with the rest of her designs, from Ravelry. This design, the pattern for which was a free download, was a crochet shawl favorite: 602 projects and found in an additional 1,849 queues. The only reason why I discovered the pattern had been retired was from a fellow Raveler who, through private message, wanted to know how to actually download it (which will no longer happen on Ravelry). I respect the designer's decision, but did try to keep the pattern alive by offering to host it on my design page (with design credit given to her, of course), but to no avail. While the designer was a little crabby with me, I do understand how difficult pattern support can be. I know you will be shocked: some people can be rather demanding. Given the extreme popularity of the design, I expect the designer received her fair share of unreasonable requests and comments. I am so sad to see it no longer available, and for anyone who downloaded it prior to its retirement from the database, I would urge you to make it in honor of the designer who worked so continuously to ensure its success. 

Nevertheless, even in design retirement from the database, Ravelry continues to build community. It doesn't get much better than that.

Well, perhaps at 10,000,000 members it may get better. I hope I am around to find out.