As a follow-up to my previous article and the great forum post discussing it, here's a distillation of topics for further clarification and exploration. I tried to sort the questions into three baskets.

Correct  Tagging & Categorization

castleman says:
Commercial supplies often lack commercial and supply tags. I think some question like 'did YOU make this item?' before someone starts listing and then being required to either list commercial supplies or vintage if you answer 'no' would be a possible fix.

This is an excellent idea. It's part of a larger project that would involve redoing Step 2 of the item listing process, and how it correlates to the top-level categories on the site. These changes are in our minds but not currently on our plates. We'll get there, though!

roccadesigns says:
I would like to know how kits, tutorials, and patterns would be affected by the changes.

If the kits are hand-made (meaning you assembled them), if the patterns are handmade (meaning they are your patterns), then they belong in the handmade supplies category.

creationsbychar says:
I see a lot of commercial supplies mistagged as paper goods (scrapbooking embellishments, paper, etc.). Yes, they are paper but they are not handmade. Will these things also be 'automagically' moved, or will we still need to flag so sellers will have to change their tags?

All such commercial supplies should have supplies as their first tag, and commercial as the second tag. As such, they will be excluded from the default search results, and will be further healed when category bleed is sutured. I hope that this basic level of retagging can be done by the system, but we still need to work out the specifics.

Finding Vintage Items & Commercial Supplies

abelemporium says:
I'm worried that this will only punish informed commercial/vintage sellers that play by the rules and tag correctly, and will be great for the sellers who tag incorrectly. I understand what you are trying to do, but I'm not sure about this solution. I think it will create more confusion, and it still makes vintage/supply sellers feel a bit second-class.

In the long run, we're creating a specialized marketplace for handmade items, as well as vintage items & commercial supplies. Can these three peacefully co-exist on one site? I think so. It will require a bunch of changes, improvements, more changes based on feedback. The more buyers we have coming to the site, the more items that will sell. A larger body of items on the site garners a larger audience. But we need to keep our focus, while allowing for serendipitous discovery.

The fees on Etsy are very low, and we think it's a great deal for anyone listing on the site. I think that we can create a shopping experience that gives all types of items their due.

SweeterThanMeBridal says:
Do you think there is a possibility of vintage shops feeling second rate? And therefore a higher rate of these shops potentially abusing the tags so that they can get more people to their shop?

We're going to keep a close eye on tagging and make sure it's done correctly. We hope to make a good home for vintage items on Etsy, but we will keep the focus on what we started Etsy to support: handmade items.

I think with the changes we'll make in the upcoming months & years, vintage items will have a firmer place inside Etsy. We need to separate them because there's no definition of what vintage is (nor is it possible to create such a definition).  And with their own space in Etsy, we can make specialized shopping tools, provide a better shopping experience, and remove any doubt about their place in the site.

It will take some getting used to. I see it a bit like getting braces. When I was in 4th grade my friend got braces. I thought they were a marvelous novelty, and wanted some of my own. A couple years later, I got them. The pain! But it's a tightening and an adjusting for long-term health. And that's what we're doing here. We'll do our best to be an excellent orthodontist.

Category Bleed

andymathis says:
If art-painting only pulls the category together based on tags under Art, the reproductions of paintings will still wind up in the original paintings category.

The ideal solution here is a filter. Assuming all reproductions were tagged accordingly, there'd be an option to filter them out. This is, in my mind, the correct solution. I do a lot of shopping in the Art category and this would make it much easier to find original works.

We're going to have a round of discussions here inside Etsy before we start another forum thread about this. Please stay tuned!