Our thoughts on Ravelry
Published on 25 June 2019 2 min readRavelry has been an incredible inspiration to the knitting and crochet community ever since its launch. We have huge admiration for the community they've built. Having worked closely in support of Ravelry to solve EU VAT issues for the designer community, we can say, hand on heart, that they are as thoughtful and kind, as they are talented and dedicated. Their values and position of inclusivity align with our values and we look forward to working with them in the years to come.
Forums are the backbone of the Ravelry community, and we believe Ravelry, as a private company, has the right to moderate these forums in the way they believe is best. We’re sure the decision to limit certain kinds of activity won’t have been taken lightly by the team.
LoveCrafts and forums
Unlike Ravelry, LoveCrafts doesn’t have forums - so we don’t have the same circumstances that prompted Ravelry’s decision. We do offer designers a platform to sell patterns, and a community where makers can post their projects and share their creativity, and our policy on the content there is clear: exclusion of, or discrimination against, anyone is absolutely unacceptable, and we will not support or tolerate hateful speech. Any patterns or projects that violate our policy will be removed from LoveCrafts.
We will continue to work with designers on specific issues where patterns might cause hurt or offense, so that the home we are building for makers online remains welcoming to the entire community. Find out more about the work we’re doing towards our vision.
LoveCrafts believes
At LoveCrafts we believe the free exchange of ideas and speech is the backbone of our society. Even when we don’t agree with each other, we know that healthy tension between viewpoints is vital to get the best results.
We believe that the solution to disagreement and conflict is not censorship, but more discussion.
That said, LoveCrafts is founded on the values of kindness and love. We want to build a home for all makers around the world and in that home, there is no room for hate. Period. We don’t allow hateful content, or content that a significant number of our community will find offensive, on our site. We will listen to our makers, do our own internal research and come to a decision.