Summary

  • Ravelry added a waiting-list checker in July 2007, then quickly taught it to resend unclaimed invitations.
  • Its founders chose the admission batch size; a program followed the queue. New servers were only part of the expansion plan.

A website for knitting and crochet had acquired a rather uncraftlike problem: 791 invitations with nobody attached to the other end. That was the number Ravelry reported as unclaimed on 7 July 2007. There were 4,054 people inside and 9,802 on the waiting list. Even the invitation had become a project awaiting completion.

For the two people building the site, the queue also generated email. Would-be members wanted to know where they stood. The founders had invited anxious applicants to ask, and applicants had taken them up on it. Every reply came out of time available to work on Ravelry.

A queue with a return address

On 14 July, the official blog announced a page that let people check their place. The explanation alongside it was unusually plain. The founders chose how many invitations to issue; a computer program sent that number from the head of the list. Order was one decision. How far the queue moved was another.

The site was still in beta, with new versions going out almost every night. From outside, however, Ravelry already looked like a place where everybody else was having a lovely time. Members were finding groups, discussing projects and meeting one another. The front door had become a feature people checked without being able to use the rest of the building.

Then came the useful bit of untidiness. An edit to the announcement, marked an hour later, said the checker now looked for unclaimed invitations and resent them when necessary. Mail could go missing or disappear into a spam filter. Someone whose first check said the address was absent from the list was encouraged to try again.

A person could therefore be waiting for a place that had already been offered. A queue-position display alone would have given that person a very tidy answer to the wrong problem.

More wool, more waiting

By 7 August, the blog reported 7,162 users and 15,432 people waiting. The founders said adding roughly 1,200 people a week was already difficult in their beta setup. Faster admission depended on moving to new servers; even maintaining the existing pace prompted talk of a quick upgrade.

Inside, the attraction kept growing. The same post described pages for pattern sources—books, magazines, pamphlets and websites—from which members could find designs, projects, related groups and discussion. Outsiders could hear about this expanding cupboard of useful things while remaining on its doorstep.

On 19 August, the proposed sequence was equipment installation, testing with some beta participants, moving the site, then larger invitation batches. The hope was 5,000 invitations in the first week in the new home. The founders and volunteer editors would also have to adapt their handling of feedback and contributions as more people arrived.

That last task deserves its place beside the server cabinet. Admission created work after the email had been delivered. Ravelry’s small checker dealt with an earlier snag: making sure a person waiting to join had not simply lost the message saying they could.