Go with the logical side of your brain. You don't have time to get royally pissed. It's the name of a dormant group for community members on a crafts website. The governance of the site is in the end entirely up to the owners--they could have just shut it down.

The part about not asking for what to change it to is annoying though. Maybe you should email them and be like "I would have appreciated a heads-up that the name needs to be changed. We would have come up with an non-conflicting name that we preferred. Can this be done now?"

Maybe send them a polite-yet-confused note? Along the lines of "I'm confused. A few months ago [Etsy person's name] and I spent a lot of time sorting through the Metsy team emails so that our group could retain the name. I don't understand why it needs to be changed now?" Maybe even forward some of the emails?

What they're doing sucks, but it may be a mix-up, and even if it's not a mix-up, treating it as if it's just a mix-up might be the best way to get it unmixed.

On second thought, I think it's okay to email the CEO or contact them otherwise about your aggravation (doesn't etsy have virtual Town Halls? they used to back in the mists of time). The tone to take though isn't OH MY GOD HOW COULD YOU, but more like "I can accept this change, but the process is needlessly antagonizing. I just want you to know so you can handle this better in the future."

Yeah, it's definitely not a mix-up. When the roster thing happened (basically they started dumping everyone from the Mixed Media group into the Metafilter group, probably because Mixed Media is very large and active and refers to themselves as Metsy everywhere online), I very specifically stated in the emails that these are the people in the group named Metsy, and these are the people in the group that calls itself Metsy, and then they replied with "This email is confusing to me. Please just let me know if YOUR Team is listed correctly." So I was all, fine, just fix the people in my group and let the Mixed Media people sort theirs out. This is the same person who sent the "we changed your name" email later.

But I guess someone from the Mixed Media group raised a bigger stink than me and got someone to really do something about it. I'll definitely contact the CEO though - I feel a bit like I've been steamrolled by the older, more established popular clique, y'know?

"I'll definitely contact the CEO though" that's good. CEO's hate it when they have to deal with real world issues. But take my advice with a grain of salt as I like to be a thorn in the side of corporatism.

Etsy is just... gah. Seriously, I don't know what your experience has been with Etsy generally, but I personally have come to believe they totally suck. Uncommunicative/hostile/incompetent/nonexistent support, feature-lame site, form-over-function navigation and search tools, US-centric setup (no accented character support at ALL; people who enter their location as "Montréal won't come up in location-based searches unless the buyer searches "Montral"?!)Random and unexplained store closings for mysterious terms-of-use violations that are never explained...

I think Etsy has gotten a free ride for a long time because they're seem as "one of us" in the alt.crafting world, but they ain't. Etsy is an Internet startup like any other -- a profit-making venture, one that happens to be run really, really poorly, and has had ample time and revenue to improve.

I listed my stuff on Dawanda as well, and not only did the site have a tonne of "like, duh" features that Etsy users have been demanding since that site's launch, but the support and even the *customers* were wonderful. The site is cleaner, faster and not clogged with stupid Flash geegaws that look purdy but don't work well, and you can list in multiple languages. AND it's cheaper to sell there.

All this to say that I completely understand your frustration, as do I think a high proportion of Etsy users... bleh, I doubt I'll list there again.

Yeah, it's definitely not a mix-up.

Yes, but sometimes sending "I'm confused, can you explain why you did this?" emails followed by "Hmmmm, I still don't get it, based on these previous conversations" emails occasionally followed by "Wait, then why did you ask me to do all that work before? I'm still confused" emails can sufficiently annoy someone enough to fix the thing, without really challenging their authority to such an extent that they dig in their heels.

It's obviously just one tactic of many that might work, but it's sometimes nice as a first-line defense, because it's not overtly feather-ruffling.