A big part of the beta is improving the way that we manage the data that flows in from our users. (We currently have 4900 patterns and 6676 yarns in Ravelry.)

Have you noticed the little red flag button that appears on some pattern and yarn pages? This allows you to flag a pattern or yarn as duplicate or erroneous and leave a little note if you wish. (If the flag button doesn't appear, that means that you are looking at a pattern or yarn that has been approved by the editors.) We've got almost 40 volunteer editors who have been helping us whip our data into shape and your flags are a BIG help.

2 days ago, I put together some Yarn admin pages that make it easier for us to keep the yarn database clean. Here is a picture of me merging a duplicate Rowan yarn:

Note that this dupe never should have happened - I recently tweaked Ravelry so that it's a lot less likely that people will add duplicate patterns but the yarns still need some attention. If this were a pattern, it would have reminded the user twice that something with the same name already existed. The pattern suggester even catches typos and variations in spelling and naming.

Anyway - go forth and flag!