Call meJeffrey

According to this article on BBC news…

Online auction site eBay has said it plans to overhaul its feedback system and will ban sellers from leaving negative comments about buyers.

EBay said problems were occurring, and slowing down trade, when buyers left negative comments about sellers who then retaliated with their own views.

There’s no question that I’m a community-minded dude, but I can’t see how Ebay would consider their actions as a good idea. Did anyone think this through? Because a few sellers were giving retaliatory negative transaction ratings to buyers, all sellers can no longer warn other sellers of a potential bad transaction? True, you could argue that a seller could be wary of a buyer with minimal positive feedback, but that now puts pressure on a seller to give someone positive feedback. What happens if the buyer doesn’t deserve positive or negative feedback? Without a completely balanced and open way of rating a transaction, the lack of response can (and will, I assure you) be misinterpreted as a negative experience.

It concerns me that either Ebay doesn’t know or doesn’t care that by tipping the scales in favor of buyers, they’re poisoning the well of data, thereby potentially nullifying the purpose of ratings altogether. If it was me, I’d simply associate each transaction rating with the corresponding rating from the other party – whether it be positive, negative, or non-existent. I’d also publish the date and time of the rating, so a buyer or seller could assess for themselves what ratings are genuine and what ratings are revenge. But like I said: I’m a community-minded dude. I’d rather give my users the best data possible to make as informed of a decision as possible, and not let a few bad apples spoil the bunch.