

The death of self-rule on the internet @ eBay - cawel
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d0668334-d9d6-11dc-bd4d-0000779fd2ac.html

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cstejerean
The title sounded pretty scary but the message is pretty simple: sellers can
no longer leave negative feedback against buyers. This is an attempt by Ebay
to allow buyers to leave more honest feedback without fearing retaliation.

I think this makes Ebay even more democratic.

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cawel
More democratic? I'd say so, even if, ironically, this meant more top-bottom
control. But I guess that was needed:

"Now, we realize that feedback has been a two-way street, but our data shows a
disturbing trend, which is that sellers leave retaliatory feedback eight times
more frequently than buyers do ... and this figure is up dramatically from
only a few years ago." Bill Cobb from eBay (source:
<http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200801290559182.html>)

I originally took the link from Nicholas Carr's blog:
<http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2008/02/crowd_control.php>

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ntoshev
The social balance involved in such ecosystems can be very fragile. I have no
idea if this will work. And how can ebay know, unless they test it before
full-scale deployment? One option would be to apply it to new sellers at first
and see how it goes.

