Thank you for the questions.
1. A member enters a review of a listing. There review is considered 'open' until that listing 'closes' in one fashion or another. There are 5 ways a listing closes. They are; 1. Listing Unchanged, Item Sold; 2. Listing Unchanged, Item Unsold; 3. Listing Modified, Item Sold; 4. Listing Modified, Item Unsold; or 5. Listing Removed or Deleted
2. During this time the original reviewer, or other members, can do additional discovery and contact the seller.
But note that this time frame is undetermined; a reviewer might see a listing and write a review for a listing with a wide variety of days left before it goes to auction (or a BIN item ends). Ideally this step will be done for every review but note that neither contacting the seller or adding additional discovery information is required. We do have an easy way for all users to filter out reviews that have not meet this criteria if desired.
3. If the seller responds, his/her response is noted. We also support having Sellers can also respond at any time, including well after the listing and review have 'closed'.
4. Finally when the listing closes we also close that review and record the outcome.
Please keep in mind that we do not mandate a 'review' of the review. Other members can add their own comments to a review in two places, sellers can have their input added if they desired.
We also do try to not limit or censor the reviews or the 'type' of a review. This is not just for a fakes or forgeries; our goal is to help limit bad transactions through education. Hopefully he doesn't mind but I will use LarryBruce's recent thread ("I am being blackmailed on
ebay with neg feedback") as an example where StampSmarter might have helped.
In mind opinion Larry's listing was legitimate but I also agree that he may have avoided the hassle if he had added more details to it. So if someone had reviewed his listing and he got a notification that his listing might be improved with some additional details he could do one of two things; ignore the input or make changes/remove the listing. I think his thread makes it pretty clear that the way it went down did not result in a happy seller OR customer.
But please be clear about this; none of this has anything to do with trying to finger either the buyer's or seller's
intent. No one is saying that LarryBruce is trying to spin his material and capture unsuspecting buyers with misleading ads. No one is saying that the buyer was clueless and should have asked more questions. Frankly I think that LarryBruce's listing itself is about as benign as they get but that doesn't mean there isn't an opportunity to educate and assist in making it a better transactions for both parties. On the other hand, we certainly can also capture some of the most egregious listings.
But please make no mistake about this, no one is passing judgments about a seller's intent in a review. Readers are welcome to draw their own opinions about any trends that might emerge over time. So in 6 months from now a reader comes across the review of LarryBruce's listing. First, it might read that the reviewer thought the listing could use some more detail. No matter how Larry responded at the time to the review (or if at all), what opinion does a reader come away with? They have only a single review of a single listing. There is no trend for Larry's listings, it is a single voice in the woods. No reasonable person would make a judgment about Larry based upon a single review. No more than we currently do with a single negative feedback on
ebay now. Who would form a strong opinion about a restaurant from a single meal in a single visit?
It are the trends that become significant. Trends undercover what specific stamps to watch for, what specific faults might be expected for the stamp you are seeking, and yes, even if a seller ends up with many bad reviews.
Is it possible for a highly motivated person to manipulate this tool? Yes, but we have put safe guards in place to prevent this. A large part of our time is spent being a watch dog over anyone from doing this, this is exactly what every Forum Mod does (like Bobby131313 n this forum). They stand guard by not allowing those with their personal agendas to damage what the community is contributing. And like a Forum Mod there are 'grey' areas about deciding when to intercede but any nonsense will be dealt with.
Of course there is no reason that good reviews can also be made for listings. No one really seems to think about this for whatever reasons. Truth is that positive reviews are always much rarer than negative reviews, I assume this is due to humans nature and what moves us to action. And positive reviews are just as likely, if not more so, to have hidden agendas. (We all have read these kinds of reviews, something written by someone who never even purchased the product/service or is just paid to write professional reviews.)
But this is the value of presenting objective data and statistical trends for readers to form their own opinions. Stamp Smarter will never be making judgments, drawing conclusions about intent, or make any assumptions about anyone's ethics.
Sorry for the long post.
Don
Posted 06/18/2014 7:16 pm
