@eburtonlab
You said, "Buyers need a way to distinguish legitimate sellers from fly-by-night scammers. The Current feedback system is very good for that when used wisely."
There are much easier ways to this then eBay's convoluted system. Take Etsy for example they show just the star rating and then might have a comment this seller has gotten 10 5 stars reviews in the last 5 days. That's probably enough information to make an informed decision for 98% of buyers.
You said, " Currently the only way to tell if a seller is actually delivering what they are advertising is by looking at the seller's feedback page and reading some of the comments. A seller with little or no track record or who relies too much on private listings is easy to spot, even if they have no negatives and their metrics are otherwise fine."
You shouldn't have to do Indepth data dive on every seller. There are easier ways to signal that a seller is fine. One could easily argue that the FB system is a bit of a burden to buyers who must research every seller. Amazon has third party sellers. Do you have to research every one? No. As stated above, Etsy has a slimmer FB model. It seems sufficient. There are other signals that aren't published that could be that don't rely on direct FB from buyers like number of sales. number of sales of this kind of product, % of shipments mad within stated handling time. Those factors might even be more important to some buyers and they don't rely other buyers providing the feedback.
Finally, while negative feedback can be a signal. It is also a convenience sample. Meaning, that only people who feel compelled to leave it do. And, people tend to weight one negative way over one positive. When Pierre created the FB system he assumed that everyone would have bad days and that 100% positive wasn't the goal.
