All the shadow banning threads are being closed "due to age."....LOL.

[stevemartin60]

eBay, you need to stop treating your most loyal long-term sellers with such blatant disrespect.  ALL ITEMS SHOULD BE LISTED WITH THE SAME VIEWABILITY.

If items must be "promoted" by forcing sellers to give up what little profit margin they may have left in this runaway inflationary economy, you will soon have no sellers left except your favored fraudsters, cheats, scammers, drop shippers, etc.

[pburn]

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@house*of*paws wrote:

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@chapeau-noir "And what on earth is 'thrill seeker'?"

I tried to find the page with the requirements for the various badges, but apparently it has been "archived" .

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eBay has never actually disclosed the specific ‘requirements’ for these exceedingly dumb rankings.  

They apparently are top secret and not decipherable by comparing the stats of individual Community members.

I’ve seen a hierarchical list of the rankings … but not what it takes to move from one to another.

’Rockstar’ seems to be the one that receives the most ridicule.  🫤

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I don't have an opinion one  way or the other regarding the monikers; however, even if they were removed, a disgruntled participant will still get in their name calling with all-too-familiar words/phrases like "eBay employee," or "shill," or "front man," or "cheerleader (and the numerous variations thereof)," "rah, rah, sis boom bah," or "minion." Removing the participation-level monikers won't prevent unhappy posters reaching for any of those gems.

IMO, the community guidelines need to be revised to not only reinsert the violation for "name calling," which was removed in the last revision of August 31, 2022, but also to define name calling as any attempt to insult another member with similar language. Then the Khoros mods need to support the guideline by acknowledging the only reason to call another member any of the above, or similar, is to aggravate, taunt, antagonize or insult other posters. It just should not be tolerated. Period.

[ckimodog]

@redlinear

I think it was "Shadow Dancing" Was that disco? 😋

[bonjourami]

"IMO, the community guidelines need to be revised to not only reinsert the violation for "name calling," which was removed in the last revision of August 31, 2022, but also to define name calling as any attempt to insult another member with similar language. Then the Khoros mods need to support the guideline by acknowledging the only reason to call another member any of the above, or similar, is to aggravate, taunt, antagonize or insult other posters. It just should not be tolerated. Period."

Yes, the constant 'baiting' by the op in this thread should have been stopped long ago. Khoros used to nip that in the bud.

[evry1nositswindy]

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@bonjourami wrote:

"IMO, the community guidelines need to be revised to not only reinsert the violation for "name calling," which was removed in the last revision of August 31, 2022, but also to define name calling as any attempt to insult another member with similar language. Then the Khoros mods need to support the guideline by acknowledging the only reason to call another member any of the above, or similar, is to aggravate, taunt, antagonize or insult other posters. It just should not be tolerated. Period."

Yes, the constant 'baiting' by the op in this thread should have been stopped long ago. Khoros used to nip that in the bud.

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@bonjourami  ^^All the OP's threads are like that and all are argumentative.  

[bonjourami]

Yep...came in looking for trouble.

[1funkydude]

That’s the correct take. But you may be a better person than I. I‘d just as soon let him continue to embarrass himself with this remarkably weak display of petulance. I know guys like this. They think because their friends and family don’t challenge them they’re impressing people with this act. When they bring it to a forum of adults who don’t have to tolerate their immaturity, they resort to sophomoric ridicule and antagonism because the alternative disrupts them psychologically. Perhaps I should feel more pity than I do. 

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@blurryrobot wrote:

I am currently doing some experiments that I believe will demonstrate to people, that overly high (double-digit) Promoted Listing percentages are a waste of money on many ordinary items.     

Will report when done.   

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@blurryrobot   Would love to see how you propose doing this, as it is HIGHLY dependent upon the types of items & category saturation that one sells in.  What's overly high in Musical Instruments may not be even mid-range in Clothing.  Some categories/items don't need promotion at all, others pretty require high rates.   Not sure how you plan to accomodate for this.   Look forward to reading.   

[chapeau-noir]

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@1funkydude wrote:

That’s the correct take. But you may be a better person than I. I‘d just as soon let him continue to embarrass himself with this remarkably weak display of petulance. I know guys like this. They think because their friends and family don’t challenge them they’re impressing people with this act. When they bring it to a forum of adults who don’t have to tolerate their immaturity, they resort to sophomoric ridicule and antagonism because the alternative disrupts them psychologically. Perhaps I should feel more pity than I do. 

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Nah.  They've had plenty of time to learn by now.

[reallynicestamps]

I didn't make the squad in high school - can I try out here?

[blurryrobot]

I can't check everything except for the categories that I list in, but I can compare apples-to-apples within each category, because I have my ad campaigns divided up that way.  I did this before, I split campaigns in half and set different fixed rates on each half-campaign, then ran it a month and compared.  At that time I found little use in the double digit rates that many people were already using for PL; I want to see if anything has changed. 

I don't doubt that there might be 'commodity' categories like new auto parts where the double digit percentages do bring significantly more sales, but even here there is a point of declining return because you can't price in a double digit promotion %.  People tend to walk on by when the math becomes obvious without calculation; they won't necessarily scroll down for 4% savings but they certainly will for 15%. 

Anyway I will see what happens.  It will take a couple months probably.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@blurryrobot wrote:

I can't check everything except for the categories that I list in, but I can compare apples-to-apples within each category, because I have my ad campaigns divided up that way.  I did this before, I split campaigns in half and set different fixed rates on each half-campaign, then ran it a month and compared.  At that time I found little use in the double digit rates that many people were already using for PL; I want to see if anything has changed. 

I don't doubt that there might be 'commodity' categories like new auto parts where the double digit percentages do bring significantly more sales, but even here there is a point of declining return because you can't price in a double digit promotion %.  People tend to walk on by when the math becomes obvious without calculation; they won't necessarily scroll down for 4% savings but they certainly will for 15%. 

Anyway I will see what happens.  It will take a couple months probably.

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I'll be interested in seeing your results.  Obviously you can't extrapolate your numbers out to every category, as there are too many variables & in some categories you can price in double digit promos &/or in other categories while you may not be able to price them in, it doesn't matter b/c the quantity of sales increase so substantially that the increased fees are paid for that way. 

When I first started PL's in earnest, I tripled my sales.  I didn't use double digits, but I do promote high b/c I'm in a super saturated category.   I did price them in, but even if I hadn't, the increased quantity of sales quickly made up for the fees.  But of course, those results decreased over time once everyone started promoting.  Anyway, looking fwd to seeing your experiment's results. 

[chapeau-noir]

I do not doubt that this PL lark eBay has going (and which I participate in) will go the same way as their former promotion back in the early oughts (can't remember the name - but the listings were given first place in all categories no matter when they were listed - this was in the old Voyager search engine days), or Google's pay to play scheme in about 2010. Both ended up being useless because in the first case so many people paid to have their listings come up first that search results became almost useless, bringing up the same old listings every time; in the second case, bidding on those clicks became too expensive.

But I'll ride the train for now.

[rugerskick]

Also factor in that the ebay search function just doesn't work that well, not even considering the promoted listings issue.  When google search returns more accurate search results than the ebay site search does, that means potentially all sellers are suffering, whether they promote listings or not.

[stevemartin60]

Right.  This is what I remember.  They are NOT admitting (as some here were errantly stating) that they are re-selling goods seized at the border, (much of it falsely, fraudulently, or errantly, I suspect.)

I still have to wonder if U.S. taxpayers aren't on the hook here somehow, AND to whom this Michigan reseller is really connected.

[stevemartin60]

There definitely were not "pay-to-play" preferred sellers anywhere near to the degree there is now.  That's for sure.