SORTING menu for feedback comments? What the ....???

[gurlcat]

TLDR: When did feedback become sortable, why is 'relevant' the default, and what the heck makes one feedback more relevant than another?

I was just doing a round of feedbacks for recent purchases, and I came to one from a seller I purchased from a second time, right after my last round of feedbacks.  I wanted to avoid saying the same thing again, so I went to their feedback page to see what I said for the first item, but ran into a problem: the top feedback on page 1 was 'In the past 6 months' (not past month), but I know I left my first feedback only a week or so ago, plus I knew this seller has a huge store and makes tons of sales, SURELY there should be lots of feedbacks in the past month.  So I went to my own feedback page, 'left for others' and sure enough, there was the one I left for the first item -glowing praise for fast shipping and how they knew how to pack a heavy box.   I went back to their feedback page, and still a 6-month one on top.  Then I scrolled down and realized there were 6-month, 1-month, past year, over a year .... all mixed in together on page 1! 

Finally, I noticed there was a sorting menu on the top right -it was on 'relevant' but I found that I could change it to 'Most recent', and there was my previous feedback, on ways down page 1.  

Am I crazy or is that totally new?  Also what could possibly determine (presumably via software) the "relevancy" of a feedback comment?  Well, I thought of a few theories and checked them:

Length: Nope, short and long comments appear randomly mixed. 

Original (hand-written) vs. template comments: Nope, also mixed.

Same or similar categories of items as the listing from which you clicked 'feedback' -Nope.  This seller has a wide variety of items, and I see feedbacks on page 1 that vary wildly from 'vintage jewelry lot' that I was looking at to get to their feedback.  

By the way, I'm still not seeing photos on any feedback anywhere.  Anybody else seeing them?

  

[dryophelia]

@gurlcat 

This change was not on my feedback bingo card!
And why does it default to most ‘relevant’, whatever relevant means. 

[hartungcards]

When did feedback become sortable?  Just recently.

Why is 'relevant' the default?  Because it's eBay.

What the heck makes one feedback more relevant than another?  Good question.

[dhbookds]

This whole exercise of "updating feedback"......including pictures.......was just a waste of time to me.  First, the small % of buyers who leave it just makes the totality of the results dubious. 

I don't agree with doing away with feedback.....simply because a number of buyers wear their "number" of feedback with pride and there is no use aggravating them by doing away with it, but spending time/resources to do this kind of unimportant change is an example of the lack of management sense to me.

just my opinion

[gurlcat]

Have any answers come to the surface about this yet?  
@valueaddedresource ? @wastingtime101 ?  

[valueaddedresource]

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@gurlcat wrote:

Have any answers come to the surface about this yet?  
@valueaddedresource ? @wastingtime101 ?  

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@gurlcat I don't believe we've gotten much more detail as far as how eBay is determining relevancy, but there are some good posts in this thread, including Kyle "passing along feedback" about making the default sort method sticky so if you change it back to most recent, it stays that way.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Update-Feedback-Enhancements-now-Visible/m-p/34299559/highligh... 

[wastingtime101]

@gurlcat @valueaddedresource 

More info was provided back in November including an FAQ about relevancy:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Feedback-enhancements-now-visible/td-p/34092132

[broto_64]

I know I hate the new version, it's stupid if you ask me...

Like it will show someone has negatives in the numbers so I go scrolling to look for it and no dice...

The old version was simple, straight forward.

I have to guess someone had to justify their job.

Another "upgrade" to something that wasn't broken, it will be a miracle if they didn't actually break something else when they did this. I am not sure what is so difficult about "if it isn't broke, don't fix it."

[luckythewinner]

Also what could possibly determine (presumably via software) the "relevancy" of a feedback comment?

It is definitely done via software. It is probably a scoring system similar to how search works; i.e. it considers a number of factors and weights them.

How it ranks relevance would have to do with what eBay's goals were in creating the feature, and we can only guess at that.

For instance, I regularly see advice here about how to get a negative off the first page of feedback. So perhaps one goal of eBay was trying to weed out sellers who seemed to be intentionally diluting their own feedback with a bunch of small sales to the same buyer.

[gurlcat]

But all it says is sorting will be done by relevancy, not what defines relevancy. There is a mention of "richer text" but I can't even begin to guess what that would mean.   As you can see toward the bottom of my OP ^ I checked a few theories but didn't see a pattern of any of them applying.   The one I would have bet the most money on was "original vs. template" feedback replies, but even there I saw template replies mixed with original ones on page 1, etc.  

[gurlcat]

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@broto_64 wrote:

I know I hate the new version, it's stupid if you ask me...

Like it will show someone has negatives in the numbers so I go scrolling to look for it and no dice...

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Were you not aware that you can click the blue numbers in the Feedback Ratings box (top left) and it will refresh the page, showing only the negatives or neutrals, whichever you clicked?  

[iamalwaysright]

I wish there was another category to sort by verified purchases and unverified purchases. Oh wait... 😯

[gurlcat]

I'm starting to get the sinking feeling that all this messing around with feedback is just for the purpose of getting us to focus on something other than the things that make real differences in our realities as sellers.  Kind of like how politicians would prefer everybody squabble over school bathroom genders whether or not they have school-age kids or know anybody who's trans .... rather than think or talk about lousy budgeting for public schools or runaway tuition rates for college.  

If that's the case then me starting this thread is exactly what they had in mind.  Ugh. 

[iamalwaysright]

Yup. Wag the dog.