Brian,
Your message prompted me to look at the recent eBay announcements, and sure enough, there it was:
In a nutshell, the new policy, which replaces member ID's with aliases (Bidder 1, Bidder 2), started in November of 2006, being initially applied to auction-style listings with high bids of more than $200, with plans to apply it to ALL auction-style listings beginng in early 2007.
So yes, eventually we will no longer know the ID's of the people bidding on any auction, even those where we are bidding. Nor we will be able to contact any of the non-winning bidders (neither during nor after an auction). At the end of an auction will we be able to see the ID of the winning bidder, but nobody else.
Not only will this make watching auctions less interesting - no more "people watching" - but we will also have no idea who is bidding against us, or who we'll be sniping. We won't know when we are bidding against friends or rivals; nor will we know when Maddog is bidding, and so we won't know when to just forget about winning :)
I have to say that I enjoyed reading the bidding history lists, and it was an integral part of my "Ended Items" review ritual. So this new system will definitely make eBay less fun for me (on the plus side I will probably spend less time on it). It's gonna be hard at first, but don't worry, I'm sure I'll be OK eventually. (Anyone interested in forming a support group?)
As far as preventing sniping, the announcement says nothing about about that, and it doesn't look like this new system can or will prevent sniping, so at least we still have that (but for how long?!?).
Ray Dobbins Miami FL USA
brian blum <bbspokes@hotmail.com> wrote: I believe I read my EBAY news last week and they are changing all auctions to this format. They claim they can stop sniping with new software but it makes me leary. Brian Blum in Berkeley
>From: Raymond Dobbins
>To: Michael Schmidt ,classicrendezvous
>
>Subject: [CR]WAS: RH Rene Herse Crank - NOW: New eBay policy re:
>biddinghistory
>Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 20:49:32 -0800 (PST)
>
>Sorry, same post as before, but with a better subject title.
>
> Mike,
>
>This appears to be a new policy that eBay is implementing on selected
>auctions, supposedly to protect non-winning bidders from scam second-chance
>offers. I saw this Bidder1, Bidder2, etc, treatment for the first time on
>a UK auction well over a month ago, and I've seen a couple more since then,
>but this is the first time I recall seeing it in a US auction. I wonder
>how eBay decides which auctions to apply this policy to, and more
>importantly, whether eBay intends to eventually make this standard in all
>auctions. It certainly would not surprise me, as apart from protecting
>members from scams offers, it would also protect eBay from losing
>business/money to legitimate offers and resulting transactions between
>members, that exclude eBay (as for example, when a seller offers an
>identical or similar item directly to non-winning bidders - something which
>none of us would ever do, because that would be wrong).
>
>If we start to see more and more of these anonymous bid history
>lists, I guess we'll know.
>
> Ray Dobbins
>Miami, FL USA
>
>
>Michael Schmidt wrote:
> Item 170067458029
>
>Crank arm is in fair shape. Right side only. But what is really
>interesting is to see what ebay is doing on the bidder identity.
>
>Bidders are identified by number and not ebay name. No other auction is
>doing this though.
>
>Mike Schmidt
>Stirling, NJ
>USA