Seth says he’s hearing that negative feedback on ebay and Amazon doesn’t keep people from buying. This is very important to me because I’m currently working on a reputation system for photographers and models. But if feedback doesn’t work, then what’s the point.

I think it might matter more to people in a face to face transaction like a photoshoot. I think on something like ebay you end up doing an averaging of risk. They have a small percentage of negative or neutral feedback and you compare it to the cost of the item. Then you gamble the odds.

The example of totalcampus.com has thousands of negative, but 93% positive rating in big letters at the top. While they have tens of thousands of positive feedback, for the past month it is overwhelmingly negative. Another point I need to remember. Maybe eBay needs to have the percentage not be for all time. Or at least list recent activity.

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