Ebay began promoting it's Guides and Reviews segments in early 2006.  I don't know about you, but I think they were onto something.  What better way is there for someone to share their experiences on everything from cooking to crafts to car repair to the perks and pitfalls of buying and selling on EBay.  I personally find it great to learn from others as it relates to my favorite hobbies and the like.

Unfortunately, the rating system currently used by EBay for the guides and reviews leaves a lot to be desired.  EBay's help page states that the current scoring mechanism is based on how many "yes" votes a guide or review receives.  The more "yes" votes a guide receives, the more helpful it is, which places the reviewer higher up on the rankings list.

What it doesn't tell you is that the number of "no" votes received on a guide or review can send your review score plummeting down the list.  What was intended to be an honest scoring system can be used by others to "cheat" the system and to sabatoge others' scores.

Examples:

Last year, EBay held a contest for the best guides.  For several weeks, winners were given prizes of varying amounts of EBay gift certificates.  (I'm proud to say I won three times during this competition, but that's a whole different story.)  During this time, I was quite active on the blogs; this is when I first became aware of the issues concerning the current scoring system.  There were numerous reports of EBayers who - in the spirit of the competition - wrote several guides in am attempt to win prizes in the competition.  Several bloggers complained that while they were on the guides, they literally watched their helpfulness ranking fall right before their very eyes as they received one "no" vote after another.   Based on the the information compared with other EBayers who experienced the same thing, it was obvious that people were going into the guides and voting "no" on each and every one of them in order to improve their own rankings.  This was a very disheartening experience for several people.

In my own personal scenario, one EBayer contacted me through EBay's contact system and told me that she felt I had provided misinformation on one of my craft guides.  Although I politely
responded to the person's concerns, she continued to bombard me with emails telling me to change the information.  This person ended up voicing her concerns to an EBay group she belongs to that
dabbles in a similar craft.  Before I knew it, I was contacted by a couple of other members of the group; in addition, the "no" votes for that particular guide increased tremendously, thus lowering my overall ranking score.  (NOTE: Prior to this incident, I had 100% yes votes for the guide in question.)  It was clear to me that the woman and the members of her group sabatoged my
scores by intentionally voting "no" on this guide.  In addition, I received numerous "no" votes on all of my other guides, which previously had a majority of "yes" votes.  It was apparent
to me that this was occurring because I refused to change the information contained within my guide as requested by one very demanding EBayer.

SUGGESTIONS TO IMPROVE RANKING:

I have contacted EBay and requested that they consider changing the way the rating system works.  If a guide is helpful to someone, they will still have the ability to vote "yes", but if it is not helpful, there shouldn't be any way to vote "no."  This way, the ranking
score will be determined just by the number of "yes" votes received on a guide; it will also significantly reduce the sabotage caused by EBayers who are less than honest individuals.

If this has happened to you, PLEASE contact EBay and let them know that the scoring system needs to be improved.  Let's bring back the integrity the Guides and Reviews were intended to have
when they were first implemented.