The purpose of this guide is to inform fellow community members what to expect when they try to discuss an issue on the eBay Community Discussion Boards.

eBay has numerous discussion boards which are available to all members. The discussion boards are accessed by clicking on the "Community" tab in your interface.

Once you click on the magic "Community" tab you will be transported to the Community Page. This page is broken up into several distince areas. The area we will be specifically covering in this review is under the "Connect" heading. Under this heading you will see a hyperlink displayed as Discussion Boards. The link is described by eBay as follows, "Discuss any eBay Related Topic".

Navigating through this process, when you arrive at the Discussion Boards, your first impression is probably something along the lines of "Wow great...I can actually discuss any eBay Related Topic with fellow community members here". So with that in mind, you click and the link and are given a whole list of choices. The options are wide ranging and the topics run the entire gamut from topics such as "Live Auctions" through Feedback down to Trust and Safety Issues.

Clicking on any of these Discussion Boards will bring you to a screen of current threads. Each of these threads, except for the top few which are generally house-keeping related, were created by members such as you and I. You can click on any of these threads and the top posting is the Question Posed or the Item for Discussion outlined by the OP. The OP is a term that means Original Poster. This is a sticky post and will generally always be on top so you can easily and quickly refer to it. Underneath this top post are a series of replied to the question or responses to the position posted by the OP.

Now lets look a little closer at the Discussion Board named Feedback. As you are well aware, the rapid deployment of numerous changes to the way feedback is left, responded to, and tallied by eBay has lead to a great deal of confusion amongst the eBay Buying and Selling Community here. So as of today, this is a very "HOT" board that is filled with information and many different opinions.

The users of the board are referred to in various ways. The "OP" as we discussed, is the Original Poster - the person who started the thread. "Pinks" is a term used by the discussing community to denote an eBay employee acting in an official eBay capacity. You can always spot a "Pinks" post as the header is infact pink. Normal users are generally referred to by their eBay User ID. A special class of discussion board users are referred to as "Trolls". Trolls operate pretty much as you would think the traditional under the bridge fairy tale troll operates. The generally seek to disrupt the harmony of the thread in several ways. Think of them as the bad troll who comes out from under a bridge to stop you, harm you, or in some other way prevent you from getting to where you want to go.

The first way Trolls disrupt the harmony of a discussion is to attempt to "Hijack" the thread. They do this by replying to a post and then trying to digress or change the subject. This is particularly frustrating to those trying to have a discussion as the thread drifts all over the realm of reason.

Another way that Trolls disrupt the harmony of the discussion boards is to publish very inflammatory postings. Now we are not talking about bringing something controversial or highly charged to the table for discussion, we are talking about posting something that is outright offensive or inflammatory. Examples of these recent postings were obtuse questions asking when someone could start negging freely for no reason, or negging everyones feedback regardless of service. Very few Troll posts are ever taken down by the censors. Most users do not understand why the so called censors sit idly by and allow this to occur. But we will get to that later when we discuss commonly employed propaganda techniques.

The third way a troll disrupts a thread is by personally attacking a proponent of a given theory. For example lets say you published a post that said something like "I wish eBay would consult users before making such radical changes". Now this is certainly a reasonable perspective to take. The proponent of the post might add something like "Doing so will make all eBay Community Members feel valued". An opponent of the post might reply with something like "eBay does this already by taking a survey from a scientifically determined subset of the user population accepted to be representative of the whole". These are very reasonable points and counterpoints. The troll disrupts this first by executing an argumentum ad hominem attack. Trolls generally fire off a statement like "You are wrong User123 because you are Xinduvian and everyone knows all Xinduvians are morons so your point has to be wrong". What does this do? It takes focus off of the matter being discussed and focuses it on the attack made by the Troll.

The fourth way a Troll disrupts the discussion is by then continually baiting the proponent or opponent with an onslaught of ever increasing taunts and person attacks until the victim gets so flustered he types back in a post "Go Farg Yourself You Cork Sucker". The troll now won and simply clicks the report button on that post and the proponent or opponent in the discussion is now booted from the board.

The fifth way a troll actually damages a person, and this is based on a true story, is to buy something sold by one of the participants in the discussion and then intentionally leave that person negative feedback. This is a despicable practice employed by the lowliest and slimiest of trolls. Unfortunately it is a reality all posters have to deal with and protect themselves against.

So how do posters protect them selves against this sort of abuse? They post under what is called a "Posting ID". A  Posting ID is a User ID set up not for the purpose of either buying or selling on eBay. but rather for the sole purpose of participating in the discussion threads anonymously.

There are pros and cons to this. This ID allows someone to anonymously participate. But the ID can also be used to anonymously damage someone. Now call me old school, but to me, I generally discount any information coming from an anonymous source. If you are truly expressing your view, you should not have to hide your face. If you say what you mean and mean what you say, use your real ID. However there is a good argument for using a Posting ID on account of all the shenanigans the trolls get away with.

Another problem with posting id's is that since they are not meant to be used for buying or selling, the falsely inflate the number of eBay users. This makes on wonder how many of the 60 million User Id's in the USA are real buyers and sellers and how many are just Posting ID's. This problem is compounded by the ease in which an unscrupulous person can set up a new id. Catch a troll and kick him off, he just comes back in five minutes under yet another id. And under this ID he can buy from anyone he does not like and leave that person feedback. So because eBay is so lax with User Id creation, it makes sense that a smart discussion board user would post under a Posting Id, if for no other reason than to protect himself.

eBay might want to consider tightening up on how easy it is to open new User Id Accounts. This would probably result in less NPB's, accurate User Id statistics, and would create enough trust in the discussion boards again that people would actually use their real id's so you could appropriately rate and weight their comments.

Anyway, besides the troll, you also have to worry about censorship on the eBay discussion boards.

It has been suggested that eBay employees are paid to troll the discussion boards under "Posting Id's" to try to create false signals on the validity or invalidity of an idea. This is a very creative use of propaganda. Of course no one has proven this, but there are regular board users who swear up and down that this is a regular occurence. Also, to many users it seems that the "Posting ID" people who consistently tout the company line get excellent service on the boards. In other words, you or I see a clearly inflammatory or racist comment posted on the board. We click the "report" button. The post seems to stay up for days. However, when the planted eBay employee sees this it gets taken off immediately.

Why did the censors miss your report on a post but were so quick to act on the report of a "Company Line" spouter? Again it has been suggested that there are plants on all boards.

Now why would eBay allow certain trolls to perpetuate these acts and have "undercover" posters mixed in to the fray? Simple. P r o p a g a n d a.

The trolls keep you off post so no question really gets answered. People just get frustrated and leave. If you are on to something, the plants do everything possible to twist or hijack the post in a more subtle way.

And finally if you navigate through this treacherous maze and actually get a valid, logically sound, point up, they just kick you off the board with no explanation as to why. Trust me on this one, you will not get one message in your in box. Poof, you will just be gone.

So the eBay discussion boards are no a valid platform for debate nor are they a valid source of information. They are purposefully biased, censored, and harrassment filled so only the "company line" gets through to people.

Wow Herr Goebbels could not have come up with a more perfect way of deploying self validating propaganda.

You probably doubt what I am relating or think I have a slant on this somehow. That is fine, if you doubt me, spend 6 nights after dinner in a row from say 7 PM until 10 PM on the same board.. You will see the same pattern.

And what is my slant on this. I like the facts, just the facts, and when I get the facts and want to discuss them with like minded rationale people who are only concerned with arriving at the truth.

There you have my review of the eBay Community Discussion Boards.