I don’t usually post anything to forums and I am not a seller on Ebay but this last comment from Katrina is just so sad and so wrong, I can’t understand how anyone could think this if they read either the Powerseller posts or especially the Phases plan on this page.
How could you have lost count of the similar auction sites that have failed when there has NEVER been a collectively user owned site before? Do you not understand that that means everyone has an equal say in it? And how would it be different? It would be different because decisions would be made by POPULAR VOTE. It would be democratic.
You said In reality, what you are trying to do is create another monolithic Ebay that you control so YOU can control the OAI to your liking. This makes no sense. It’s true, I’m unsure what OAI is, but the users all the users! would control a people’s site and that’s the purpose of it. If you joined this campaign that means you too.
“In reality you are allowing Anarchy to creep in here and playing out nothing more than a power struggle for your own ends.” What are those ends? Not letting Ebay kill person-to-person trading? Having a good all-purpose auction site for everyone to use for free? Where’s the power? Where’s the struggle? I say this is simply nonsense, literally. And I don’t see how the Teamsters could possibly come into it either but my mother was in the ILGWU most of her life and without that her life would have been much harder. Probably there are a lot of Teamsters who would be insulted by you too.
Myriad “of alternative sites…crying out for support.” I thought you said you read the Powersellers posts. Who do you think the universal search portal thing would help? ALL the small and alternative sites AND everyone selling at them (not to mention it would make shopping a lot better for me too). And contacting the site owners…I think some SUBAT sellers are, but in order to ask them to participate in the portal. Why would anyone want to be under another privately owned site, just like at Ebay, and this time a small one, for what? How does that help anyone? What would help is unifying those sites with a portal to search all of them so they might, oh I don’t know, get some TRAFFIC.
Being a buyer…so am I. These people, since you haven’t noticed, are just about the only ones NOT promoting their “own site” but instead a site for everyone, as a final goal, like a whole new marketplace area of the Internet, free and not under Ebay monopoly. I remember the Internet in the mid 1990s and it was nothing like it is now. People using Ebay long enough to remember how it used to be are the ones who can see the greed and avarice, how it’s grown to ruin the site. And I think it’s you who should be thinking long and hard Katrina because when Ebay is ruined and made like a new Amazon and no one gets any traffic at the alternate sites because they’re all small and scattered what do you think will happen then? People won’t sell their stuff online anymore because they won’t get any money for it. We’ll all have to go back to local auction houses again. And as for communism you obviously know nothing about it (or anarchy or democracy for that matter) and even your date of 50 years is wrong and makes no sense. Or maybe you are what those people meant at Powersellers about “Febay rats”?
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