Honesty is the Best Policy at Flippa?

[grynge]

I actually gave examples above but without other details I can't say for sure they are shill bids. You or the coders would need to check them.

[Clinton]

If anyone sees concrete examples of possible shill bidding, I would really appreciate a quick PM with a link.

And maybe you'll take action when you get such reports, but the suggestion of retrospective action does more to give the impression that you're serious about stopping shills than it does to actually stop them. grynge raised some significant ways you can track down shill bidding. I could come up with a few more, but they wouldn't be very seller friendly. For example, there are certain listing and seller footprints that have a higher propensity for dishonesty. At the stage of the seller creating the listing itself certain actions could raise flags and the listing could put into a moderation corral or under a publicly visible amber warning.

While I appreciate the security argument of not disclosing how exactly you check for shills, that security argument is less valid in your marketplace moderation than it is for, say, protecting an operating system's vulnerabilities. Non disclosure also means that users can't tell when you're turning a blind eye to shilling. The extent to which you should abstain from mentioning publicly what signals you look for should be governed by the extent to which that information can be used to game the system. If public knowledge of a certain protection doesn't affect the marketplace - i.e. the knowledge can't be used to manipulate the market or scam buyers - then there's no need to keep it secret.

You've got far, far too many dishonest sellers playing all sorts of games ... and not all of them visible in the marketplace. One seller recently kept sending emails to me and the only other bidder in the auction. He was trying to push bids up and playing one of us off against the other. By accident I managed to find the identity of the other bidder and we compared notes. It was very revealing! The seller had been lying brazenly to both of us about the other one's intentions and budget. So no matter what Flippa does to combat shill bidding I hope you don't give buyers a false impression of safety in the marketplace.

If the writers of original content (i.e. you and EP forum contributors) agreed to it, I would love to integrate some of the content to the guide, and thank those contributors with a link to EP in our introduction,

That's very kind. I can't speak for other posters, but wherever you're acknowledging the contribution to EP, I agree for you to use content from my posts. Standard niceties apply of course and I'm sure you appreciate, for example, that selective quoting can distort meaning and that content from our private VIP Lounge can't be reproduced.

[OLechat]

grynge raised some significant ways you can track down shill bidding.

And those will be raised with our coders today (I was out of the office yesterday). My point in asking for links to possible shill bids isn't so much in taking action against individual shill bidders (though that's part of it, of course) but more in helping identify trends and similarities, which are more evident when we can collect data from the auctions.

If public knowledge of a certain protection doesn't affect the marketplace - i.e. the knowledge can't be used to manipulate the market or scam buyers - then there's no need to keep it secret.

I can appreciate that, but I'm really not at liberty to discuss our security measures, or upcoming security measures, publicly.

I can't speak for other posters, but wherever you're acknowledging the contribution to EP, I agree for you to use content from my posts.

Thank you very much for that, Clinton. I'll contact you directly when I'm at that stage in the buyer's guide.

[grynge]

Not knowing how your auction system works means the following could actually be legitimate bids.

In the 120 auctions I went through I saw a bunch of auctions where only one bidder had raised their bids. To me on face value that is shill bidding, but there could be a legitimate reasons.

If you allow maximum bid amounts then that could be a reason but on other auction sites they usually show the 2 bids.
The second reason could be to raise the amount to a level of reserve.

Now if you don't allow maximum bids then the first reason is out and only the second reason exists. If they were bumped up past the reserve then that would suggest to me a shill bid.
Also your coders could also flag any bids that jump from a low amount to either the reserve or past the reserve. As reserves are hidden this would be a red flag to me, unless of course the seller told the reserve in a comment or pm to the buyer which is against your tos anyway.

[grynge]

Another simple easy step would be to check if the bidder or commenter had bid on any other auctions by the seller upto a point of no purchase, I can only assume that you moderate by hand any flags and this one would have to be moderated by hand as people do follow other sellers.

[crabfoot]

As a veteran of real-life auctions, I know what to look for on an auction floor. That's why I would pay a dealer to bid for me at a car auction, rather than bid myself, even if I'm in the place myself.

It don't matter what's being sold, or what the law says, people form a "ring" and carve up what's on offer between them. It doesn't have to be formal, you just have to know that "Dave wants the big screen TV" and you might as well stay out of it, he's got a customer for that. It's a natural social way of getting along, although it is against every country's law.

Web auctions are unfair because you can't see anyone's face. You don't know who you're bidding against, you can't guess why they bid as they do from their body language.

For selling on the web, Dutch auctions are a fairer way to go. Start with a high estimate, come down in steps, and the first bid secures the purchase. Needs some thought about the application. eBay tried it a few years back and it didn't work - but they are only in business because they grew so big, the staff are a pack of eedjits. First person to make Dutch auctions work for sites and domains will win the marketplace.

Gwon, I'll tell you how to make it work - price keeps dropping, first bid secures if no one bids inside two min, if there's a matching bid the auction goes back up one step and then there's another two min added for a bid etc etc. If nobody bids when it goes back up, the first bid wins. That's how a real life auctioneer works the room, and it makes schill bidding very difficult.