That would be great, Kalera.

As I stated in my email, I thought that complaints to eBay regarding
category violations would increase daily until they did something. Anyone
care to help me make good on that? Even though it's a PITA, I try to send
at least a few a day. There's not only mass produced, imported lampwork,
but also czech glass beads.

I could only find how to report actual auctions though.

--
--------------------------------------
Lori Greenberg
www.beadnerd.com
ebay:
http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...origre enberg


"Kalera Stratton" wrote in message
...
Hooray! I am going to PM Lori over on WC and let her know folks are taking
action... maybe she can bring it up on WC again and we can get a bunch of
emails sent. Wouldn't it be lovely?!

-Kalera
http://www.beadwife.com
http://www.snipurl.com/kebay


E J Ralph wrote:
I sent my email!

Emma


On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 09:40:41 -0700, Kalera Stratton
wrote:


A few lampworkers have been discussing lately something which concerns
most of us here... the lampwork categories on eBay. We were talking about
how lots and lots of us emailed eBay and they gave us a new category;
lampwork handmade US. Unfortunately, that category is woefully
inadequate, as it really doesn't specify what we *need* it to specify,
which is whether it is artisan lampwork, and whether it's made in the US
is irrelevant. Narrowing it to US lampworkers only hurts non-US lampwork
artisans and the customers who are looking for good-quality artisan work,
regardless of counrty of origin.

The thing this dedicated focus group (HAW) of lampworkers came up with is
the category "Lampwork - handmade - self-representing artists". This was
actually Lori Peterson's brainchild, if I understand correctly! I think
eBay would be amenable to that because they already have a category in
paintings for self-representing artists... which they won by emailing
eBay and asking for it.

It wouldn't keep liars and scammers from posting their mass-produced
lampwork there, but it would at least be a more accurate category for all
self-representing lampwork artisans worldwide, and that would benefit
both sellers and buyers of lampwork. If anyone here thinks this is a good
idea and one that we beaders as a whole could benefit from, please take a
moment to email eBay and ask them to make this change.

Here's the link for making uncsolicited suggestions (they made it a bit
hard to find)

http://pages.ebay.com/help/welcome/suggest.html

This is what I said in my suggestion:

"Hi,

I am a self-representing lampwork artist selling on eBay, and I'd like to
suggest the addition of the category "Lampwork - Handmade -
Self-representing artists".

The current category, "Lampwork - Handmade - US" was a step in the right
direction, but unfortunately it excludes a great many of our
international colleagues and doesn't specifically narrow the offerings to
artists selling their own work. I think that the self-representing
category will make it easier for lampwork customers to find the kind of
work they want, and will exclude those reselling mass-produced, imported
(but still handmade) lampwork, while including exceptional talents
worldwide who are selling their own work.

Thank you for considering this suggestion."