They did it because sellers who received negative feedback from buyers were retalliating by in turn posting negative feedback on those same buyers. It became an intimidation tactic, and many buyers became reluctant to post anything negative about a seller, because they'd get slammed themselves.

I'm not sure the change is any better though - it just opens up a different avenue for abuse of the system.

I'm still not sure I get that. Buyers can still leave negative feedback for sellers, and one guy threatened me with it this week after he tried to pull a scam on me for a CD he says he didn't receive (after leaving me positive feedback for getting it in great condition 2 weeks ago -- weird).

If they were concerned about retaliation and negativity in general, they should've taken away the option for both buyers and sellers and relegated arbitration to behind the scenes via unpaid item strikes and eBay complaints or something.

I'm not defending the policy b/c I thought it was a bad move from the get-go. But I think the rationale was that more unscrupulous sellers were taking advantage of buyers than vice versa. And the unscrupulous sellers would intimidate the buyers into silence w/ the threat of bad feedback if the buyer reported the seller's bad behavior. So they made the choice to put more of the power in the buyers' hands.