I have to admit, I don't and have never seen what the problem with 'sniping' is. It's simply using the system in a way that it not only allows, but can't really stop anyway. If, for example, ebay had as you put it a tougher line on sniping, what would that mean in practice?

The whole issue arises because the auction has a strict fixed time limit. What counts as sniping? Bidding 1 second before the end? 10 seconds? 1 minute? If you say, for example, that no bids received later than 30 seconds before the end of the auction are valid, all it means in practice is that you have shortened the auction by 30 seconds. You still have the same problem, it's just that people will try to get in 31 seconds before the end of the auction, rather than 1 second. The only ways I can see to eliminate this feature is either to run the auctions for a secret, random time (which is silly, but might be fun), or just have as the Yahoo system did each bid extend the auction by a fixed period to allow counter-bids.

Actually, thinking about it, you could only allow each person to bid once for any item, thus ensuring that they would submit a value which was closer to what they actually were prepared to to pay, or get rid of the current more or less real-time update of the current selling price. Keep everyone guessing until after the auction was over.

pca