@amber-eyed-girl wrote:
How? Interested to know.
As most people know (or might be able to tell from my post count 
), I've been reading / posting in the discussion boards for several years now, so if I may offer (what I hope is) a mostly impartial point of fact, based exclusively on what I have seen transpire on the boards, on the odd occasion (that is, it didn't happen every day, or every week, and with the sharp drop in board particpation, it wouldn't even happen every month...)
-But- did the site ever help? Yes, just usually not the person asking for said help.
Being able to check out a listing without waiting for an OP to come back and provide further details is only part of it - that just means someone might get faster, more accurate help. And that actually matters, since many times I have seen (and even been guilty of giving) responses based purely on the info in the OP, to the detriment of the seller (and sometimes buyer) that's the subject of the question. (As a really simple and unfortunately not unprecedented, example - help, my seller never sent my item - response, neg the jerk! Then it turns out the buyer only bought the item a day or two ago and the seller has a lovely red dot).
Sometimes an OP would purposely omit certain details, or post deliberately misleading information - such things could potentially be with the intention to scam a seller and glean the best way to succeed from replies in the forum (yes, it has happened, and yes they have been caught out after someone decided to use the buyer search tool when that still existed, or WC after eBay retired it).
This post is not intended to advocate for the history search tool, or lament it's loss. But it can and did help catch people out.
