eBay sellers noticed a problem with eBay's Item Specifics display. The problem appeared when visitors went to eBay.com and clicked on the Buy tab, then clicked on a category link. The left side of the resulting page, instead of showing Item Specific attributes, all said "Other."

An eBay seller documented the problem on the eBay booksellers' discussion boards on Monday, and the glitch was still occurring on Wednesday evening when an eBay moderator acknowledged the problem. He said eBay had "identified the problem for the disappearing Item Specifics and are working on a fix" (http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=2000180461).

One AuctionBytes reader wrote in to say, "The inability for a buyer to browse a category is EXTREMELY frustrating for sellers. Books> Nonfiction> Hobbies and Crafts> should have dozens of sub-cats and sub-sub cats, but every thing is going into "other." At any rate, it has been reported over and over to ebay, to no avail."

eBay did not get back to AuctionBytes about the problem by press time, and by Thursday evening, the problem appeared to be fixed.