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But for all intents and purposes it is. You register, you interact, you build a reputation. You're not having full-blown conversations but it's still a community of sorts.

Even if Ebay doesn't meet our definition of a community, why does the system work for them but not for an MMO? What is different about the context that makes it possible to use this kind of system? I would imagine that, since Ebay mishaps are dealing with real money and not magical swords, any bitterness and vengeful abuse of the feedback system would be even MORE likely. The loss of real money really ought to be more important to people than having their kobold stolen, so the feedback ought to be more vitriolic than it would be in an MMO.

Again, I'm back to wondering if the only difference in the two contexts is that MMO players act like bigger jerks.

Why that is, I'm not sure. Perhaps they feel more anonymous and therefore less likely to be punished. I don't know too much about Ebays policies and execution thereof, but I'm assuming they readily ban people who do nothing but give bad feedback. Perhaps if the MMO could hand out punishments (temporary suspensions at least) for the same thing, it might have an effect. Currently most MMOs seem to let the players run riot, or perhaps I've just been playing too much WoW.

Really, I'm genuinely not sure why the Ebay system would be so much more successful than an MMO variant. The only problem with the entire proposal is the vulnerability to abuse, but I can't see why Ebay is less vulnerable to it than an MMO. Simply saying that an MMO is a community doesn't convince me.