STRING BIDDING - I know a lot about this because Brent and I talked about it as I was doing it as they define it, and they asked me about it. It's still one of the least understood bidding practices out there. I don't agree with their policy, but I understand why it exists.
PWCC defined it as bumping the minimum bid multiple times without actually taking the lead. I understand how it could look odd when you can't see the names and broader bidding history, but without that you don't have all the facts or context. This was one of the big downsides of eBay not displaying the user IDs in the bid history.
For me, it's strategic to help manage my time bidding. I bid on literally hundreds if not thousands of items every week, so sniping isn't effective but I also don't want to have to come back to everything. Those "string bids" helped me rule out somewhere between 10-25% of auctions.
I wanted to either (1) get right behind the high bidder on something I really did want to win, or (2) drop out from any continued bidding because the high bid was sufficiently higher than I would want to pay. I normally did this a day or two prior to auction end to rule some auctions out, but sometimes did it late in the auction on things I really was trying to win.
When you're already high bidder in an auction, you don't have much incentive to bump your bid higher unless you've been outbid. If you know someone else is right there, it may put you to the test sooner - which for me is good because it helps me rule some things out so I could focus elsewhere.
Maybe other people did it to shill, but for me it was mostly time management.
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