Recently active discussions in Hubdub

There's such an active community on Hubdub but many questions aren't as discussed (via comments) as they might be. The commenting functionality until now has been hidden amongst the many tabs on the question page, but we've rearranged things slightly to make it more prominent.

It is now the default tab. Details from the Info tab are available on the "read all" link next to the settlement details (which is a better context for that data), related news is on the right hand panel (as it leads to other pages, like the rest of that panel) and the graph can be enlarged in situ by clicking the Zoom button (more intuitive than a tab at the bottom of the screen).

Any feedback welcome.

Thanks,
Tom

After much discussion, we have decided to change the definition of 'by' to be EXCLUSIVE of the date referenced - here is what the amended Rules will say:

The term "by" will be considered to be exclusive of the date referenced. E.g. "Will the satellite hit earth by March 25th?" will be settled as a "Yes" if it hits prior to March 25th, and 'No' if it hits on March 25th or later. Where possible, category editors should edit 'by' to 'before', to avoid ambiguity.

This is for a number of reasons, but particularly:
1. For consistency with other date questions, ie 'by August' does not include the entire month of August in the time period, and 'by 2009' does not include all of 2009
2. To align with commonsense - although a spot poll has revealed that not everyone naturally interprets 'by' as exclusive, this appears to be the interpretation for the majority

Where possible, we will endeavour to use the terminology 'on' or 'on or before' to try to avoid any ambiguities in questions.

Similarly, for 'between', which often occurs in the context of mutually exclusive time period outcomes (eg between 1 and 2; between 2 and 3), the first option would be interpreted as 1 to 1.99999, and the second 2 to 2.999999.

To save creators of commonly structured questions some clicks and keystrokes, they can now click the "copy question as new" button at the top right of the question page to duplicate one of their own questions (and modify appropriately) before resubmitting as a new question.

Only the question creator (and super users and admins) have this capability.

Tom

From today's Wall Street Journal -- ‘Pundit Watch’ May Need Its Own Watchdog

"Pundits are prized for making bold predictions, but they’re usually not held accountable for their forecasting accuracy. A news-prediction Web site is trying to change that with a pundit-tracking game, pitting the likes of MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews against technology blog TechCrunch and entertainment blogger Perez Hilton. While the idea is a good one, the execution is flawed."

With plenty of commentary from Nigel!

You'll now get an email notification when:
1) a question you've predicted on is voided
2) a suspended question you've predicted on is unsuspended
3) a prediction you made is cancelled for being too late (past the cut-off time) when a question is settled.

These can be turned off from your Site Settings screen (My Hubdub -> My Account -> Site Settings)

Hopefully this will help you keep even tighter tabs on your H$.

Hi everyone, we're just released some cool new functionality.

1. Twitter your predictions from Hubdub. On the Prediction Made screen there's a new blue box on the right. From it you can Twitter your responses to questions immediately, from Hubdub, by entering your Twitter username and password. Hubdub can remember these details so each future tweet is just 1 click, or even tweet all your predictions automatically.

Use it to show off your predictions and start discussions with your friends.

2. Tags have arrived. You can now browse to other questions related to the one you're viewing from its tags on the top right of the screen. Question creators pick the tags, and feel free to add as many as you want (it's no longer restricted to specific tags for pulling relevant news).

3. Now, finally, our esteemed question creators amongst you can upload an image with your wonderful questions. There's a box to pick a file from your computer at the bottom of the question details screen. Please, only user images you have the right to use in this way (ie. you own the copyright, the images are unrestricted or you've obtained permission from the copyright holder).

Enjoy!

Tom

I caught this blurb in today's Cleveland Plain Dealer - ranked in the top-25 newspapers in the United States:

... "Do the pundits know what they're talking about? It's New on the Net."

(it included a live link)

I am starting this thread to provide a place for everyone to discuss what they liked and what they disliked about the NBA Finals in play markets. I have some ideas for future in play markets, and think we should keep them limited in quantity and reserved for major events.
I would love to see some of the following events open for in game play. The Major golf tournaments, the MLB playoffs (or just World Series), NFL football (Sunday night game and Monday night game as a minimum), College Football (just the major matchups between top rated teams, and the BCS bowl games), Tennis (just the grand slam events), NASCAR (Daytona 500, a few of the other important events), NHL (stanley cup), WNBA (finals), and I am sure some of you will find others I can't think of.

I propose the following, sports markets close at set times depending on sport. Lets start with Football, suspend any questions about the results of the first quarter before the game
starts (ie.. which team scores more points in first quarter), suspend questions about the results of the first half at the end of the first quarter of play, to carry this all the way out, 3rd quarter markets would suspend at half time, and questions about the final outcome would suspend at end of 3rd quarter. With baseball playoffs, we should suspend games at the 7th inning stretch. Nascar races should suspend with they are within 10% of the final number of laps, if it is 500 lap race, it would suspend when there was only 50 laps to go. I think we can all come up with interesting ways to make these markets exciting, while preventing people from wagering on events that are most likely known. With the other sports we can work out suspension times that provide excitement but don't allow wagering on events when outcome not likely to change.

Is there anyway possible that we will be able to add spaces and or capitalization to our hubdub "usernames"?

I dont know but i must have a little ocd.
I would love to see a capital s at the beginning of stephen
making it ........ ahhhh Stephen

I was looking at this http://www.hubdub.com/m8132/Will_Colo...
question and wondered, will this be determined by popular vote or the electoral college. I thought the rules covered this, but checked and was surprised to find they do not.

I propose a new rule for US Presidential politics questions to the effect that unless otherwise specified questions regarding US Presidential elections will be based on the electoral college.

Someone wrote my American Idol question this week and I have to say I was pretty upset... that is until I remembered that I stole it from bayoubear to begin with about a month ago.

There is definitely a sense of "ownership" for the questions and categories that people usually handle. Especially, I think for the high volume questions - there's a certain thrill about seeing your name on the front page for the first time. On the other hand, the level of possessiveness that has developed around these questions makes it a lot harder for new users to come up with reasonable questions. Additionally, if a market isn't being made, do you step in and do it, ask permission first, or does that question type always belong to that person to make or not?

So what do you think? Should we continue to stake out our turfs, should we encourage new users to take over or should we make them find their own turf?

(Tone note: no criticism happening here, hope no one feels defensive. Just wanting to bring topic to discussion)

Hello all

I know that some of you are going to be disappointed with this post, but we've come to the very difficult conclusion that we are going to have to restrict further the number of indices allowed within the Business Category.

This is because of the following:

1. In some of the less popular indices, it is far too easy to make huge amounts of profit.

2. Hubdub's users are predominantly from the US, and being in that timezone are unable to follow most of the markets in Europe and Asia. When we begin gaining more users from around the globe, this would change.

3. And finally, Andrew, our Business Category Editor, is leaving for a better paid job (not hard to find!) next month and frankly, having to settle markets in the rapid way expected for the indices questions is proving difficult. If the number of indices is restricted, the manageability of the category becomes easier. Obviously when Super User settlement is in place, this would also change.

So, with this in mind, we've decided we need to temporarily restrict the questions allowed to those concerning only the Dow and the Nasdaq. No questions would be permitted on any other index until further notice.

I'm guessing you're all going to have something to say about this decision, but if you can come up with a better solution to the problems as outlined above, I'd love to hear it.

Many thanks

Lesley.

The following question was unfairly voided : http://www.hubdub.com/m7685/Will_the_... .

The following was the reason given : "Voided Today 12:29am PST by andrew: Not one of the indices we follow "

But this index has been followed and settled on hubdub before :

http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/Will_t...

I asked where my question was prohibited and I received the following message :

"Hi epicur,
Section 2.3.4, rule 3
http://www.hubdub.com/public/goodques...

Regards,
Andrew "

Well the above cited rule is :

"Questions can be made about the major indexes (Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ Composite Index, FTSE 100, DAX, BSE, Nikkei and Hang Seng) but should not be made about the performance of individual stocks"

My response to this rule being applied to my question was :

"First off, that rule says what questions can be made about. It does not
explicitly exclude this major index. In addition, there are many other
indices that aren't on that list that are being regularly allowed i.e. CAC
40, MIBTEL and S&P 500. What are you going to do about those questions?"

Hubdubbers, please tell me what you think of this situation. Why is my question excluded by this rule while all these others are allowed to stand? Is this a way to try to penalize success so all may compete more readily?

Why did you join HubDub?

I joined because I had surgery on my leg and while I was recovering I came upon a news article about HubDub and instantly fell in love!

Today, 3/14/08 is the last time i will be logging in for awhile because I am beginning an independent strike. Users such as crudsy and orlin have been growing their net worths at pretty much impossible rates. There is no possible way they can increase their net worth soo quickly given the time it takes to settle most bets. Clearly, they either both have several accounts? or maybe they are the same person? this way they can place bets back and forth to sway bets and give higher cash out values. This is completely unfair and ruins the system. I think there needs to be a monitoring of accounts from IP addresses. If there are multiple accounts under a certain IP address than the accounts need to be checked in order to see if the same questions are being bet on. If so, than penalties must be issued.

I love the idea of including the recent predictions on a market, but really hate the new layout. It feels very cluttered to me.

Unfortunately, I don't have much in the way of suggestions for making it better... that's why I started a discussion here instead of just sending an email. I'm hoping someone has some brilliant suggestions.

I do think maybe you could switch the graph back to the top and maybe put recent predictions under a tab?

It also seems like the "make your own prediction" section is smaller and off to the side. Isn't that kind of the whole point? I think that should be the first and biggest thing you see. Not what other people have been doing.

Here's to hoping someone else has some good ideas and you guys aren't too much in love with the current layout. Or maybe I'm the only one who hates it?

I'd like to escalate http://www.hubdub.com/m7055/How_many_...

"How many Facebook fans will Hubdub have by the end of May?"
I know, only the Hubdub gods may escalate questions but, I have flagged it and would like to get a discussion started:

Here are my reasons to void it:
Hubdubbers can change the outcome by joining, leaving, and having their friends join and leave the facebook fan group. This plainly creates an issue where I could bet 101 - 200 friends and there be 100 right before close, then join the group before close and win.

Best regards,
Skipper
(p.s. no offense to Mrs. Eccles)

I love the idea of including the recent predictions on a market, but really hate the new layout. It feels very cluttered to me.

Unfortunately, I don't have much in the way of suggestions for making it better... that's why I started a discussion here instead of just sending an email. I'm hoping someone has some brilliant suggestions.

I do think maybe you could switch the graph back to the top and maybe put recent predictions under a tab?

It also seems like the "make your own prediction" section is smaller and off to the side. Isn't that kind of the whole point? I think that should be the first and biggest thing you see. Not what other people have been doing.

Here's to hoping someone else has some good ideas and you guys aren't too much in love with the current layout. Or maybe I'm the only one who hates it?

We've had a bit of a foul up regarding the RCP markets. In the current case although the market was settled on time, new polls came in which skewed the averages after the market had been settled thus making the original settlement false.

RCP was reporting a tie but new polls came in and changed the averages. As infernalmachine pointed out RCP is unstable as the averages are always changing as new polls come in. The problem were having with this market is the same that happened regarding earthquake markets, in that some polls are late to come in and therefore skew the results.

Because of this I think if we want to do anymore of these markets we need to come up with an exact time to settle the market. I'd propose noon on the next day (EST) so that sufficient time is given for the polls to come in. The problem which will develop though is that an admin won't always be around at that exact time to settle the market so I would have to rely on timestamped photos of the webpage, and the problem with this is that users might alter the timestamped photos.

So what do people think? How do we work with the RCP markets to make them fair and not volatile?

Regards,

Ryan
Hubdub US Politics Content Editor

Those of us who have used this "Get Satisfaction" forum have likely noticed the "form" seems to change -- sometimes from day-to-day. Some days the fonts are big, other days they are small ... etc.

The latest version rolled out yesterday (with some now-fixed glitches in being unable to edit) -- but with one significant change Hubdub users may want to know about.

Up until now, users could "reply" in a thread in two ways: either a "general" reply to the entire thread, or as a "specific reply" to another user's comment.

In either case, a copy of that reply would be sent via email to everyone subscribed to the thread.

Now, the "specific replies" are called "comments" -- but more importantly, "comment replies" are not emailed to everyone who has already left a response on the thread -- a "comment" is only emailed to the specific person you have left the comment for.

For those of us who may be used to extensive replies in HD topics, and who may, essentially, follow additional comments via the email responses, rather than by checking in this forum, one needs to know that, possibly essential, replies may be missed.

Accordingly, I will no longer be leaving "comments" -- and will make only the "general type" replies.

This Get Satisfaction forum is in early beta -- and ongoing changes will be made.

How HD users are supposed to know about these changes is a mystery to me.

If you want to leave feedback on the "change to comments feature", you can do so here:
http://getsatisfaction.com/satisfacti...

The Get Satisfaction team has also decided that the method of "promoting" a response shall be "This Answers The Question", instead of "Mark This as Useful". In my view, I don't think the change is helpful for Hubdub users ... as most of the HD message threads seem to be about discussing possible solutions ... with no one claiming to have the answer.

Some minor good news ... it looks like a suggestion I made to have a "preview" function in addition to the "edit function" will be acted on -- sometime. And "editing" is now open for the full 10 or so minutes, even if new replies are made during that time.