Recently active topics in Hubdub tagged with ambiguity

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?

The Yankees game is the first rain out of the year, and it instantly brings the focus of HubDub users to the idea that baseball games can get delayed/postponed, and how do we resolve this issue. The situation it created was that a question was phrased "Will the NYY's lose to Toronto on the Opening Day Game on March 31st?" Now, of course, since the game wasn't played, they didn't lose, but there is intent to the question that can't be denied. It has already been stated by an admin that the question in question (ha!) will be decided by the April 1 game, but this does bring about the idea of setting a standard and/or proper phrasing of MLB game specific questions.
First, a little info on MLB delayed/postponed games:
A game can be postponed by one day or a couple days or months.
If a game is postponed until near the end of the season, but ends up not having any impact on either team’s playoff chances, a postponed game can end up not being played at all.
When a game is postponed, the tickets are NOT reissued. You need a ticket for the original game date to get into the later date game.
A postponed game is frequently NOT the very next game to be played, even if the same two teams are playing.
A postponed game RARELY involves the same two starting pitchers as was originally planned.

This being said, how should HubDub handle postponed games? If an April game ends up getting postponed until August, I don’t imagine that people will want their money tied up. However, I don’t believe that any outcome should be decided based on the game being postponed (unless that is the question, of course). So, should postponed games cause questions to get voided? Is it up to admins to determine if the game will be played soon enough for it to be played out?

I do think that the question creator has a large responsibility to be specific in the phrasing of the question, and in the settlement details.
First, I recommend that people NOT create questions of the Yes/No variety. Create a question that has two outcomes, and provide two team names. That will require a team to actually WIN for a payout to occur.
Second, be specific in the Settlement Details how you would like a postponement to be resolved. You can request it get voided if postponed, or can be even more specific and request it gets voided if postponed by more than one day or two days. If the game is postponed, but the same two teams are playing the next day, the question can be applied to that game. The key is to actually specify what you (the creator) think should happen, and not let it get flushed out in the comments section.

Now, these are just my thoughts. I would love to hear what the rest of the community has to say about this issue.

Hubdub has had a few questions appearing such as, "Will Dow Jones be up on February 8,2008?" The problem with this is the phrasing "be up". It is open to multiple interpretations depending on the reading and could result in a settlement different to a users belief in what the question asked. Better questions are "Will the Dow Jones Close up on Feb 8?" This can be very reasonably settled as whether the Dow rose or fell that day.