Recently active topics in Hubdub tagged with settlement

Hi everybody, I am keen to avoid a potential Spitzer in this market and have therefore escalated it to Get Satisfaction. The market in question regards a proposed merger between Delta and Northwest airlines, and the question asks if it will happen "before June 1st".

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

The "Spitzer clause" in the rules for the politics category (2.3.1) is of obvious relevance and I think a good outcome would be to end up with a rule for similar circumstances in the Business category.

My personal position would be to settle yes if they announced a merger tomorrow, but I know some will have differing viewpoints if they don't actually become one company before June 1st. Therefore I am very interested to hear your views so that a sensible conclusion can be made if they do announce a merger. As always please reveal any positions you have in the market.

Thanks,

Andrew
Hubdub Business Category Manager

Ok... this one should be settled, and I'll give my reasons why:

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

There's a bit of a time disconnect, I admit, wherein the question asks for the value as it will be on April 30 ... yet the provider of the data specifically to be used for settlement only gives weekly results, and the latest was April 28. My thinking is that this question should be settled as NO, because the latest available data point (April 28) is the only one that can be considered according to the settlement rules link. And that data point was clearly less than $4.00. Therefore, on April 30, the PRICE LISTED ON THE LINKED SITE was less than $4.00, and voila... the answer resolves to "NO".

Hi.

I've recently received a settlement request on this market: http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/Will_a...

The problem we have is that the "Montana secession" thing was reported, but it was reported in a editorial by a reader of the paper and not a writer for the paper. Here's a link to the editorial:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/p...

So what we have to decide is what we consider a report and what we don't. For context we should remember that comments on a story on CBS from users aren't reports but postings from the individual users not employed by CBS. But in opposition to this point, the Washington Times decided to publish this letter in their paper, so is it considered a report?

Thanks for the help in the settlement, this one can prove to be tricky. Also cheers to dieseldog for sending me the settlement request.

Regards,

Ryan
Hubdub US Politics Content Editor

This market question below appears to have been incorrectly settled.

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

It appears to have been settled based on the new article referred to in the "settlement details" section. This article has nothing to do with this market question, and the question should become active again.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23882698/

If there is a news article that clearly shows that one or both of the parents in this market question HAVE been charged, please let us know.

Thank you,
hubdubbob

Will the U.S.A. suffer another terrorist attack on their homeland before the end of the 2008 election?
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/Will_t...

This market has created much debate in the Hubdub community. I think the most recent incident that has gotten people talking about "terrorism" was the Times Square bicycle bombing.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/200...

Talk continues within Hubdub that this was an act of "terrorism"; however, admins did not come across major mainstream media coverage labeling this as an act of terrorism--we're talking NY times, CNN, etc.

How is it plausible for Hubdub to declare that an act of terrorism has occurred in the United States when this cannot be verified in widespread print? Technically, we cannot settle a question based on personal opinion.

Let's open the discussion.

Because the admins don't work 24/7 (WHY NOT??) they can't immediately respond to settlement requests. Of course, people then continue to bet after the result is known driving the percentages up to 100%. There is the back voiding (which doesn't appear to be working?) but that doesn't help with the people who cash out their bets.

This isn't a new problem, but has been mentioned again in a couple threads lately:
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/Will_t...
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/Formul...
and relates to a couple others I have been following (as well as many, many others):
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/When_w...
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/How_mu...

This is a pretty crummy way to make money in my opinion and I'd like to brainstorm on how to alleviate this problem.

My idea was to auto-suspend a question when a settlement request comes in. Most of the time when there is a settlement request either 1) the question is actually ready to be settled and should be suspended or 2) the person misunderstood and the question needs clarification (and should be suspended during clarification). Of course users too trigger happy with a settlement request could suspend a market prematurely but to my mind that's better than leaving it open too long.

I guess if power users (once they exist) can suspend markets that may help too... other thoughts?

I've received a flag on a politics market here: http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/Will_N...

The flag states: "I appreciate it's important to wait on these matters, within reason, but this question is about the editor Bill Keller. Now, it may emerge that McCain was shagging the Barbie doll but either way there is no chance I can see that NY Times Editor Bill Kellor will be fired or forced to resign. If evidence emerged McCain was doing the mango tango with her, Bill Kellor keeps his job with kudos. As it stands now, Bill Kellor is in fact wrong and has kept his job. What is the likely outcome of this almost dead event? Bill Kellor keeps his job.

Bill Keller has recently been prattling on about his man in Zimbabwe. I think we can safely assume he indeed has kept his job. Can we close the question?"

So the question I have is how should we settle this market?

Because the question creator designed the market with the suspend date, it would be hard to change the date or settle now. But, with that said I'd agree that the market suspend date is just to far away for a resignation to be attributed to the Iseman affair. So please comment and give your view on the settlement of this market and hopefully we'll have a decision soon.

Regards,

Ryan
Hubdub US Politics Content Editor

So the suspension date was reached for the following market: What will Conrad Black's first prison assignment be?
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/What_w...

I have never noticed news sources covering such things like prison assignments and I'm not sure if this will be made public. Should this question be voided as 'cannot be settled'? Should it remain open? If anyone can help that would be great.

-Diana

This question
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/WGC_CA...
was settled as "Does not lead a single round" using
http://www.worldgolfchampionships.com...

However, it appears that Woods did lead round 2 (although that left him 1 back from Ogilvy cumulatively). I find it a bit ambiguous. Does the question ask for how many rounds will he lead the competition, or how many rounds individually he leads?

Markets need to be settled consistently. Today a market was settled that referred to whether the debate in Ohio would be the last debate between Clinton and Obama. It was settled as a NO because a debate was announced. While this seems on the surface as possibly the right thing to do, the category editor has previously refused to settle questions until the event took place, in case something came up and they didn't debate. I am referring to the question Ryan settled last month the dealt with the MSNBC debate in Cleveland. He refused to settle the question until the debate began, even posting this comment: I'm going to let this run until the debate. As the market asks if she will attend the debate, if she was to dropout or something else caused her to not participate, I would have settled this incorrectly.
Ryan - Hubdub U.S. Politics Content Editor
Why are we not using the same rules and thinking for settling this question. We can not be expected to guess which way Ryan is going to think before he settles a question, especially when we have what should be a pattern he has set in settling questions.

The question, Will Cleveland, Oh recieve 10 inches of snow as reported at Cleveland Hopkins Airport on March 8, 2008 by 6PM EST? was, in my view, incorrectly voided.

The category editor stated the reasons for voiding were:

"The issue with this market is that it can be interpreted in several ways--illustrated in the issues brought up in the comment section of this market. I think the best way to prevent these questions from being voided is to be specific as possible. When you say 10 inches of snow, make sure you state something that indicates "more than 10 inches" or "less than 10 inches"...something to avoid confusion! Thanks for the market though; I am just trying to be fair!"

The first comment was from a user, stating how s/he interpreted the question.

The second comment was from the category editor: "That's the way I read it, 10 inches of snow ON MARCH 8th between 12am and 6pm."

The third comment was from the originator of the question, confirming the first two comments, affirmatively.

All of the other comments concerned whether or not the question meant "10.000" inches of snow, or more than 10.000 inches of snow.

All of those comments are/were moot -- as there was 8.7" of snow at the location specified in the question. (Albeit there was a lot of snow throughout Ohio yesterday -- just not where the question specifically asked.

I requested settlement at 6:01pm EST, and included a link for a weather station located at the reporting location:
<http://www.wunderground.com/history/a...>

I don't question that the category editor wants to be fair -- however in this instance, the "comments" made on the question do not relate to the outcome of the question. As far as I can tell, the ambiguity of "what the question meant" took place after the expiration time of the question -- and were moot. FWIW, I made no comments for this question.

I request that this settlement be reconsidered, and that the question be settled as of the time of the first settlement request (6:00pm EST, yesterday) -- and that all predictions made after that time be voided.

Three times I reported the problem, perhaps on an inappropriate place, because I have no answer, nor any action to fix the problem.
It refers to one of the famous 'Spitzer questions' - http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/Will_G...
One time I flagged for review with reporting my problem (I didn't want boring the community with my things) and two times I posed the same at the discussion 'Spitzer market issues' - http://getsatisfaction.com/hubdub/top...
As I said - no response.
AnAverageAmerican adviced to post a new separate question and when I saw that TruthWrangler has the same problem, I decide to open this thread.
In brief, I made my prediction on the above question - "NO".
And I repeat - this was done many hours BEFORE the suspend date.
Finally, the question was settled just as "NO". But for me, instead in 'Settled predictions', the question appears in the 'Void predictions' section, the wage is restored, no gain is awarded and the answer is 'Yes', which is not correct.
I had the same problem one more time and it took some time to be fixed.
It appears to me that this is perhaps a bug.
Please, fix this problem, as well for TruthWrangler, and for me.
Thank You in advance.

I really don't want to be a prick about this, and I have nothing personal against the user who created these questions, nor against questions about Asia in general, but I do have a problem with this question (and the four others which are suspending about now on the same topic, and the fact that they are part of a weekly series of such questions).
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/How_ma...

All of these questions are multiple choice, they have low amount of activity, the bets at closing are all 90%+ on one option (does that mean the suspend time is late?), and given previous issues regarding the question creator, I'm afraid I'm more than a little suspicious about the intent here. But regardless of intent, questions of this type are just easy ways for a very small few to make money in a fashion that appears more like a loophole than a legitimate prediction market. Since most or even ALL of the $ wagered are on one option, the winnings are coming directly from Hubdub (no-one wagers on a losing choice).

If these Roadies questions (it's a show on MTV India) are being followed by a sizable community, I sincerely retract my above comments. If not, I feel that we are missing some rule to discourage week upon week of easy-for-very-few, impossible-for-the-majority questions. And how does the editor in question judge these (especially with regard to the appropriate suspend time)? [In an earlier such question, which was voided, a claim was made that a video clip on you tube had the pertinent evidence in Hindi! What if the judge doesn't speak Hindi?]

In general, I'm thinking that it might be an idea to have a minimum number of predictors on a question before it can be settled (say 20?). If it's a tough question and people don't want to wager much, that's fine, but there's something wrong with questions that only have 1 or 2 people wagering (fairly heavily) on them. Liquidity (which translates, I assume, to activity $s) is not the only issue here. So is actual participation by a significant percentage of the community (say at least 1-2 %).

And on a related topic: in particular, in-running (ie financial markets) questions with very few players allow someone to bet heavily on one option (thus keeping others out of the market), watch the charts unfolding, and then if required change horses in midstream with little loss and fairly guaranteed payout. This is nothing like the risk and up-and-down of the Dow questions, nor the "guessing" involved in "normal" questions (such as US primaries, sports events, etc.), and seems a little like a personal licence for one or two players to print their own H$.

To repeat: this is not an attack on Roadies or non-American questions, or on the person who created the questions. But it brings up a very important issue about what distinguishes a legitimate question (and the money paid out on it) from a currently-legal-but-actually-unfair one.