Contentious questions: Proposed resolution

All is well if tagging is used in concert with opt-in/opt-out customization, as Nigel spoke of.

Regarding newsworthy military body-counts, I think that the suspend date should be set to a day prior to any option. In this way hubdubbers may predict that market's outcome, but not change their prediction once the counts start. This would then be 'predicting' and not simply a function of following the news and updating your position to reflect realities on the ground.

For instance, NASCAR (and other sporting events do not allow positions to be made after the start of the event.

Seems a good solution to me. And I'm with jerry concerning the suspend date.
Maybe one should be able to set both a suspend and a settle date generally.

jenniandboys said it well. As long as a fix is coming ...

Perfect solution, Nigel. User level filtering control will likely solve the problem, especially if certain keywords (i.e. die, death,and Apple) can be entered by the individual members and then questions with those words can be filtered out. That way people who want to wager on those types of questions lose no freedom and those who don't won't be annoyed or troubled. Actually, this might even remove the burden of tagging altogether and preempt complaints of 'mis-tagged' questions. An added bonus is that anyone who starts trying to promote products or drum up interest in their cause by over-posting (even under different screen names) can be quickly and effectively tuned out. I think it would be pretty telling to the HubDub staff when they review the statistics of what is getting filtered out by the members. I suspect certain patterns might evidence themselves.

Up until now, my comments in the various "Contentious Questions" threads have been unspecific.

Rather than comment directly on "war causalities" -- of any flavor -- US soldiers, Canadian soldiers, UK soldiers, Australian soldiers, Spain, etc., or on deaths of members of the Iraqi, Afghani, Turkish, or Pakistani military -- or on civilian causalities of any nationality or religion, my earlier comments tried to make the point that virtually any news story had the potential to become contentious, or could be news that some people would prefer not to read, listen to, or watch.

My quasi use of the Socratic method, apparently, has failed.

Accordingly, let me make my views on this as clear as I can:

I am 100%, without equivocation or compunction, opposed to banning, voiding, or "hiding" news-related questions (markets) that reference, measure, or inquire about death; or of war causalities of soldiers or military or civilians of any nation on the planet involved in acts of war, aggression, terrorism, murder, assassination or any other similar activity or topic.

Tomorrow evening, March 19, 2008, we will celebrate the fifth anniversary of the War in Iraq.

In my view, a war is measured by two metrics: money and death. Measurement is not to be confused with goals, reasons, or anything to do with "end result", rather money and death is how a nation, or faction, measures it's progress towards whatever end game it has declared.

In my view, the singular metric that brought about the end to the long-suffering war in Vietnam was the news reporting of the incomprehensible body count -- of US and other country's soldiers, and of the North and South Vietnamese military and civilians. When the people of this Country could no longer stomach the daily-dose-of-death reported in the news, they mobilized into massive, and unrelenting protests against the war.

The War In America:

The Vietnam War did have a major impact on everyday life in America and the Johnson administration was forced to consider the domestic consequences of its decisions everyday.

Eventually, there simply were not enough volunteers to continue to fight a protracted war and the government instituted a draft. As the deaths mounted and Americans continued to leave for Southeast Asia, the Johnson administration was met with the full weight of American anti-war sentiments.

Protests erupted on college campuses and in major cities at first, but by 1968 every corner of the country seemed to have felt the war's impact. Perhaps one of the most famous incidents in the anti-war movement was the police riot in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Hundreds of thousands of people came to Chicago in August 1968 to protest American intervention in Vietnam and the leaders of the Democratic Party who continued to prosecute the war.

The Vietnam War: An Overview -- Professor Robert. K. Brigham, Vassar College.

MORE FUL-FILLING, MORE TASTE

How the news is reported varies as do how Hubdub market questions are asked.

The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, et.al., don't write their stories in bad taste. They are not vulgar, nor are they disrespectful. There are, so-called "tabloid" or "gutter-press" publications that are, to my palate, in poor taste.

So it is with the questions (markets) that probe the news.

In my view, a distinction that is not readily grasped by some users is that Hubdub is a news prediction site. Users don't have the convenience of simply reporting the news ... and choosing appropriate words to describe an event -- they need to create possibilities; outcomes -- both visible and hidden. News prediction questions, by definition, deal with the unknown, the unforeseen; the likely and the unlikely.

News services have the job of reporting Patrick Swayze's cancer. Their task is not to predict outcomes -- albeit they may offer background information on the specific type of cancer, which may imply a degree of survival. Hubdub users have the task, if they choose, of predicting the outcome(s) of Patrick Swayze. Will he survive? Will he die? Will he start a charitable foundation dedicated to cancer research? Will he become an advocate/spokesperson for an existing charity/foundation?

There are an infinite number of outcomes that can be predicted for Eliot Spitzer, for war and war causalities, and for Patrick Swayze.

To use a tired, but apt, example ... Hubdub users don't get to report that Eliot Spitzer resigned -- Hubdub users are asked to predict outcomes of what Eliot Spitzer allegedly did. Will he resign? Will he be charged with any crime? Will the call girl(s) be identified? Will he be divorced? Will it be revealed that Eliot Spitzer had unsafe sex? Did Spitzer wear boxers or briefs? What kind of condom does he use? How long was intercourse? How big/small is his penis?

I think Hubdub can reasonably determine where the line gets drawn, in the above example, between questions/markets that are in reasonably good taste, and those that are not.

Likewise, questions concerning "body counts" can be in reasonably good taste, or in poor taste. No one, as far as I know, is suggesting that questions concerning causalities should be allowed if they are written in poor taste, or are disrespectful -- however, questions about causalities are not intrinsically disrespectful simply by being asked.

And, there is another side of "US soldiers" that always needs a bright light to illuminate it from the darkness that may often surround it. Kruijs commented in Contentious questions (part 3):

"... it should be a matter of concern to the American people how many of their soldiers die far away from home. Just as it should be a concern how many people are killed by US soldiers.
It is part of your (I mean US) Identity to go to foreign countries and bless them with democracy.
So please, be fair and do not try to hide the dark side of the medal."

John F. Burns wrote the other day in The New York Times:

"Beyond these, there were the instances when America’s intentions were betrayed by its troops in more personal ways, with the abuse and torture of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, with the shooting deaths of 24 civilians in Haditha and with the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl at Mahmudiya, along with the killing of three other members of her family, all leading to court-martial hearings that tore at the heart of anyone who starts from a position of admiration for the American armed forces. The Marine offensive that recaptured Falluja from Islamic militants in November 2004, virtually flattening the city without achieving more than a temporary change in the arc of the war, may also draw its share of condemnation. "

War Torn - Five Years

I have no doubt that there are folks who don't want to read about atrocities committed by US military. If we only want the "nice" questions on Hubdub, then any questions created on topics such as these must also be banned.

To sum up:

1. I do not support option #1.

2. I do not support the gist of option #3 -- specifically, I do not believe "these questions ... should be kept separate in some way from the rest of the site."

If Hubdub wants to implement some form of "safe" filter -- that's fine, if the default is "show all questions". How Hubdub plans to implement tags/filters that apply to all forms, variants and flavors of death that could be contained in virtually any question -- and in all of the comments that accompany them -- is for you to work out.

3. I am absolutely opposed to voiding the two questions enumerated: "Patrick Swayze" and "US and coalition troop deaths".

Whichever way you proceed, my warmest advice would be to "take baby steps". Were you to consider voiding ... "any future variant of those questions", please try to consider unintended consequences.

In my view, there is an extremely simple answer available to make a decision on this issue -- simply answer the following "yes or no" question, and then apply that same answer to Hubdub:

Should news reporting about death, or of war causalities of soldiers or military or civilians of any nation, involved in acts of war, aggression, terrorism, murder, assassination or any other similar activity or topic be banned from newspapers, television and all other media outlets?