Help: Rules and common (mis)understandings

Comments (part 1)

It's very specific, seems fair to me, and overall is excellent. Should be a great step forward.

One major quibble about the rules. It still doesn't place enough onus on the question creator to really think about the question they are asking (have I considered all reasonable options, have I made it fair and straightforward to settle, will settlement drag on for weeks after the suspend date,etc.)

Final draft should have a summary of most important points at beginning lest lazy readers not get past first 20 lines.

Outages: perfect. Act of God. The risk we all take.

Time Zones: Still too confusing. Stick with one (PST). Add a widget to the question creation page that calculates time zone changes (if not a widget, then a link to 1 of many TZ calculators on Web), so the PST date/time for event and suspend date/time are entered correctly. Why not have a field to enter the question locale's Time Zone (major city or standard abbreviation of time zone - we could have a list of them in the faq), which would appear next to the additional text on the prediction page. Also the suspend time PST should be up there too. If the above widget is available here too, the predictor can figure out how PST relates to both event time and their own time easily.

Suspension: "While a question is suspended, it will not be possible to place any new predictions or to cash-in any existing predictions on that question." Does this mean that the cash-in loophole is going away? Good.

Great that administrators (this includes editors?) can change things, but should also state that it is the creator's responsibility to get things right first time or have question sent back to them.

"The Suspend date and time should not be used as a guide as to when the question will be settled. E.g. If the question is ‘Who will Edwards endorse?” and the suspend date is February 5th then the question should not be interpreted as “Who will Edwards endorse by February 5th?”"

I don't get this. It says what isn't the case, but leaves open to doubt what is. Suspending a question (by the creator) potentially months before a settlement is bad question-making practice (especially if cash-out is suspended too). The question should be reframed by the creator, not endured by the predictor. In other words, I think these kinds of questions need to have an explicit decision date (as opposed to settlement, which is a Hubdub mechanism) built into the question. "Will X happen?" is a bad question, made worse by having an arbitrary suspend date. It should be sent back. The proper form for these questions is "Will X happen by Y?", and the suspend date Z should be close to date Y, unless the creator explicitly explains in the extra text that your money will be potentially tied up from Z until Y and also explains why the question is framed this way.

Types of question: Basically sound. Personally though, I will miss Hubdub questions. I feel our stats are a form of news source, and they're public to members of the community. The self-referential questions, the ones with strategies available to ensure one outcome over all others (ie $ in trade), and questions that allow one or more members to both predict and determine the outcome are not fair and should go, but for the reasons I've stated, not because they're Hubdub questions. I think Hubdub questions build community. Perhaps you might consider easing these restrictions at a later date.

(to be continued)

comments part 2

Settlement: Good you make clear about the delays in settlement related to editors having to sleep.

In paragraphs 2 and 3, the term "suspend time" is misleading. You mean the time when the question is determined by real-life events.

Hopefully in the future you will have editor assistants who live in different time zones who can adjudicate while Midlothian sleeps.

"Number of times" questions should be discouraged. If the settlement source is public news sites, there's no guarantee they will count that word or phrase. You have to then go to public transcripts or watch the video, neither of which may be available. (ie things on you tube usually get yanked for copyright). Anyway, should an editor have to slog through pages of transcripts (I guess you could just run a word count) or minutes/hours of audio or video to settle an event like this?

Disputes: Is it possible to add a new Category to Get Satisfaction to collect these dispute posts. As use of the forum grows, it's going to get harder and harder to find things and keep up.

Voiding questions: Could Hubdub duplicate this forum's approach to topic creation? That is, force a search on the topic before you can opt to create a new one - would help with duplicates.

Still think that question creator shouldn't set likelihood values (unless they are barred from betting on question). When question first goes live have ability to vote on option exactly once with no payout. When 50 or 100 have voted, use these as initial likelihood, and open betting. User could keep track on their page of which questions they've voted on are now open to bet on. (To be clear, this is separate from the new mechanism for vetting new questions. It follows it. And users are voting on one individual option like yes or no within the question.)

Why not require conditional questions to have an option that, in the example given, Edwards does not drop out.

Change of Circumstances: "Any official changes to the outcome of a question after that question has been settled will be disregarded." As stated, this contradicts the ability to appeal the result of perceived settlement error. This is a tricky issue which requires extra thought. You want appeals for incorrect or too hasty settlements, but you don't want this to go on forever. Perhaps limit the time for filing a settlement appeal.

Creating Questions: Personally, I feel 12 hours is way too long to freeze out creators. If cheating is so worrisome, bar the creator from betting on own question.

As in part 1 of my comments here, I want lots more guidelines and rules for question creation. Carelessness at the beginning causes much grief and trouble later. If the question creation process is properly explained and guided, a huge burden on the admins and on the predictors will be removed.

I'd suggest that a worthy project would be a redesign of the question creation process and page(s). Make it much more guided. Come up with types of questions and have appropriate forms for each (like the current differentiation between yes/no questions and multiple choice). Reflect the result of these in the page that the predictor later sees.

TV Shows: Not sure I like the voiding of questions where a tie which isn't anticipated occurs. These contests are like sports races where ties are very rare. (Many games by contrast have ties as expected potential result, and questions that reference these should/must have a tie option or be considered invalid.) Is there no mechanism you could build into the program to account for this and allow an adjusted payout for the 2+ options that did "win", versus all the options that lost? I'd be happy to work out the details for you. It wouldn't be the "if right, you win" amount, but it would still be preferable in most cases to the wager amount.

Weather: How about all weather questions with temperatures must state both Celsius and Fahrenheit (link to web temperature converter on question page). Similarly, both inches and centimetres for rain/snow. Both MPH and kph for wind speeds. And so on. If I can't look these up when making a question, why am I bothering anyway.

Wind chill factor not a temperature. Agreed.

Sports: Would you consider an idea I put forward elsewhere in this forum that in-game questions be the only questions that can be duplicates? That is, if a normal question exists about an event which suspends at start of game, let it stand as such (because people who bet in its market did so assuming it was not in-game). Create an in-game duplicate (with NO 12 hour freeze on cash-in -- and since an admin created it and will judge it, they can't bet on it), maybe stick it into a new In-Game category so people can find it, borrow the suspend time odds from the question it duplicates, and open it say one minute after the normal question suspends. OTOH, In-Game questions that are original can be set up to the admin's pleasure, provided they are labelled as In-Game, and normal questions which later duplicate these can be rejected or voided.

Members of the school of thought that In-Game is "cheating" have their points. Perhaps a purists' Predictors Club leaderboard for those who have never bet in-game could allow for peaceful co-existence for all.

Politics: As we've seen with Super Tuesday, delegate counts are not as simple as they sound. Some states take a long time to come up with these figures after the primary/caucus. Perhaps the onus is on the question creator to actually research the event in question, explain it briefly with their question, and discover and specify an actual likely settlement date, or else the question should be voided ASAP (before people have got too involved in betting on it). Personally, I think primary questions should ONLY refer to popular vote, because these are usually able to be settled within 12-24 hours. The Super Tuesday total delegates question for each party should be banned in future years because of the complexity of settling it. The November Presidential election will have similar problems if it's anything like 2000 (or even 2004), so people should be made aware that it may not be settled until January of the next year.

Business: Agree with the individual stock ban in general, but will miss Google/Yahoo type questions, as they are newsworthy beyond just the financial sector.

About major indexes: What are the major indexes? Specify them. Allow users to push for new additions (it all comes down to how many people will participate). Any way to automate the creation of these questions for say the DOW daily (open 2 days in advance?) by the business editor?

I just realized that the index questions are very similar to the Sports games questions (ie they can be seen as games with final outcomes which fluctuate in potential all through their duration). Should, for example, DOW questions close when the NYSE opens, or say 1 or 2 hours before it closes, unless they are run In-Game by a Hubdub admin? If not, it seems Sports questions are held to a much higher standard than Business:Index ones are.

Overall: Very helpful guide, and the rules seem appropriate.

I shut up now.

All,

Thanks for the help on the rules. I will keep them up for a couple of days and then publish them to the site by the middle of next week.

On resetting everyone back to H$1,000 I can't say we haven't thought about it but I feel it is way too contentious. What we are planning to do is to retain the total increase leaderboard but to focus more attention on the % weekly increase leaderboard. More details here:
http://getsatisfaction.com/hubdub/top...

I agree that the rules are a good step forward to trying to prevent players from gaming the system. I have commented elsewhere that I feel the editors of each category should set the questions for events that are pre-planned, ie.. daily stock market questions, political events, award shows, and so forth.
I believe that the stock market question should have an suspend time roughly one hour before the market closes, otherwise those who have ability to watch the market at closing time are benefitted. I like certain sports events that are in-game play.
I believe that all new questions should be reviewed before being allowed to be wagered on. I feel that the category editors or other "power users" be allowed to review questions and give them a thumbs up or down. If a power user feels the question is questionable then they can submit to category editor, if they like the question it can then be made live. I feel these same power users and editors should be able to suspend questions that have been decided. Settlement would only be done by the editors, but allowing select group of power users to suspend question and flag it to the editor, it will stop heavy wagering on events that have been made public.
I feel by selecting users in different time zones it could help questions be monitored more easily. Especially those questions that relate to sport events.
I believe we need to also address the settlement of questions too soon. The Amy Winehouse question is great example of question being settled before the end date, and the news reversing itself. So those that selected she wouldn't be allowed in, were rewarded with a win, even though the news broke today that she was being allowed. So those that guessed correctly are penalized their profits, and those that guessed incorrectly rewarded. Same thing happened with the Super Tuesday delegate question, it was settled before final results came in.
I love the site, look forward to helping it continue to be a fun and interactive way to engage in current events.

Hey everyone,

Thanks for the amazing feedback on the rules. I'm updating them now. The only one I hesitated on was in financials. The reason we include in-running financials and generally exclude it in sport is because it is possible for us to guarantee liquidity in four financial questions but not across the 100s of possible sports events. With liquidity, in-running questions are no easier to make money on than non-in-running questions.

(As an aside there is a very funny story about a horse raise in the UK about 6 years ago. Tony McCoy (a champion jockey) fell off his horse early in the race. A punter offered the horse to win at 1000 to 1 on Betfair. Unfortunately, all the other riders also fell or pulled-up. Tony jumped back on his horse and went on to win the race! In-running punters beware! Here is the full story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/funny...)