Loading Profile...
Question incorrectly voided - Ohio Snow
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.
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.
1
person has this problem
I have this problem, too!
Tell me when someone solves it.
The more people who report this problem, the more it gets noticed.
The more people who report this problem, the more it gets noticed.
The best solution from the company
-
Thanks for this Truthwrangler. I'll look into it and get back to you as soon as I can.
Lesley.
The company says
this solves the problem
Create a customer community for your own organization
Plans starting at $19/month
-
Inappropriate?Thanks for this Truthwrangler. I'll look into it and get back to you as soon as I can.
Lesley.
The company says
this solves the problem
-
Inappropriate?Hi Truthwrangler
I agree with all your points regarding the clarification of the question. I can see that the meaning of the question was indeed clarified through the user comments. And while I can understand that Diana voided it because the question as it stood wasn't clear, you are right in saying that it was resolved through the comments, and the only sensible meaning should have been taken, i.e. at least 10 inches of snow (not accumulated). With this in mind, I agree that it should not have been voided, at least not without some further discussion with the users, and you have my apologies for that.
However, unless I am not seeing the correct information on the link that you sent me, I can only see "Snow - 10.8inches/27.43cms". Any idea where I can find the 8.7ins that you refer to? Has the information perhaps been updated since you saw it? Or am I just missing something?
Finally, and unfortunately, no matter how we agree to resolve this, at the moment it's impossible for us to unvoid a question, as much as we'd like to. We can unsettle but not unvoid currently. I'm looking into whether we can change that.
I hope this has helped, Truthwrangler, and apologies again.
Lesley
Hubdub Category Manager -
Inappropriate?Thank you, Leslie, for your response.
Of course, the Daily Summary, provided in the settlement link was continuously updated, hourly, and now shows the total history for that date. And, silly me, I didn't take a screen-shot (who knew ;-)
Looking at the hourly summaries, at the bottom of that linked page, shows the following precipitation and conditions, after the last time (5:51pm) referenced in my settlement request:
. .Time . . . . Precip ... Events . . . . Conditions:
6:46 PM .... 0.01 in . . Snow . . . . . Light Snow
6:51 PM .... 0.01 in . . Snow . . . . . Light Snow
6:59 PM .... 0.00 in . . Snow . . . . . Light Snow
7:14 PM .... 0.01 in . . Snow . . . . . Light Snow
7:28 PM .... 0.01 in . . Snow . . . . . Light Snow
7:46 PM .... 0.01 in . . Snow . . . . . Light Snow
7:51 PM .... 0.01 in . . Snow . . . . . Light Snow
8:01 PM .... 0.00 in . . Snow . . . . . Light Snow
8:11 PM .... 0.00 in . . Snow . . . . . Light Snow
8:17 PM .... 0.00 in . . Snow . . . . . Light Snow
8:44 PM .... 0.00 in . . Snow . . . . . Light Snow
8:51 PM .... 0.00 in . . Snow . . . . . Light Snow
9:38 PM .... 0.00 in . . . . . . . . . . . . Overcast
9:51 PM .... 0.00 in . . . . . . . . . . . . Overcast
10:51 PM .... N/A . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overcast
11:51 PM .... N/A . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scattered Clouds
That totals an additional .06" of precipitation.
Now, comes the tricky part -- as converting precipitation into snow is not an exact science (as I've learned in looking at all of this).
At <http://forum.onlineconversion.com/arc...>, at the bottom of the page, there is a reference to snow conversion:
For a really detailed study, see the following very informative report (127 pages) at the Meteorology Education & Training website of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research: <http://www.meted.ucar.edu/norlat/snow...>
That report proposes a classification of snow into six main categories, with corresponding mean snow/water ratios as follows:
4:1 - very heavy snow
7:1 - heavy snow
10:1 - average snow
15:1 - light snow
20:1 - very light snow
25:1 - ultra light snow
So, while one could use the "15:1" ratio for the "light snow" condition, the conversion is also affected by the temperature :-( as is noted in that same reference.
Anyhow, applying the "somewhat faulty" 15:1 ratio to the .06" of precipitation =
.06 x 15 = 0.9" snow
Adding .9" snow to the amount I reported at 5:51pm (8.70") =
8.70" + .9 " = 10.6" -- which is a difference of 0.2" snow from the total reported for the entire day (10.8") [less than 1/4" difference]
Calculating in the reverse (subtracting from the day's total): 10.8" - .9" = 9.9" at 6:00pm
This is likely wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy too much information ... but I was curious, I guess.
And, I do understand that you probably can't accept this math as an authoritative source.
I also know that you can't un-void a question -- and even if HD did settle this, are wagers and percentages saved (internally), once the question has been voided?
Soooo ... it's too bad the settlement request didn't get picked up sooner --- (you may want to add this "information" to the new "weather rules"-- such that "hourly" questions cannot be accepted -- only "daily totals" to prevent something like this in the future) ... I had made some great, and risky, predictions in this market!
Thanks again for your kind response.
- Roger
I’m snowed by all this information.
-
Inappropriate?Leslie,
Is there a next step on this? -
Inappropriate?Hey TruthWrangler,
I think once it's voided there aren't any next steps, at least that's my assumption based on other, similar, situations posted in these forums. I think the problem with unvoiding are keeping track of what everyone's position was prior to the voiding. You have to do that so you can take away the original wager you refunded and restore the market to it's unvoided state.
I’m making some assumptions here
-
Inappropriate?Questions have been unvoided in the Politics area, so it's possible. (Specifically the Obama/Clinton Feb 5 pledged delegates question which is still open because it can't be decided accurately yet.) But in this case, the problem is the cutoff time for snow (not bets). Had the question ended at midnight, there was a way of settling it, but there are no reports of snow accumulation for the 18 hour period. TruthWrangler makes an interesting case for a complex formula to remove the last 6 hours from the 24 hour total, which unfortunately is not equivalent to a news report, is based on extremely arguable snow densities at the trailing edge of a heavy snowfall, and involves the accumulation of rounding errors in totalling the after 6pm precipitation. The original question should have been amended or voided based on the difficulty in determining the total by 6pm, and the weather rules should be updated to handle this kind of problem with weather questions. The void should stand.
-
Inappropriate?I agree with InfernalMachine. I have great respect for TruthWrangler but feel the application of a complex formula to approximate snow accumulation was probably _not_ the intention of the original question. I have no horse in this race, so I'm completely impartial. In fact both InfernalMachine and TruthWrangler are friends (and kicking my butt in the most serious way 8^), so I'm not taking sides, just expressing my opinion.
I’m glad I'm beating all my office HubFriends (R), even if IM and TW are killing me
-
Inappropriate?Thanks, Infernal Machine and An Average American -- I had no desire to settle this market by anything but official, verifiable, sources -- which is what I submitted. Unfortunately, apparently there was no one available to look at the settlement link in a timely manner.
I offered up the formula only as a way to try to reverse engineer a solution to the admitted problem that this market was incorrectly voided. (Interesting that all the debate about parsing words in this market were moot -- as there wasn't 10" of snow.)
There is no question that any formula is not a substitute for the actual measurement of snow ...
The reason I asked "is there a next step on this?" was because I inferred a willingness, or perhaps an opening, to somehow come to an agreement on settling this, from Leslie's comment:
Finally, and unfortunately, no matter how we agree to resolve this, ...
and just wanted to follow-up on that. -
Inappropriate?Hi Infernal
Thanks for your response. I just wanted to clarify that Voided questions CANNOT be unvoided. I assume the politics question you are refering to is:
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/Will_t...
If you look in the Settlement Details tab on that question you can see that it's been Suspended and subsequently Unsuspended, but not Voided/Unvoided. We don't have that functionality anywhere in the site. Although we are looking into it.
On the other issue, you are right that the problem was getting the Snowfall for the single day up until 6pm, without someone sitting watching the Weather site and taking a screenshot of the update nearest 6pm.
I will suggest it as a change to the weather rules, and we will look out for future such weather questions and either amend or void as necessary.
Thanks again for your input.
Best regards
Lesley. -
Inappropriate?Hi TruthWrangler
Sorry for the delay in responding. It's been one of those weeks....
I have responded to infernalmachine above and just to re-iterate here, I'll propose that we add the rule around this to the weather section of the Hubdub Rules and we should all look out for these tricky questions in future and either amend or void them as necessary.
Thanks for your input.
All the best
Lesley. -
Inappropriate?Lesley. My apologies about the "void" thing. You're right. The question was a similar one
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/Which_...
and it was suspended, settled, unsettled and then re-opened (ie I got all my bets back in place as if they hadn't been settled). It wasn't voided though. Sorry for confusing the issue.
I think a weather question which is "different", like the one under discussion, could be ok, if the creator does the work to figure out how and where it will be settled. I suspect people get excited about their idea and rush it online without always considering whether or not it can be settled.
EMPLOYEE
EMPLOYEE
EMPLOYEE
