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The three big shortcommings of Hubdub in the eyes of an average user
There are three serious shortcommings in Hubdub, as I see it.
The biggest flow, in my opinion, is not the ambiguous questions, not anything else, but only THE LATE SETTLEMENT of the closed markets.
I understand that the autorised people cannot sit around for 24h only to settle questions, but this is a world wide service which cover events from around the world, and they need a settlement as soon as possible, because the next suspend date is close. It is particullary annoying when a settlement is delayed in daylight time. Typical exemple: the questions regarding the openning of the american indices - the event occur exactly at 1.30PM british time, which is in the middle of the working day. But very regullary they are settled many hours after the event occur. This should not be tolerrable and represent serious deminuishing of the enjoyment of the participation.
So, the settlements must be due ASAP. In the working hours they must be done immediately.
Second. The TIME ZONE which is taken for base is absolutely inconvinient. The permanent recalculation of the time is more than boring. Perhaps there are many californians and seattlers for whom their own time zone is good, but there are may be much more people in other parts of the world and for us it is not so well. PST-time zone is inappropriate also for often posing a problem when particular event occur in some point of the planet where there is already the next day.
The time zone must be Greenwich, of course; this is the universal time and the one the most part of the people around the world is accomodate with.
Third. There are obvious prefferences and privileges toward AMERICAN USERS which set the rest of the participants in an unequal position. And this is not their fault, nor of the site of course. There are huge amount of strictly american questions and I'll say local, in which not everyone outside US is fluent. One simple example is the ocean of typically american sport questions - NBA, NHL, and particulary the world wide completely unknown college basketball events. Americans do know about all that, but not all europeans for example are familiar with this. And it appears that this is like the Europe's 'second division' football games - not too many people outside the particular country know the details around that type of events.
And, on the other hand, namely the american sport questions are the easeast way to make it into the top 5, where I'm not sure if they are others except americans. The overall leader had made his huge wealth at 2/3 only on american sport. I strongly doubt this could happen if there were an equal number of european sport questions.
I see gaining some equality in creating more and more questions on rather typically european sport events. Last evening, for example, there were plenty of different and very inerresting matches in England (Tottenham - Chelsea 4-4, what a match!), Germany, Italy, Spain and in other championships - and on Hubdub there wasn't a single (not one single!) market on that. Another example is the World championship of figure skating now in Sweden - there isn't also a single question on that, altough there may be very intriguing ones. On the other side of the ocean everyday there are plenty of sport events in HD in which the middle european cannot adequately participate because he's not fluent with these events. Here belongs also the numerous american TV shows etc. All in all, it is strange how any non-american can make it into the top of the leaderboard.
So, let europeans (and everyone, of course) create more, much more 'european' (or, not strictly american) questions to reach some equality in opportunities with the american contenders. Many football (or soccer) games and other sport events rest uncovered.
Finaly, the proposed methods for reaching the same goals by the changes in the leaderboard and the attributed H$ are not good. The big gap between the top 5 (or 10) and the rest of the field may be effectively erased if every user has his chances, instead of the obvious prefferences for the americans as is the current situation.
Appologise for the long text and for the bad english (I even hadn't learned it!).
The biggest flow, in my opinion, is not the ambiguous questions, not anything else, but only THE LATE SETTLEMENT of the closed markets.
I understand that the autorised people cannot sit around for 24h only to settle questions, but this is a world wide service which cover events from around the world, and they need a settlement as soon as possible, because the next suspend date is close. It is particullary annoying when a settlement is delayed in daylight time. Typical exemple: the questions regarding the openning of the american indices - the event occur exactly at 1.30PM british time, which is in the middle of the working day. But very regullary they are settled many hours after the event occur. This should not be tolerrable and represent serious deminuishing of the enjoyment of the participation.
So, the settlements must be due ASAP. In the working hours they must be done immediately.
Second. The TIME ZONE which is taken for base is absolutely inconvinient. The permanent recalculation of the time is more than boring. Perhaps there are many californians and seattlers for whom their own time zone is good, but there are may be much more people in other parts of the world and for us it is not so well. PST-time zone is inappropriate also for often posing a problem when particular event occur in some point of the planet where there is already the next day.
The time zone must be Greenwich, of course; this is the universal time and the one the most part of the people around the world is accomodate with.
Third. There are obvious prefferences and privileges toward AMERICAN USERS which set the rest of the participants in an unequal position. And this is not their fault, nor of the site of course. There are huge amount of strictly american questions and I'll say local, in which not everyone outside US is fluent. One simple example is the ocean of typically american sport questions - NBA, NHL, and particulary the world wide completely unknown college basketball events. Americans do know about all that, but not all europeans for example are familiar with this. And it appears that this is like the Europe's 'second division' football games - not too many people outside the particular country know the details around that type of events.
And, on the other hand, namely the american sport questions are the easeast way to make it into the top 5, where I'm not sure if they are others except americans. The overall leader had made his huge wealth at 2/3 only on american sport. I strongly doubt this could happen if there were an equal number of european sport questions.
I see gaining some equality in creating more and more questions on rather typically european sport events. Last evening, for example, there were plenty of different and very inerresting matches in England (Tottenham - Chelsea 4-4, what a match!), Germany, Italy, Spain and in other championships - and on Hubdub there wasn't a single (not one single!) market on that. Another example is the World championship of figure skating now in Sweden - there isn't also a single question on that, altough there may be very intriguing ones. On the other side of the ocean everyday there are plenty of sport events in HD in which the middle european cannot adequately participate because he's not fluent with these events. Here belongs also the numerous american TV shows etc. All in all, it is strange how any non-american can make it into the top of the leaderboard.
So, let europeans (and everyone, of course) create more, much more 'european' (or, not strictly american) questions to reach some equality in opportunities with the american contenders. Many football (or soccer) games and other sport events rest uncovered.
Finaly, the proposed methods for reaching the same goals by the changes in the leaderboard and the attributed H$ are not good. The big gap between the top 5 (or 10) and the rest of the field may be effectively erased if every user has his chances, instead of the obvious prefferences for the americans as is the current situation.
Appologise for the long text and for the bad english (I even hadn't learned it!).
I’m indifferent
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Inappropriate?i think the server is based in california and that is why the default time zone is pacific...used to be, all Q's were automatically set to just PST, but now there is a choice...it _may_ be easier to switch to GMT since most people know how far forward or behind they are from it, altho i know i created a Q about a different zone and had to look up what time to set it to... i also would like to see more european sports questions...seems i do better on the soccer and cricket Q's than the american sports, but i also don't know much about it(soccer that is), simply place bets to see how much of a pure predictor i am without much knowledge, so the only way for there to be more Q's is for more people who follow it to create Q's...just to note, rohan and satyaki are both from india i believe, altho i agree the leaderboard seemss skewed towards we americans...the settlement delay should be helped once they institute power users, from what i gather they are going to allow power users the ability to settle at least some Q's altho i may be wrong about this
