InfernalMachine's dashboard

I've discussed my disagreements with the proposal above. But if it's adopted anyway, I have a big question about the open proposition rescaling and its effect on those questions/markets.

As an example, crudsy has approx. 600K while I have approx 400K. So crudsy wagers are discounted 30x and mine 20x. So their $300 on Yes (say) is scaled to $10, while my $300 on No scales to $15. But this doesn't leave the odds on the market unchanged. The rescaling is going to have drastic effect on some markets. In the above example. crudsy's $10 might then go down to $5 while my $15 goes to $20. This is not only unfair, but it also seriously ruins the integrity of the market.

The only way to to preserve the integrity of the market is to divide all current worths (or shares held, as I understand is how markets are internally managed) by the same amount across the market. Since all questions are theoretically equal, the divider should be equal across all questions.

This is the benefit of rescaling by a single factor, rather than creating tiers. You could use a divider of 100 for everything, or you could set an amount you want the front runner to start at (like 5000 or 10,000) and calculate the divider from that at reset time. I doubt there is any real opposition to bumping up the new total of cash and predictions for players who end up under 1000 after division back to $1000.

thanks to pics4d for the shout.

i missed this discussion (sleep) and then it took me a while to process it.

thoughts

1. it's too complicated
2. it ruins the market for long-term questions and thereby discourages the asking of some of the most interesting/challenging questions
3. if the point is to return to "initial conditions" every quarter, why have tiers?
4. questions about financial quarters and month-ends that coincide with Hubdub quarter ends are sort of ruined
5. what exactly is the benefit of past performance?

Rating: 2.5 stars

Suggestions:

1. how about tagging questions by the quarter in which they were posed? at end-of-quarter if a question is not settled it's suspended as is, but no rescaling of bets is done. subsequent results on the question are processed as usual, except that they only affect performance and cash totals for the quarter (past) that they belong to. so, in effect, a quarter is not over until all its questions have been settled or voided. a request can be made to ask a "new" question in the current quarter which is identical, starts with the odds at time of suspension of the old one, and runs through the current quarter. this could even be automated for questions whose suspend date crosses one or more quarter-boundaries. NB winning money on a previous quarter's question has no effect on this quarter's stats.

2. pick a quarter end for hubdub that is NOT exactly at the end of a month (ie March, June, etc). this will help with the problem around the collection of month-end questions that are "damaged" by occurring at current quarter-ends.

3. no tiers. whatever the reset is for the quarter, it's either a fixed amount of cash, or a fixed percent reduction (ie you get 1% of your previous quarter total or $1000, whichever is greater). Starting with 20K versus 1K is not going to change much on the gain leaderboard (20K is near optimum for %growth, I found, so it may even allow the 20K club to dominate the weekly percent board at first)

personally, i prefer restarting all even, but if we want to stagger the start (like pole position in auto racing) then either make it a function of previous quarter's position or net gain (but such that the difference between first and last in the new quarter's start is not all that discouraging)

4 if you use suggestion #1, then people start a new quarter with only cash, no open predictions (for that quarter). the question then is where does this cash come from? is it taken from their previous earnings or does it come from hubdub? the reason this may matter is that it has an effect on total net worth.

5 the in-game bonus or bling thing: are these awarded or purchased? if bought, how does this affect total earnings. i mean, are you potentially exchanging your place on the ladder for bling-display or not?

6. maybe you could be able, if you go below a certain amount (1K?), to "purchase" from your previous earnings a limited amount of new cash by paying an upwardly-increasing penalty (starts at 50% or 100%?) for the transaction. So if you want 5K of cash, you can get it by paying 7.5K first time, 10 K next, etc.

7. you need to compensate or balance the effect of resetting H$s with tangible rewards for past performance. this should be at the same time as the quarter end, not in the indefinite future. this is very important, because not only does it compensate for any current bad feeling regarding these new and somewhat out-of-the-blue changes, but also it addresses the central issue of incentive in the game. why bother spending lots of time playing, researching, etc., if two weeks from now it doesn't count for anything at all?

I'm happy.

"and remember..i will get caught". Yes, but when. I have you down for getting passed in August. ;-) [Unfortunately, when I wrote the question you were $205 K ahead but now it's more than 225K!]

Not happy at all that 4d is leaving.

I can't say I don't understand the frustration though. Here's a discussion, largely among HD editors and admins about the GTA IV violence question:
http://getsatisfaction.com/hubdub/top...
I don't understand how that discussion is engendered by the actual question. Are they bored?

This is a very serious problem. Out of good manners, and also out of a worry about setting a judge against one, it's a serious matter to criticize the people who judge HD questions. But a game (and a market) relies on its rules and their fair and knowledgeable interpretation - there's a deep reason behind the saying "as sober as a judge". To their credit, this discussion is not on the comments tab of the actual question, but they seem to be saying that the question about GTA IV will be interpreted as about GTA in general. WHY?!?!?

Other than quitting (but not quietly) or staying but risking offending the people who judge the questions we bet on, how are we to indicate to HD a growing general frustration with the method in which certain questions are being settled, voided, or re-interpreted via comments?

The Spitzer issue was not about ambiguity of question or language. It was about a very small minority vocally claiming a case (again and again) for a clever re-interpretation of an obvious set of questions against a clear majority who thought common-sense was the way to go - that is, until the category editor suggested there really was ambiguity in common sense and they'd be siding with the minority, thereby changing the meaning of the question to something no-one had actually bet on previous to their statement. It happened, big deal. But it's going to keep happening (and currently is happening) until clear guidelines for judging are implemented and enforced. And the users can't do much about it except complain - it's a serious, but internal, matter. We can say how important it is, but ultimately it's like the addition of a feature - totally in your hands.

It can't have escaped attention that the people most concerned about this are among the group of users who have most participated in the discussions here at the forum, have solid records of successful questions created, and to boot are among the most successful at the game so far. We love this game, and we give our time to this game. There is also no personal animosity towards HD or any of its representatives expressed in our concerns. We are just responding to a "drift" in the affairs of the game, and are saying, "It really matters."

The question says "GTA IV" not "GTA". The media will report on violence caused by previous versions of the game. But that has nothing to do with the new version. The violence has to be tied to this version. Since the day of release is the first day the public gets their hands on it, it seems obvious the act of violence would have to be that day (unless a GTA IV programmer or reviewer or beta tester goes postal).

Like the tagging and filtering idea for the long-term.

The short-term solution is problematic as stated though. If Patrick Swayze questions go, then so should all questions that name people who might die. If coalition death tolls are out, then so are Tibetan rioting death tolls, fatal tornado counts, etc. If death is taboo, then so should be divorce and hospitalization, among other "not-nice" things. If you take all these out, you won't have much news. It'll be just sports and financial, just like betting sites.

I'd say you either promise people the long-term solution and leave things as is in the short-term, or you remove all nastiness until the long-term solution kicks in.

Personally, I'm opposed to removing the military death tolls. A major poll this week discovered that most Americans do not know almost 4000 of their fellow citizens have died to "protect their freedom" (or serve their country) in Iraq. Given that the Administration and Pentagon went out of their way to discourage the reporting of the repatriation of soldiers remains for political ends (to prevent a Vietnam War-like turning against the war as a result of daily reports of the war dead on the nightly news), we are hardly doing the truth any favours by banning these questions. (Here in Canada, a big deal is made over every Canadian soldier who dies in combat in Afghanistan - they get their 15 minutes of fame, which is the least we owe them, no?) I'm all for encouraging or even demanding sensitivity from people who create such questions, but banning them seems to fall into the category of obeying cynical propaganda.

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.

That's funny. I just flagged a question with a Spitzer-alert.

I disagree though with your suggestion that these questions were vaguely defined. They were perfectly straightforward. I'd say a Spitzer is a question that's easily settled until a group of people who want to win-by-losing complain vociferously and a HD rep unfortunately stumbles into believing there's a legitimate debate or ambiguity and possibly indicates a support of their ridiculous position. Anyway, that's what it means to me.

Good ideas.

Fully support the meaning of "resign" being suggested for the rules. It agrees with common sense and with the "by formal notification" aspect of the dictionary definition above.

I'd also suggest a new "rule" for editors and admins: careful with what you post. Also, it should be made clear when an editor/admin is making an official comment (as is done here), so that any other comments are understood to be simply the opinion of the person posting - not of Hubdub and not of the person in their official capacity.

After reading this, perhaps he has a point:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...

You're getting a little tedious with your approach.

If Dubya says so, it's official. After all, he's The Decider. (If only he was The Settler.)

I don't believe that we users are entirely free at HD, nor that we should be. I agree that there are restrictions against offensive language and epithets. HD owns and controls the site, and I agree to be bound by their rules in order to use it (whether I like those rules or not). So freedom of speech is limited from the start.

What I was trying to get at with my fictional questions was that, in the name of news, I can turn someone's tragedy into a game, a bet. I can even, with my Monty Python reference to the Wankel Rotary Engine, turn it into a joke. And that's currently fine by Hubdub. It's within policy, because it references a news story.

I think that that's the central idea that Jerry's Just Trolling has been hammering at this past week or so. And although I at first thought they were being far too "moral" (and kind of crazy with all the Nigel questions) and restrictive, I have come to understand that there is a very important issue at stake here, that goes way beyond Death Pools. It does boil down to "what kind of site does Hubdub wish to be?". And the decisions made (or avoided) will have actual serious consequences further down the line. So it's great we are discussing it here, and I hope others will give it some sober reflection and join in.

You should have used a different dictionary. "To give up (a position, for example), especially by formal notification" implies that the formal notification defines the action of resigning. This is precisely the reason that people are saying he did resign today. Note that it doesn't say "after formal notification" but "by formal notification". The resigning is in the notifying formally. Thanks for proving the opposite of your point.