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InfernalMachine replied on March 13, 2008 00:06 to the question "Contentious questions (part 3)" in Hubdub:

I so much want to disagree with Jerry's Just Trolling. But I can't.

Here's an unfortunately likely news story. A young child is abducted and later found murdered. At a news conference, a pale grim-faced detective states that the child was sexual molested, possibly repeatedly, with a foreign object.

So I go to HD and ask:
1. How many times was child X molested with a foreign object?
Not molested with f.o.
Once
2-5 times
6-10 times
More than 10 times

and then
2. With what object was child X molested?
A hammer
A Wankel Rotary engine
A ....

Hey - it's news. It's my free speech. They're legitimate questions.

On a slightly different topic, what about the whole issue of minors using the site? I can see a social studies teacher very much wanting to set their class loose on a site like this. But there are legal issues around minors and exposure to certain material, aren't there? And do we really want to discourage the use of this site by young students, (ie discourage their teachers)?

JJT may or may not be right in particular. But in general there are some real problems with laissez faire, and it's great that this discussion has been opened up. Let's not just tidy things up by sweeping them under the rug.

InfernalMachine replied on March 12, 2008 23:21 to the question "Escalation: What color is this tie?" in Hubdub:

Spitzer Category (or is it SubCategory?), you mean.

InfernalMachine replied on March 12, 2008 23:15 to the problem "Question incorrectly voided - Ohio Snow" in Hubdub:

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.

InfernalMachine replied on March 12, 2008 22:41 to the problem "Spitzer Market Issues" in Hubdub:

If the question about Spitzer resigning today
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/Will_G...
is to be settled NO on a technicality, then it should be voided on a different technicality. The question was created less than 24 hours ago, and since no-one leaves the exact day they announce leaving, the initial odds of 80% Yes were clearly WAY off (they should have been the 5% minimum or the question should have been voided for having only one sane option - the one that was rated by the creator at 20%).

I mean, doesn't the fact that the question started with 80% Yes make it quite clear what the question means re: "resign". From my point of view, HD is having a Monty Python moment on this Spitzer topic.

Full disclosure: I bet on NO on this question, because I thought he might wait a day just to irritate his enemies. When he announced, I cashed out for pennies, because I had LOST. I was wrong. I fully expected to have my cash-in retroactively voided for being past the announcement time. I accepted defeat. But obviously HD is now suggesting that my honest and mature approach is wrong. I should have kept my wrong bet and whined. Whiners prosper at Hubdub. The editors make a point of taking their side. They'll even rewrite the rules to justify siding with them. The result: more and more whining. It will become the "News Prediction and Whining when you're Wrong" Site. Enjoy.

InfernalMachine replied on March 12, 2008 22:16 to the problem "Spitzer Market Issues" in Hubdub:

Will Team X beat Team Y on date Z in their NHL playoff game? Team X wins, only the game happens to go into double overtime and finishes at 12:45am local time. All the people who bet on team Y (ie NO) then cry foul, it didn't happen on date Z, but on date Z+1. The editor agrees, and proposes new rules to define "win" relative to dates. I mean, come off it.

It's clear what my example question intends, and there should be no debate about settling it YES. There is no need for updating the rules.

Every time an editor or admin settles a question (or voids it) to satisfy a technicality against common-sense, Hubdub, as a whole, loses. Sore losers should not be coddled, and certainly not obeyed.

No-one wagering on these Spitzer questions, until this morning, was worried about the technical meaning of "resign". Only the Losers are now making a huge deal about this, and it's not on a point of principle but to keep their H$. The issue at stake is not deep, not important, not worthy of rule changes. "Nice try, but no," is the appropriate response.

InfernalMachine replied on March 12, 2008 21:21 to the problem "Spitzer Market Issues" in Hubdub:

I agree completely with Destry here. The question as phrased, at the time it was put out there, was about when (and if) he would announce his resignation. Whether or not it takes a couple of business days to accomplish that is irrelevant. I'm saddened that the editor is not sticking to the common sense understanding.

I thought he would resign after the weekend, and wagered thus. When I saw this mess brewing, I cashed-in the wager at a slight profit. But it wouldn't be right to win because people who bet as I did then re-interpreted the meaning of the question. This is silly, and as Destry says, it's happening way too often and it brings the game in disrepute.

The editors should ALWAYS follow the common-sense interpretation of questions.

InfernalMachine replied on March 11, 2008 21:54 to the question "Politics Market Quarrels" in Hubdub:

I didn't mean my comment in that way. I just was wondering, if in the future you have different versions for different locales, will we still have access to all the questions, even those in the different regions/versions?

But, in general, this question of why the site is US-centric keeps coming up. Maybe you need to address this , ie explain it, on the Notice Board, or in the FAQ?

InfernalMachine replied on March 11, 2008 20:42 to the question "Politics Market Quarrels" in Hubdub:

I hope, if you go this way, that people from out of region will still be allowed to wager on questions. That's half the fun of hubdub.

InfernalMachine started following the discussion "Photos included with questions" in Hubdub.

InfernalMachine marked one of crudsy's replies in Hubdub as useful. crudsy replied to the discussion "Photos included with questions".

InfernalMachine marked one of Destry's replies in Hubdub as useful. Destry replied to the discussion "Photos included with questions".

InfernalMachine replied on March 10, 2008 20:06 to the problem "Is there a time zone issue?" in Hubdub:

Thanks. You might take a look at the ALL - Closing Soon tab. There's a number of non-business questions that are listed but also Suspended.

InfernalMachine replied on March 10, 2008 19:20 to the problem "Is there a time zone issue?" in Hubdub:

Any chance of reopening this one:
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/Readin...

InfernalMachine reported a problem in Hubdub on March 07, 2008 16:35:

Odd odds behaviour

In the following question,
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/Where_...
there is some very weird odds reporting. This is particular to today's question -- that is, it wasn't like this in earlier days.

The market activity is over $70,000, yet wagers of 300, 400 and 500 are valued such that cash-in drops the current odds on that question 5-7%. That doesn't make any sense. Taking less than 1% of total activity out of the market shouldn't be having such a dramatic effect, and didn't seem to yesterday or before on such questions. Also, it suggests that all predictions in this market are being undervalued.

InfernalMachine reported a problem in Hubdub on March 07, 2008 16:21:

Settlement email problem with hedged bet gain reporting

Love the new email reporting of settlements. Really useful feature. Just a minor problem. With hedged bets on a settled question, the total gain is incorrect. For example, on the recent question about the Euro, I had several wagers in each of two choices (one of which was the correct one). My gain (not counting wager) was $2200 greater than the losses on the wrong choice, but it was reported as a total gain of $3. There was no problem with payments themselves, just an arithmetic error with the email.

InfernalMachine replied on March 07, 2008 15:20 to the problem "Nameserver Failures" in Hubdub:

Still hoping for a response to this. Had real problems around 6am PST on Friday Mar 7.

InfernalMachine started following the question "Finding Other Hubdubers With NetWorth Close to Mine" in Hubdub.

InfernalMachine started following the idea "common links page" in Hubdub.

InfernalMachine replied on March 06, 2008 03:54 to the problem "Incorrect settlement date on cricket test series" in Hubdub:

Thanks. Most of my wagers were in time for the cutoff, but there was a fair amount of activity between the two matches.

As to "misreading" the question, I made the exact same error after the first match (and in fact in predicting on it). I had to do a little web research to discover it was a series of matches, each over several days. This connects up with another discussion on-going here about clarifying questions with news links. In this case cricinfo.com might have been a better source, but most of all some explanation in the background text would have made things clearer. It would really help if people actually used this area to clarify their questions.

InfernalMachine reported a problem in Hubdub on March 06, 2008 00:48:

Incorrect settlement date on cricket test series

This is the question:
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/Who_wi...
The best source for these international cricket matches is cricinfo.com

In this case, this was a two game series which was decided on Mar 3. The bbc reference cited in the settlement is to the first game, not the series (which South Africa did win). Therefore the cut-off date of Feb 24th should have been Mar 3 or Mar 2. This refers to wagers after Feb 24th which were voided retroactively at time of settlement. The point being that the series was not decided on Feb 24th, but more than a week later.
Here's the results
http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/bdesh...

Thanks