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Nigel Eccles replied on March 16, 2008 21:03 to the question "Contentious questions (part 3)" in Hubdub:
Proposed resolution to contentious questions here: http://getsatisfaction.com/hubdub/top...
Let me know your thoughts.-
Nigel Eccles asked a question in Hubdub on March 16, 2008 09:23:
Contentious questions: Proposed resolutionOver the past week there has been extensive debate about whether contentious questions, such as those involving death of celebrities or military personnel, should be allowed on Hubdub. I see three main positions:
1. It is morally wrong and offensive - questions involving death (in particular the Swayze and Iraq body count questions) should be banned
2. These questions are news and as a news site we should carry them, and treat them like any other question
3. While these questions shouldn't be banned they should be kept separate in some way from the rest of the site
I'm not sure if there is a majority behind any position although most people it would seem would settle for position 3.
Therefore long term we are proposing to introduce a tagging system so that all new questions are tagged with regards what they relate to. Questions relating to death would be tagged as such. In addition we will have functionality which will allow other users to filter out all questions with certain tags (YouTube does something like this).
One problem is that it will probably be 1-2 months before we can release that functionality. Therefore in the short term I propose contentious questions are dealt with on a case by case basis. If there is significant opposition to a question then it would be voided. Those case rulings would then be used as 'case law' for any new contentious questions. To date there has been strong opposition to two questions, Patrick Swayze and US and coalition troop deaths. If this resolution is accepted, those questions will then be voided, as would any future variant of those questions.
When we introduce tag and filtering we would review this again to see if these rules should be amended. -
Nigel Eccles replied on March 16, 2008 07:33 to the problem "voiding individual bets when a Q is changed" in Hubdub:
I like the idea of having a forum for discussing how questions should be worded. I guess we would add that to other forum elements. I will add that to the product idea list.
We are planning on introducing user settlement but not question creator settling the question. There are a number of sites that already do that and the results aren't pretty e.g. questions getting months late if at all and questions getting incorrectly settled. User settlement when we introduce it will have to be speedy and accurate. -
Nigel Eccles replied on March 15, 2008 20:56 to the discussion "More users" in Hubdub:
We obviously had a lot of coverage at launch which drove the bulk of our sign-ups to date. We've been fairly heads down since then but we are now planning on increasing our exposure and improving the amount of search traffic we get.
However, anaverageamerican is right, sites like us don't have much of a marketing budget and need to grow virally to be successful. We will be releasing some features over the next week that should make it easier for that to happen. -
Nigel Eccles replied on March 15, 2008 19:53 to the problem "voiding individual bets when a Q is changed" in Hubdub:
This must have been a mistake on our part. We only should be editing questions to clarify them not change the meaning. At times this can be tricky.
I think your suggestion is a very good one. I will pass a note around to the category editors that if a question requires editing, and the editing could be construed to change the meaning then they should void prior predictions and note that in the settlement details tab. -
Nigel Eccles set one of Nigel Eccles' replies as an official response to "Spitzer Market Issues" in Hubdub
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Nigel Eccles replied on March 13, 2008 23:49 to the problem "Spitzer Market Issues" in Hubdub:
I spoke with Ryan last night and today about this question. We knew not everyone was going to like it but we thought it the least bad result as it was both consistent with the earlier guidance on the question and recognised the legitimate confusion.
Lots we can learn from this in dealing with vaguely defined questions. Thanks for your suggestions. We'll try and capture that and feed it into the rules and settlement process.
Plus I think we have a new word, a Spitzer, which is a question which is unclear how to settle. A potential Spitzer is a question that is vaguely worded and may turn into a Spitzer. I guess we could also have a full Spitzer which is one of sufficient contention that it generates 280 or more comments!
Our objective is to keep our Spitzer count as low as possible.
(BTW Well done TruthWrangler for getting that out of the NYT) -
Nigel Eccles replied on March 13, 2008 08:53 to the question "Contentious questions (part 3)" in Hubdub:
Really throught provoking discussion here. To answer one question about what does Hubdub want to be; I have always intended Hubdub to be a news forecaster, something that would combine the excitement of fantasy league and betting markets with utility of having accurate forecasts of future events, insightful comments and links to the most useful news articles. Unfortunately, that dual mission (as it were) means that different users see Hubdub as different things.
This discussion reminds me of firestorm that the US Policy Analysis Market kicked up (although the discussion here is better considered). Article on the PAM here:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage...
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_A...
Very interesting write-up of the press response here (the authors was one of the architects of PAM):
http://hanson.gmu.edu/PAMpress.pdf -
Nigel Eccles replied on March 12, 2008 22:48 to the question "Escalation: What color is this tie?" in Hubdub:
Thanks for all your input. Even though I am color blind this is the clearest void I have seen to date.
Now on to the Spitzer question... -
Nigel Eccles asked a question in Hubdub on March 12, 2008 13:38:
Escalation: What color is this tie?There has been a very active market on the color of the Chancellor's tie. Unfortunately, it looks to me to be purple which wasn't an option. Picture of the Chancellor in tie:
www.bbc.co.uk
The question: http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/What_c...
What do you think? If you agree that it is purple, should we go for the nearest (blue/navy or pink?) or void it? (let me know if you have a position in your comment) -
Nigel Eccles replied on March 11, 2008 09:13 to the question "Contentious questions (part 3)" in Hubdub:
Note we have made some amendments to the rules last night, in particular it is worth looking at section 2.2.5 (http://www.hubdub.com/public/goodques...). If by the start of next week there is a strong consensus that certain types of question should be banned then we will update the rules with that regard. If, as I expect there might be, a clear difference in opinion then we will see if we can work out some more minor rule amendments (e.g. questions involving death must be worded in a particular way) and additional functionality (e.g. tabloid section, tagging of questions referring to death etc). -
Nigel Eccles replied on March 10, 2008 17:28 to the question "Contentious questions (part 3)" in Hubdub:
One feature we were considering developing was to have better filtering on the site. Therefore users could select which types of questions they did and did not want to see. When a user creates a question that involves death then they put that in as a tag. Other users can elect whether or not they want to see questions with that tag on it. -
Nigel Eccles replied on March 10, 2008 10:42 to the question "Contentious questions (part 3)" in Hubdub:
Just to note here that I voided the questions created about whether I myself was going to meet a nasty end. And before I get accused of double standards let me explain why.
Hubdub has always been aimed at being a news site. The Patrick Swayze question, while you may consider it distasteful, is a news story carried by nearly all other news organizations. My premature death, while would be tragic for my family (and not a barrel of laughs for myself), is not news.
As a community led site, the rules come from rational debate and agreement between members of the community. If there is a consensus that the rules should change in a certain way then they will. -
Nigel Eccles asked a question in Hubdub on March 09, 2008 20:23:
Contentious questions (part 3)There has been some discussion on the Patrick Swayze question as to whether it should be voided as it is considered distasteful:
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/Will_P...
There has already been some discussion on what questions are acceptable:
http://getsatisfaction.com/hubdub/top...
The consensus then was that we shouldn't be policing the morality of each question. Since then we have proposed a slight amendment to the rules detailed here:
http://getsatisfaction.com/hubdub/top...
We will make that rule change in the next couple of days. However some of the commentators on the Patrick Swayze question think that all questions like it should be banned. Views? -
Nigel Eccles replied on March 08, 2008 07:59 to the problem "Odd odds behaviour" in Hubdub:
Hi Infernalmachine
You are right. The market scoring rule is behaving as it should however I'm not happy that it doesn't take into account of how much liquidity a market has. We are looking to make some adjustments here. -
Nigel Eccles replied on March 05, 2008 23:24 to the question "Proposed rule amendment: Contentious questions" in Hubdub:
Linking to a news story wouldn't be required but giving some background would be best practise. For financials, it might be as simple as "Market was down yesterday". For weather questions it might be "<city> averages at about x degrees at this time of year". There are a lot of questions on the site that are devoid of context and it is really hard for new users to work out what it is all about.
With regards contentious questions the point is to reinforce that we are following the same news stories that are being discussed and debated in main stream news sites which I believe is what we want. </city> -
Nigel Eccles asked a question in Hubdub on March 03, 2008 15:47:
Proposed rule amendment: Contentious questionsOver the past week there has been a lot of discussion about contentious questions such as this one:
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/How_ma...
Whether or not we should retain these questions has been discussed in the comments, on the blog (http://blog.hubdub.com/2008/02/21/a-q...) and here on Get Satisfaction (http://getsatisfaction.com/hubdub/top...). The current consensus is that we should.
An amendment I propose making to the rules is as follows:
All questions should provide context in which they are created (e.g. through linking to a relevant news story). If the question is potentially contentious (e.g. about loss of life) then it must be in the context of a mainstream news story
As a news site we need to be able to follow the news that other news sources are following however we also need to avoid the risk of becoming considered a 'death casino'. -
Nigel Eccles replied on February 29, 2008 22:19 to the problem "New leaderboard question settlement dispute" in Hubdub:
OK, that is 4 in favor of over-turning the settlement and none against.
I will re-settle the question in favor of the No's (although the Yes's will retain their winnings).
Thanks for helping out on this one -
Nigel Eccles replied on February 29, 2008 17:25 to the problem "New leaderboard question settlement dispute" in Hubdub:
Hi infernalmachine,
I did ponder this one before settling it. In the end I thought it was a Yes because the friends leaderboard is a 'new leaderboard' and it allows you to see more than the top twenty users. Technically therefore I considered that it answered the question, however potentially not in the way some people expected.
What does anyone else think? (Please state if you had a position on the question)
I think a bug crept in with yesterday's release which affected cash and prediction amounts. Chris is working on that right now. -
Nigel Eccles replied on February 29, 2008 10:03 to the idea "Proposed rule amendments" in Hubdub:
Thanks for the review. One addition we want to add is that unless otherwise specified we will use a hierarchy of publications in settling US politics questions. The hierarchy is:
-CNN
-FOX
-MSNBC
-Reuters
-BBC
For World the prefered settlement source will be Reuters.
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