Diana Barraza's dashboard

Well since we seem to be in agreement, the market will stay open until "the end of the 2008 election?" or god forbid a terrorist attack.

Regards,

Ryan
Hubdub US Politics Content Editor

very nice resolve and discourse solution here.
mork, I truly hope you know I did not in any way think you were gaming the question with the starting odds.
If the question was going to settle by the incident in N.Y., that would make it unreasonable to have the odds set as such.
Relieved that it looks like all will workout, and hopefully will settle as "no".
thanks for posting on my shouts in hubdubland to draw my attention back to my comments posted on this fine market you created.

Thanks anaverageamerican, it looks like we can definitely trust the Robert Edwards auctions to be able to settle the markets ahead of time. Cheers for looking into that.

This is a fantastic point that auction sites are not all the same and it will be necessary to investigate their policies before settling.

As for the reopening of the markets, that won't happen. Don't worry. Generally, I markets are more enjoyable when you can pull your money out any time, but in the case of auctions, the market should be suspended at reasonable length from the time of settlement. I can foresee suspension times on these types of markets to be tricky depending on the market's circumstances, but we will work that out if need be.

If anyone has anymore thoughts or suggestions on these markets, it would be thoroughly appreciated!

Hi Diana,

Thanks for bring the discussion over to GetSatisfaction.

First off, I think it is perfectly safe to settle the Honus Wagner baseball card question. Yes, it's an auction and it's not over until it's over. On the other hand the Robert Edwards Auctions site requires bidders to go through a rigorous approval process, including reference checks, and they do not allow bid retractions, so the likelihood of a bidder failing to honor a bid is minute. Here http://bid.robertedwardauctions.com/t... are the Robert Edwards terms and conditions (note numbers 5, 6, 7, 22 & 23)

My comment #9, that you alluded to, was a response to _your_ comment #8, that stated, "if the auction bid rises above the market's goal--like it has done here--then it should be settled despite the risk that the sell might not be achieved in the end for whatever reason". The point I was trying to make is that all auction sites are not all created equal. While it might be safe to settle Robert Edwards auctions when the bid price satisfies the Hubdub question; you couldn't say the same thing about Ebay. So perhaps the rule should be that the market settles when the admins feel that there is minimal risk that the sale will not be completed.

Lastly, I must disagree about these markets being reopened. The Honus Wagner baseball card auction is definitely going to exceed $100,000. I don't see the value in allowing users to "predict" a foregone conclusion. I would prefer to have my predictions tied up until 5/3 rather than having these markets reopened.

Regards,
AAA

Human error, guys. I'm really sorry. Chull sent me that article and I didn't catch the 11-year-old girl part in the market question. I saw that the link did not work, so I didn't have a chance to read up on the background info.

The market is now reopened and I am catching up on the Madeline Neumann case. Sorry again.

When I first read this question, I took it to mean just what Mork said s/he intended it to mean (in his/her first post, above). Further, I immediately related it to the pundit's comments floating around that "a terrorist attack would be a big boost to John McCain" (as was noted in the background of the market question).

That said, it is difficult to write great questions like that. And, when there is a vocal minority raising objections it creates, in my view, a chilling effect on users willing to risk creating new, great, questions. (OTOH, debate is a "good thing".)

I do think that both if there was a "terrorist attack" that the Department of Homeland Security and/or The Pentagon would weigh in on it as such -- and, at the same time, I don't trust either to tell us the truth.

Bottom line, for me, I don't think this was a terrorist attack, and the market ought go on.

[Disclosure: I have no predictions, past or present, in this market.]

Since my previous post here I have been doing some Googling and have come to a different conclusion due to this news article from Reuters:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOn...

Two excerpts:

-"We're treating it as if it were an incident of vandalism," Army spokesman Paul Boyce said at the Pentagon.

-Homeland Security Department said there was no sign of an immediate threat to the United States from the incident and White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said there was no initial sign of any link to terrorism.

I cannot find any article stating that the US government has changed their opinion on this matter.

We would be false to conclude that this was a terrorist attack when the victim of the attack clearly says otherwise.

I now conclude that this question should be allowed to continue as it is.

I really am a slow typer.. Didn't even see this one. I still think we should rely on news instead of any internal definition of terrorism (or any other word for that matter). After any significant event, the newspapers always ask "Is this terrorism??" and 99 times out of a 100 there is a response from Homeland Security that it is not. (I'm thinking about something like the Florida blackout here). – jenniandboys, on April 09, 2008 16:23

1. Settlement rules: As reported by a major mainstream news source. There was no act of terrorism reported by a major news source, therefore I do not think this should be settled.

2. The reclama to this argument has been the Spitzer decision whereby the newspapers all said he resigned, but Hubdub did not. At the end of the day, I think the resolution was that this was a _wrong_ decision. Therefore, saying this needs to be settled like that one was is backwards thinking to me. The quality of the questions and settlements are hopefully spiraling to some happy nirvana in which everything is clear and we never argue. However, this is an iterative process and history is to be more often learned from than repeated.

The goal should always be common sense solutions. If you feel the need to get out the dictionary, you're probably reaching.

As an aside, in this and other markets it seems like some users feel that they louder or more vociferously they yell, the more likely they will get their way. I hope I am not alone in not being swayed by the length or number of such protests and instead evaluate each only on merit.

The problem here is that if the news didn't report it as an act of terrorism, but some people on the site have an opinion of terrorism as one thing while other view it as another thing.

I'd want to keep on the track of having nominal acts such as the NYC pipebomb (late at night, no casualties, just a loud bang) not seen as terrorism. This is because with this definition, acts like throwing acid on the Japanese whaling boats or political protests can be seen as terrorism. A possible definition would be

"The systematic use of violence to achieve political ends or premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience."

It is such a subjective term that when we settle we will have people on each side arguing one way or the other. In my opinion the terrorist activity should be seen as violent in nature. The NYC "attack" was not really violent it was more or less protest.

The problem is that the definition I'm using in a way make all types of political violence terrorism, which isn't always the case.

I regret not making this question more specific when I made it. This was one of the first questions I created upon joining the hubdub community and have since recognized how extremely important it is to be as specific as possible when posing questions.

I was hesitant to pose this question because it brinks on the 'death pool' theme. Please allow me to explain why I made it.

Upon watching a news report that pollsters believed another terrorist attack would bolster John McCain's position, I wanted to pose a question on hubdub to somehow tie in with that information. I enjoy making questions that inform hubdub users of news items but had difficulty figuring out a question to serve this purpose so I decided to pose the question as it is and use the background slot to inform of the link with McCain pollsters. I felt the simplicity of the question would appeal to the predictors and thus have the most potential to be viewed by the user base.

When posing this question I did understand that terrorism is not easily defined and some could argue that it happens very frequently but I considered the settlement detail: "as reported by a major news source" to make the outcome easily definable because I can only think of a handful of incidents in history where media reported that America has had an incident of terrorism.

The incident in New York with the suspected cyclist may be the worst case scenario in terms of settling this question because of it's relatively minor nature and because the perpetrator was never caught. I did not anticipate this.
When this incident occurred it did not qualify as a 'terrorist attack' in terms of the spirit of the question because I do not think it has had any impact on John McCain's ratings. Although it does not qualify according to 'spirit' of the question I think it does qualify as a terrorist attack.

As the question is worded I feel that it must be settled as yes. In the future if someone were to ask "how many terrorist attacks occurred on US soil in 2008?", this incident would be considered as one.

I hope this helps settle this matter soon.

Regards;
rnork

I've been a software developer for somewhere around 25 years, and I cannot tell you how many projects that I have been involved with failed (that doesn't sound too promising, stop reading now 8^) because the business didn't know what it _really_ wanted, and the development team knew _exactly_ what the business needed.

Open communication, and honest assessment of goals, are the keys to success.

One last point I'd like to make is that Hubdub is still in beta, and in my experience as a user, being in a beta always sucks (actually, now that I think of it, in my experience as a developer, being involved in a beta also always sucks). There are bugs, you're trying to accomplish things but the software balks ... that's business as usual for beta-testers. The payoff, from the user side is you gain credibility with the company/development team, so they take your input more seriously than that of "regular" users. The payoff for the company/development team is the creation of a set of super-users who can keep you on the right track in the future.

So it always sort of starts out as a lose-lose (or at least invest-invest) proposition, but can develop into a win-win proposition in the long-term.

This is very heartwarming. Thank you very much, anaverageamerican. I have had a lot of fun so far on Hubdub and I am glad that we're forging a sincere online community for news junkies. This made my day.

--Diana

Screen shots are problematic for several reasons, such as editing, etc.

However I think the biggest negative is that they can't be readily viewed by all users.

Lesley -- I'll post a link in the comments thread for this market, as you're considering voiding and looking for input.

Destry, only as FYI/meh ... I took a screen shot of the front page with McCain on it. I can send it to "whomever" if anyone wants it.