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Orlin reported a problem in Hubdub on August 16, 2008 07:57:
Once more time about the suspend timesUsually users complains about a late suspending, probably because of vastly popular gaming paranoia.
Here's my complaints about the opposite: the earlier suspend times.
This apply mostly in sport questions category. There are far too many cases when question creators put their suspend times way earlier than the sport event begins. Only some examples: User Jake recently has put great effort of making many football questions, namely on the Olympics football quarterfinals and English football championship. This is good in general. But all his football questions suspends many hours before the games starts. There were some olympic questions (in athletics, for example) which were suspended at the beginning (or even earlier) of the Games, although the athletics tournament was to begin a whole weak later. This apply to some questions created by user Valornhonor who obviously put more attention to invent the most possible strange and complicated version of a question rather to a precise suspend time. Examples could be found in Motorsport subcategory where some questions on Formula 1, Indycar etc were suspended 12 and even 24 and more hours before the start of the given race. There are such cases in many other occasions (rugby etc).
All this is not good.
While there is explicite rule on the suspend time of sport events which cannot be after the event begins, there is not a firm reciproque rule against the unnecessary earlier suspention.
In my opinion this is great problem which decreases the pleasure as well as the activity on those questions.
A good example of well created and usually precise in suspend times questions are the efforts of SDCharger.
My note to the question creators of the sport questions: please, do this little effort to check the exact start times of the sport events. Generally, most sport events have firm start times and it is not at all hard to find them.
And to the category editors and superusers: please, pay attention not only at late, but also at too early suspend times.
This will be good for the game of Hubdub, for its popularity and the activity as well as for the users and their pleasure of participating in those type of questions which are of the most popular ones.
Thank you.-
Orlin replied on August 02, 2008 11:41 to the discussion "New Category editors!" in Hubdub:
Why 'lofty', Chatarra? Just an opinion, very subjective.
"Indifferent & unconcerned" - because my opinion doesn't matter; nothing's changing. I simply tell what are my perceptions, nothing more.
New admins - means to me a more quick reaction on settlement. There were many cases when we waited far too long for settlement. This does not add to the pleasure of the game. -
Orlin replied on August 02, 2008 11:30 to the discussion "When should questions related to the stock market (DJIA, NASDAQ, etc.) close?" in Hubdub:
Do you remember what happened on Thursday with both Dow and Nasdaq in the last 15 min when your and most of the others indices questions were suspended?
Nasdaq felt sharply and Dow changed also suddenly. Although this happens regularly in the last moments before close, you hardly can predict in what direction this will be or how much the change would be. In the case of an early suspention this is not predicting.
On the other hand you also cannot earn big in the last moments because the percent usually is already 'spoiled' and whatever big you stake the gain is relatively insignifficant. This doesn't make a difference between the "big money" users and the rest.
You can gain only by risking - for exemple, betting early when things are not yet clear, but then you have the hope of cash in and thus preventing bigger losses - but only if the question is not yet suspended. Which is the case in the last and most active minutes with the 15 or 20 min suspension.
Off course, I do not insist on that; just my opinion: early suspention greatly reduce the pleasure of playing.
I appreciate very much your efforts on creating indices and all other questions; thank you for that.
Also, I would like other indices to be restored; they bring diversity and increase both the pleasure as the possiblities of moving on the leaderboard which is signifficant part of the Hubdub game. Reducing the indices only to two is a little bit monotone. -
Orlin replied on August 02, 2008 09:04 to the discussion "When should questions related to the stock market (DJIA, NASDAQ, etc.) close?" in Hubdub:
Earlier suspention is NOT good.
It turns the game into a lottery which is NOT predicting but is a Las Vegas and Atlantic City type of entertainment. I do not think we need exactly that.
But what is very much needed, it is far more easy loaded HD pages; especially in the last 30 or 20 minutes before the Dow closing bell, HD is loading extremely slow. One can say this is made this way for some users to lose easily and largely just when markets become intriguingly volatile.
Without the daily indices questions Hubdub will slowly and painfully die. They bring the intrigue on a regular daily basis; you may gain and you may lose. You may even lose heavily and fall from high. But on the next day you stand up again and continue to fight and try to climb. No otter type of questions and cattegory have this abbility.
And when you move up the suspention early, most part of that is gone. It's better to try to hit the winning number of the lottery.
5 minutes is a good mark for suspension. -
Orlin replied on August 02, 2008 08:37 to the discussion "New Category editors!" in Hubdub:
I expect form the newly recruited small army of rookie admins at least two things:
1.Prompt and swift settlement when due - a longstanding Hubdub issue.
2.Not trying to show their understanding of wit in the settlements - no need of that; what is need is serious, balanced, respectfull and proper attitude to the job they had applied and toward the rest of the users.
And, of course, no need to say that - not to try to extract some dividents from that position as players.
Symptoms of what have been shown from some of the former SU's now turned to A's. -
Orlin replied on August 01, 2008 20:44 to the discussion "Friends automatically seeing questions wagered on" in Hubdub:
Agree with Ashleigh.
Now the question is - the new feature or no friends at all. -
Orlin replied on May 23, 2008 19:44 to the problem ""Question suspends in" clock is off by an hour" in Hubdub:
I'm sorry, but because of my not sufficient knowledge of english I cannot answer properly.
If you (or anybody else) has felt offensed, my appologies for this - I simply didn't express myself enough well. -
Orlin replied on May 23, 2008 15:30 to the problem ""Question suspends in" clock is off by an hour" in Hubdub:
GMT is not confusing; confusing is namely the mistaken, wrong Pacific standart time which in fact is Pacific daylight saving time, but this is not explicitely explained in the question creation page.
There is something broken in the question's clock, many users complain about errors with the time they didn't made, but nevertheless they appeared.
GMT is the fixed, nonmoveable, world time. Whoever don't know about it, will easily learn.
However.
I don't believe anymore in improvements here in Hubdub; for me, the trend is opposite - Hubdub was better in the beginning.
So, we will bear the real situation. -
Orlin replied on May 23, 2008 05:26 to the problem ""Question suspends in" clock is off by an hour" in Hubdub:
Me too, I have raised the problem many times.
I'll repeat myself, but the most appropriate time zone should be the Universal coordinated time - UTC, known also as GMT or simply Greenwich.
No season changes, no complicated and misleading calculations forward and backward, no suspend time errors, everybody knows it and knows what is his time difference with GMT and for what season.
It's simply like that.
But?
No - why should things be simple when they can be complicated.
That's the impression of what is the attitude on that problem.
It appears that the Blue Dream (as russians says) called Silicon Valley is the cause for sticking to the most inconvinient time zone.
If there was a question "Will Hubdub change the base time zone to GMT?" with 0.1% for the No option, I would bet on this option and record a huge, garanteed win.
:) -
Orlin replied on May 21, 2008 17:10 to the discussion "Unfairly voided question." in Hubdub:
P.S. Today's Nikkei question was wrongfully voided, in contradiction with the rules and the established precedents, just as InfernalMachine said. I wrote my objections in the contact form. I'm sure you can easily guess if I had a reply or something was done on that. -
Orlin replied on May 21, 2008 16:56 to the discussion "Unfairly voided question." in Hubdub:
First.
@Epicur - I suppose this is not your real name. But Orlin is my true, real name since I was born, so the quotation marks are a little bit offensive for me.
Otherwise, I sympathize to you and to your expressed opinions.
Second, and more important.
I confess that I had missed the cited rule and had made a number of questions on "restricted" indices until I received a warning from the appropriate editor. Because of other reasons, I stoped create not only indices questions, but questions at all. [Not that anybody mentionned that and regret this.]
I disagree with the reason for the restriction on the indices. Every index is volatile and its outcome is always unpredictible. I had lost many H$ on many occasions when the trend has suddenly and in moments changed.
This is applicable on all of the restricted indices and I do not see any difference between them and the allowed. As InfernalMachine one more time wrightfully remarked, you need to follow strictly the trend, the news, everything which can influence the trend. This is not easy and is time-consuming.
I read between the lines, that there is an opposition against the easy H$-making.
This is nonsense. Questions are open, everybody is welcome to participate and try his chances and abilities, come on, make your easy H$ and climb the leaderboard.
If we follow the same logic, we must restrict not only the indices, but in the first place the good part of the sport questions and especially american sport questions. We must stipulate - only the NBA final and by no means other matches. Only the MLB finals and nothing more. Only the matches between the big four in England and nothing outside that. And so on.
Particulary, should be excluded the 'strange' to say the least questions which became so popular recently, having nothing common with any news, obviously for lack of news.
Et caetera.
I think, this game have one of its greatest senses in the virtual possibility of gain. It is bad if someone gain more than me? Than ban him and ban the ways he earn its H$.
Finally we will ban everything and will play only on when I will cut my hair and when will be born my next child.
Very, very interesting.
Restrictions are bad. As well as write rules which we don't apply in spite of the admins discretion. Or we have rules and they are obligatory or we have editors' discretion and we don't need rules.
Once more, sorry for my bad english and for the long text. -
Orlin replied on April 21, 2008 16:04 to the problem "Once more for the BIGGEST problem and the GREATEST defect and flow of Hubdub" in Hubdub:
This is not satisfactory and is far very general.
I speak on when the result of the settlement is clear, but the settlement is not given for an uncomprehensibly extended period of time.
Here are only two examples.
The question is http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/Will_M...
Regardless the suspend date, according to the rules, time applied should be local time, because this is a strictly local event and very well covered by all the world mainstream news sources especially in England, BBC has an everyday story on these elections.
The local time in Zimbabwe is GMT+3 which means that the question is not settled for more than 19 hours by now. What we are waiting for? Everything is clear and a simple "NO" must be given, not so much time I suppose. Even with the PST suspend date, 8 hours of delay for settelment of this question is far too more.
And another example. The question -
http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/Pope__...
is reffering to an event which happened almost 24 hours ago, Sunday afternoon in New York. Not enough the question is not yet settled, but it is even not suspended and is with an open date. And it is choosen to be one of the 'representative' questions which appears at the top of the front page. And it appears - a full day after everything is clear and long after the question should be settled and already forgotten. Of course, I can still cash in, but it wouldn't solve the problem.
This is not a problem of lack of time or not yet power users implemented.
Btw, in my opinion this is not a good idea and will only drastically increase the dissatisfaction. The "Spitzer" story will be a game of children in comparison with the storm of disagreements on who is right then. -
Orlin reported a problem in Hubdub on April 21, 2008 15:06:
Once more for the BIGGEST problem and the GREATEST defect and flow of HubdubI've said this in several occasions, but I will not be tired to repeat it until the problem disappears.
The BIGGEST problem and the GREATEST defect and flow of Hubdub is the late settlement of the questions, when the settlement is due.
It is normal and understandable the delay of some settlement to be 2-3 or even 4 and more hours, especially if this is in the middle of the night where admins (or editors) are.
But it is NOT normal if the delay extend over 8 to 10 to 12 and more hours (and sometimes a days), which is a heavy relapse in many occasions.
This is not normal even when the settlement requires some profound or time-eating research or reading.
But this continue to happen and in various categories.
With the growing of Hubdub and the growing community of users, this will become more and more problematic.
There must be editors on permanent duty and working on a shifts. A full interchangeability may also help.
We are invited to participate and play. We are promised of a prompt in a reasonable limits settlement. We are in the rights to expect this.
The delay in the settlement eliminate a great part of the pleasure of all of this.
Something - whatever it is - should and must be done. And - wishfully - quickly. -
Orlin replied on April 17, 2008 05:30 to the problem "Congo plane crash settlement" in Hubdub:
I disagree this time with InfernalMachine.
As the one who first requested settlement, I think that there was not any doubt on the count of the victims. Everyone of the major news sources cited the number between 75 and 83 and this was for many hours. There was no reason of waiting for what will happen.
Only a day later appeared the news that the body count is much lesser.
But even now CNN report 38 dead and 20 still missing and local autorities looking for more bodies under the wreckage. Final count could be (and obviously will be) over the 50 mark set in the question.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/...
Other sources cited the same.
This is not a bad action and we cannot wait endlessly in the "suspend" status of the question untill everything is completely clear.
In fact, the case is very clearly settled in the rules: the settlemet is based on reliable news reports and without waiting the 100% secureness of the news. If after the settlement new data appears, the question is not resetled.
And this is correct.
There is no problem here and - sadly - the settlement would prove itself correct: there would be more than 50 victims in that strange plane crash.
Sorry for my not so good english. -
Orlin replied on April 10, 2008 13:18 to the discussion "(Almost) duplicate markets" in Hubdub:
Thank you for the invite to express my opinion, Jenniandboys.
As an author for the last few days of the question "Will Dow open up", I'll try to defend why this question is not a duplicate of the alternative. Although there are simmilarities, the two represent different views of the same thing; one is detailed, the other is pure and simple. There is no contradictory between the two, nor the one exclude the other.
The 'simple' form of the question is the elder one from the two and it exist since the first day of Hubdub.
I think that there'll be good if we apply a broader understanding on 'what is a duplicate'. Not every time when it appears that two questions asked the same thing in a different ways, this should be considered as duplicate. Offen, one ask something slightly different, or more focused, or bring the attention on a particular detail of some event. I do not think that a restriction on this matter would be positive; in fact, such an approach would 'shrink' the interress and the possibilities of a different point of views on the same event.
I had a previous case when one of my questions felt victim of pretended duplication. I asked if L.Hamilton would win in Malaysian F1 GP, but this was voided because it would be a duplicate of the question 'Who will win" (one of many). I do not think there was a duplicate and that this one was voided correctly.
Here is the same - one ask one thing, the other ask something other.
The reason why I started to create the 'simple' question is that I like it more than the detailed version.
May be should be considered one other reason why the simple question is prefferable, About a week or 10 days ago an user created the same question (Will Dow close/open up) with the explanation that the detailed question can facilitate gaming or cheating. Jenniandboys asked why and how this can be made. I don't know if there was an answer, but in other discussion the answer is given - here, comment # 17, second part: http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/When_w...
So, in my opinion, there is no duplicate and the simmilarity souldn't be a reason for voiding.
On the other hand, I do not insist on that and if the community agree and accept this as a duplicate, I will stop creating these questions, of course.
I didn't want In any way to oppose Bayoubear questions and I much appreciate his efforts to create them.
Please, pardon me for my bad english. I'm really sorry for not being able to express myself in the way I think and can do in my native language :). -
Orlin reported a problem in Hubdub on April 07, 2008 10:03:
Problem with an incorrect settlementAbout the question http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/How_ma...
The settlement is not correct and should be fixed.
In the settlement details there are two correct requests - Dow closed 3 days up during the week, and one with wrong request - for 2 days. The settlement is for 2 days, which is not correct.
The same is mentionned in the comments (comment # 2) by InfernalMachine.
I also left a comment with the hope that the error would be promptly fixed. I also flagged the question for review and used the 'contact' form.
There is no reaction on any of this.
So, I post the problem here.
Please, take an action and fix this. Thank you in advance. -
Orlin replied on April 05, 2008 15:52 to the discussion "Proposed new procedure for dealing with gaming" in Hubdub:
IMHO this problem is not of so great importance as it is attributed.
No less problematic is the fact that the # 1 user in the leaderboard had make his not normal huge amount of H$ by more that 2/3 only from questions created by himself and self-responded by him on local american sporting events of little if any interrest for users outside the US.
But this is not a sportbetting site, there are plenty of them outside. And american local sporting (and other) events are far from being really popular for the rest of the world.
This is also a sort of 'gaming' which undoubtfully affect users' success and the leaderboards. And I'm really suspectfull of the fairness of the incredible success on sport betting of the # 1 user. May be the flood of american sporting questions should be limited? It appears that if you are not very familiar with local american sport you haven't any chances to enter top 20 of the leaderboard. Oh, indian cricket too.
These are two faces of the same problem.
So - when one group of these two is attacking the other, this seems a little bit unilatteral.
Also - although user Satyaki was the fist one publicly named as suspect of gaming two months ago, he's listed as 'friend' in most of (and in ALL editors') "My friends' section of those who want his head now. Isn't it a little bit hypocrite? -
Orlin reported a problem in Hubdub on April 05, 2008 13:05:
Greatest problem of Hubdub, which needs immediate actionIn the Business category the last settlemet was 2 days ago. There are great amount of questions awaiting settlement. No one settle them for second day in a row. Even greater amount of H$ is frozen there, while this is a volatile market and the frozen H$ may have been used in other predictions.
That problem is not from yesterday, it was levelled already, but nobody listen to the complaints.
I don't know why it is not visible that THIS IS the real and greatest problem of Hubdub with potential to blast the good idea from inside.
And this is so easy to prevent this? Settlement of the business questions is simple and fast, there is no ambiguity or controversy here, there is a clear and simple result.
I think this is an issue which needs immediate attention and appropriate action. -
Orlin replied on April 02, 2008 13:53 to the question "Proposed rule amendments" in Hubdub:
I strongly and vividly recomend a change of the base time and time zone.
The current PST is so unconvinient and embarrassing.
Time should be Greenwich - the coordinated universal time, which is common and easy for everyone to understand and calculate wherever he is in the world and for whatever event it is applied. -
Orlin started a conversation in Hubdub on March 20, 2008 16:12:
The three big shortcommings of Hubdub in the eyes of an average userThere 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!).
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