June 17 Cycle Retro: What could have gone better?
14
1.3kṀ332resolved Jun 23
24%21%
No incentive to bet on long-term markets, thus short-term markets dominate. Not enough interesting short-term questions, so gamey circlejerky meta stuff dominates. Signal to noise ratio of Manifold falls, putting new users off.
13%11%
Search is bad at helping people find markets
10%8%
Liquidity is too low
7%6%
Many markets have little activity (bets, and esp comments)
7%6%
Our messaging and how we present ourselves still unclear
7%6%
lots of free daily market complaints, not a lot of action
5%4%
Market types overhaul
5%4%
Charity Prediction Markets follow-up
5%4%
Comment tips took a while
4%4%
New user experience still suboptimal
4%4%
Uniswap V3 research took a lot of time
3%3%
Autoresolve
3%2%
Free response markets are pretty meh
3%2%
Liquidity withdraw created exploits & little benefit
6%Other
1.0%
Notifications
1.3%
Open source contributions distracting
0.2%
Manifund execution
1.4%
portfolio complaints, not much improvement
0.0%
Our messaging still unclear
Where did we drop the ball? The point of this isn't to point fingers or assign blame, but rather to identify where our processes and strategy are not serving us well.
Mostly, this market is for the Manifold team; don't expect the probabilities, etc to mean much other than like a subjective vote on how much you agree with a particular statement, or how much you want to discuss it.
This question is managed and resolved by Manifold.
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@akhil Thanks for the feedback! We're hoping that the introduction of limit orders will go a long way to making markets more deeply liquid -- currently one of @JamesGrugett's priorities
@EnopoletusHarding I don't think that's accurate - yet. The site isn't big enough for it to be a problem IMO. But the status quo cannot endure if the site is to grow and become more popular as a fun game (if that's even the goal, which it's unclear if it is - see SirSalty's answer), because the dominant strategy of the game is boring and silly.
@SirSalty this is a pretty big one IMO. I have very little idea of what Manifold is *for* in the eyes of the staff. Seems from the outside like each employee has their own unique vision and/or pet projects, which results in a good amount of innovation I suppose, but not much focus. Is the goal to make the most accurate prediction markets by being the most accessible way to make them? Is the goal to make the most mathematically interesting prediction market mechanisms? Is it something something charity?
Speaking of charity - I'm a fan of giving to charities. I do it often. But.... I don't really see what it has to do with prediction markets in any fundamental sense. It's admirable that there's that option, but the amount of energy spent discussing the charity stuff and related (e.g Manifund) seems like a distraction from the core project.
@MattP For sure. If we can figure out a system for paying interest on long term markets that is resistant to being abused, that would be great for the site.
Nobody sees the interesting long term markets because don't get surfaced by any of the sorting criteria.
Maybe we'll run out of novel gamey market ideas and get tired of them. And maybe by making trading bots that win every gamey market, they'll be less fun. Or maybe people will just create bot-resistant markets.
I think the election markets are currently well served by PredictIt/Polymarket and we should focus elsewhere.
@EnopoletusHarding For most markets I consider betting on, a M$10 bet would move the market by ~5%. Expected profits are in the single digits. Maybe it's just me, but I end up not betting at all.
@akhil "- Fewer highly liquid and active markets is better than many illiquid markets." Not rly. M$100 liquidity is plenty.
"I'd like Manifold to be where I get my news, and share my predictions with a community on how that news/event might impact the future."
Ditto. Perhaps we could have a "millions affected" label.
- Fewer highly liquid and active markets is better than many illiquid markets.
- Expected Profits are too low because small bets move the price significantly
There are a few different product choices and improvements which can help here - but the purpose of Manifold as a whole still doesn't have clear answer for me; and the whole product might have to change significantly (rather then small feature additions) to accomplish this.
I'd like Manifold to be where I get my news, and share my predictions with a community on how that news/event might impact the future.
@ian as a user, I don't even necessarily want action in the short term - just info about what the plan is (and not only because I have a prediction market on if y'all will do something :P). Right now it seems like y'all either don't care about the free market farming or don't have any idea what you want to do about it, which is a little frustrating when it's been talked about a lot and many viable solutions have been brought up.
@MattP I think I agree. Probably the most interesting *questions* are long term (presidential elections, big sweeping outcomes, polling stuff) but the incentives make me not want to bet in those markets. For example, my own market on Strangemood, which I sold my profit in because I don't want to wait till next year to realize any gains.
I think this has a lot of overlap with the "mission/message" is confusing stuff, in the sense that right now, what you're incentivizing (intentionally or no) is a lot of these random gamey markets. Those can be fun for the subset of users who enjoy them (including me, sometimes) but they are a distraction from most of the other possible missions of the site - and seeing mostly gamey markets on the front page makes it seem less serious, somehow.
@ian tied to free market issue - M$100 free mana every day trumps the smartest betting I could possibly do.
@Austin "Mana more desirable = portfolio gamification, the graph; to set making it more like you want it more."
I have suggested approaches to improve the Portfolio page.
@Austin "People need to want mana more."
Will eliminate bets on longterm markets with the current arrangement.
[A] Now that it's built, we should use it to unlock more growth. Need more biz energy
[A] How do you describe Manifold?
[D] With Charity, there's no incentive to donate now. Matching - expiring day. Having a static number looks bad
Could change the mechanism - X for a certain month
[D] Most charities do a time-frame campaign.
[J] Phasing out money over time?
[C] Sticker on profile?
[D] For this month - rotate out the matching