Ok cool so let me make sure I've got this right...

At some point today, when this market was north of 90%, the market was locked, the description was updated to say essentially "oops everyone misunderstood my description, this market is actually going to resolve NO" and then reopened? So whatever yes holders happened to be offline when the correction was issued got screwed, and whoever happened to log on at the right time got arbitrarily rewarded? Even though all of those people were equally confused about the resolution? Do I have that right?

Cool!

In cases where the entire body of bettors misunderstood the question, it seems to me like the clear thing to do is just cancel the market, rather than issue some correction and cause a free-for-all where some people get screwed and others profit substantially, just based on who happened to see the correction first.

[Removed my comment because it was a bit more aggressive than necessary]

@partlygloudy I went to the please resolve thread and posted that after seeing the comments here, the people who talked to Dylan about keeping the market open were evan, panfilo, and gabrielle.

You can see the full conversation starting here.

I don't have any particularly strong stance on the resolution here myself, but someone had to buy the market down once a decision was made. I grabbed the shares before any of my competitors could.

@Joshua Okay apologies for calling you out then, misread the timing of that thread.

But like... yeah, this is exactly why you have to cancel the market!

It's silly to say "hey, we're changing the question in a big way, whoever sees this message first gets to take everyone else's money!". Once a market gets screwed up like this, it just needs to be cancelled because there's not a fair way to undo the damage otherwise.

Also like, yeah, the reason you were first is that you were following along the discussion of how the question would resolve on Discord. That's not the skill that the platform should be rewarding, the platform should be rewarding people who are making good bets based on information that improves the accuracy of the market. It's unreasonable to make "following along diligently on the Discord" a requirement for not getting screwed.

All entirely fair. I was just worried one of the other five fastest button clickers on the site would buy it down if I didn't.

@partlygloudy I do feal sorry for most YES betters and I apologize for anyone who feels mislead. I do also feel that the description has always been pretty unambiguous that a full vote is required for a YES resolution. I'm probably digging myself in a bigger whole by saying this but betting this market from 98% or 97% to 99% with the description as written and no clarification from the market creator shows an almost comical level of lack of caution and prudence which I like to think is a skill manifold should reward.

Regarding the timing of everything, I didn't tell or hint to anyone that I was re-opening the market as to not give anyone an advantage. I'm not sure exactly how I should have done that part better.

@DylanSlagh if a clarification is expected to move the market by a very large amount, the correct thing should be to cancel the question, because there is no fair way to reopen the question once that happens

@partlygloudy Alright congrats you won. I knew this would happen from the beginning and I'm extremely upset by the whole situation. Please everyone read the description and try to understand the markets you trade in

@DylanSlagh I repeat that there will be no vote to end the strike by all union members, the only vote to end the strike is the one that has already been there and ended 86-14%. It is not a question of reading the description, it is a question of giving an interpretation, based on the fact that the market is not yet closed and based on a comment you made later, to a poorly written description.

Alright I’ve made my decision. I’m going to re-open the market and resolve it based on my original intention which is whether the full vote will take place before Nov 30. I will sell my shares immediately as much as it pains me

@DylanSlagh I worded the question poorly because I misunderstood the nature of the strike.

@DylanSlagh The full vote can’t have considered to have taken place before all the votes are counted so all votes must be counted before Nov 30

@DylanSlagh well that seems certain to resolve no then, based on the announcement that votes would be tallied on December 5th

I've put some limit orders down for yes, if anyone wants to sell their shares

@DylanSlagh So basically this market is a scam (title different from description, description that doesn't make sense since they don't vote on the strike, creator betting on No once it gets to 98%, market closed) and I lost third of last month's profits. And I am sure that if I had bet No by not making public the fact that the result of the vote will be made public in December (on the new contract, not the strike) the market would have been resolved with Yes. Congratulations to the moderator who exploited a scam to gain 5000 mana, I regret nothing and will not sell anything, either now (to save at least 10%) or before when I could.

I sympathize with all of this, but I also sympathize with Dylan. I think this was a tough call with no great solution, so I stayed out of the conversation in discord. Dylan asked for other users' opinions, and they agreed that the markets description meant that it should remain open. Dylan sold his shares and isn't profiting here.

I'd be happy to send you the mana you lost, though obviously that doesn't help with leagues/profit. But hey, the schedule for approving the end of the strike could always change in the next month. I've seen weirder reversals.

@Joshua It seems to me to be a fairly easy market to solve, considering that it has reached 99%. The fact that it has dropped to 12% (and if I sold my position, I think it would drop to 0.5%) without anything happening doesn't make the market difficult.

I don't care about getting the 2,000 mana through backdoor ways, and honestly not even the 67 mana I would have gained with a Yes, I care about the credibility of the markets.

And I repeat, union members do not vote on the strike. The strike is already over, the first productions will start next week. If users had bet Mana because they had misunderstood the description I would have bet No without much trouble (I did so with Ohio and with AI capitalized a billion, although I "returned" a small portion because it had really misread the description), but here we are talking about inventing a meaning that does not exist.

@DylanSlagh Feels like a straightforward scam. "Will the actors strike end by Nov 30" -> the actors strike has already ended (not in some technical sense, people are fully back to work).

If we are meant to completely ignore the question title, and only use the description, well the phrasing there is not coherent. The members of the union do not vote to end the strike. That wouldn't make sense, because the strike has already ended, and people are back to work. They vote to ratify a new contract. That's something quite different.

The question title that everyone saw was coherent, the alternative description was not. The market clearly interpreted it in the sensible way, and only reversed once the opposite was announced (at 99%, no one would have possibly guessed otherwise, if they did, we would have seen people buy up the cheap shares!). This doesn't feel like some tricky case to me: the phrasing of the title, the interpretation of the market, and the incoherence of the alternative criteria all point in one direction.

The amount of mana at stake here is trivial, but I do consider myself scammed over those few pennies. So, obviously who cares on some level, but also, it sucks because Manifold is a fun game.

@Ziddletwix I feel like the title explicitly mentioning “see description” should have clued people into the fact that the description explicitly defines what I meant by the end of the strike. I apologize for the fact that my poor understanding of the mechanics of the strike lead to this problem but the description is very explicit there must be a full vote of all union members.

Also, I resent the accusation of a “scam” that I in no way benefited from

NO ONE understood from "the Actors strike end" and "full vote of union members votes to end the strike" that you meant "the ratification of the 2023 contract will be made public." The only ones voting are the union leaders and they have already voted to end the strike, 86-14%, and the strike is already over, productions are recovering, no one else will vote on the strike.

I just assumed that because you weren't solving the market and asking for a vote that doesn't exist. If you misspelled the market (but I would say no, no one asked for anything, no one complained, and it was 99% "consensus") you had to solve it with N/A

P.S. I still see a Ṁ2,003 position, but maybe it's the site taking time to update.

@DylanSlagh Whether or not you did/didn't benefit is irrelevant to me (again, the mana values here are trivial). The question title was unambiguous. The market interpreted it in the (only) natural way. If this was the original intent, I would have expected you to use a different phrasing from your other market ("Will the actors strike end by November 14", this used the exact same phrasing). Instead, this is resolving "no" because of a technical distinction placed in the description. Except, that technical distinction is not correct. While I think this is a straightforward "yes" case, if the claim is that the language needs to be perfectly precise (regardless of the title or how the market interprets it), I suppose that's an argument for the market ot be voided, because the criteria were impossible to fulfill. (I don't see how it leads to "no").

I'm new-ish to the site, and this is the first time I have felt scammed by a question resolution. I don't expect it to be the last, but it still sucks.

@Ziddletwix You shouldn't expect that just because two markets are made by the same user that they have the same resolution criteria. That market resolved based on whether there would be a "tentative agreement" which is why I resolved it immediately. This market was based on whether there would be a full vote of all union members. I thought there might be confusion about what the criteria was for the market so that's why I put "see description" in the title.

@DylanSlagh Tomorrow will open a market "Will Biden be president in 2024?" with description "Will Biden use his presidential powers in 2024?" and resolve it by saying you meant as president of Mexico? :D