Hmm. Seems most serious users of the site are fine with it, but some are not a fan, especially more casual users who are less into prediction market math. Given that the long-term health of Manifold likely relies upon an influx of new users to t̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶e̶y̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ grow the community, that does seem like something we should care about.

I'm thinking a 50% resolution would be best? I'll wait a few days in case anyone wants to present further arguments in favor of YES or NO.

I don't bet on my own markets, so I can be unbiased when resolving them

I have no problem with it, and in fact I wish manifold would just automate the return of unused liquidity to the creator so that this question would disappear.

I thought it already does that?

What happens to the liquidity in a market when the market resolves? Is it just burned?

@IsaacKing That's what I think... not totally sure.

But if it already did give the creator the unused liquidity, what would be the point of (or problem with) placing a bet beforehand? M$ gained would be the same, yeah?

@ScottLawrence Yeah, liquidity does return to the liquidity provider, which is the creator (except in the case that it's one of your 5 free markets).

I still do it as a habit for a few reasons:

• because it's the same thing I do on a market someone else created (although if it's my own market I bet more because I don't have to hedge misresolution as much)

• because there might be limit orders that I can profit off of

• because getting the liquidity back doesn't count as profit, but betting does count as profit. Whether it should work this way is debatable, there are pros (e.g. why shouldn't the author be rewarded for noticing a piece of news that anyone else could have noticed) and cons (very easy to game, although I haven't seen it really abused yet), but since it's how it works I do what I'm incentivized to do.

Generally, I think author betting at resolution is not really different than author betting any other time in the market, and I think the same general fairness principles apply.

@jack I see, thanks.

I hadn't thought of limit orders. I still think it's fine to profit from them in the sense that I wouldn't begrudge anyone else that opportunity, but I'd feel a bit dirty about doing that myself...

No one that I know of has a strong opinion that it's unacceptable.

I personally am not a fan of it existing and would prefer if we found a technical solution mostly because boosts the profit number/leaderboard ranking. But I don't deem it as unacceptable nor a big priority to fix. The same problem exists with any market where news comes out and someone reacts fast to take up all the remaining mana anyways.

I agree with Jack and Isaac that it's (almost?) always acceptable.

I tried it here and no one complained, but that was a very small market, so probably not a great test.

https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/will-i-press-the-petrov-day-button

@IsaacKing I do this on most of my markets and nobody ever complained. I think I remember discussion in the discord about possible complaints but I couldn't find it right now

Personally I'm in favor of minimizing the number of unspoken and difficult-to-enforce norms that a community has to follow. If there's some problem with creators betting in their own markets right before resolution, a technical problem should be found to mitigate it. Asking people to police themselves and each other can lead to bad feeling, as different people have different understandings of exactly what is or isn't ok.

One downside of allowing it is that it allows the creator to artificially inflate their profit numbers. (IIUC this is why the option to add liquidity to other people's markets was removed. (Though I still see the option to add liquidity to my own markets, so unless I'm missing something I could still inflate it that way.))

@IsaacKing It was removed because you could artificial generate mana (not just profits) when Manifold temporarily had a new feature that injected extra liquidity after each new predictor on a market. Authors are still allowed to inject liquidity. (There's so many ways for authors to inflate profit numbers if they want, Manifold just needs to change the calculation to address that eventually.)

Oh sorry, I got things mixed up. The ability to add a subsidy was removed because people were abusing that feature with extra liquidity injection after each new predictor to generate profits on tournament markets.

@jack Those were two of the reasons. But I think the final nail in the coffin was the bug that let you steal liquidity provided by the market creator or other human traders.

I say yes, it's acceptable. It doesn't harm anyone. Why do people think it isn't acceptable?

I ran a related poll here about anyone, not the creator specifically:

Copying my comment there:

A little context for those not familiar with the market math: for binary (yes/no) markets, buying when the outcome is known lets you take some additional profits, which comes from the liquidity providers. But it does not affect any previous traders already holding shares, since if you make a trade and hold until resolution, any later trades do not affect your profits/losses.

Note that the liquidity provider is yourself. So it literally only moves money from yourself to yourself.

A case when it does take money from others would be if there's limit orders. But I think taking that money is entirely fair in most markets.

@jack

Note that the liquidity provider is yourself. So it literally only moves money from yourself to yourself.

Unless it's one your 5 free markets, where liquidity is provided by Manifold.

I did something akin to this the other week and felt a bit bad about it, plus my friend was somewhat unimpressed. I think in part it depends on how the market resolves--at a specific time/the close date, or when an event occurs.

If the resolution is dependent on the creator finding out a piece of information, I think it's a bit scummy for them to learn the news, buy a bunch of shares, then resolve. It seems less bad if the resolution time is more well known, and the creator simply happens to have an additional incentive to pay close attention.

@journcy I'm curious how you feel about the points mentioned by myself and Jack? (Only 2 people have commented, so I need to try to figure out a "consensus" from those two people.)

@IsaacKing What Jack says makes perfect sense, and I don't really disagree analytically--all I can say is that on a gut emotional level it felt kinda sneaky and that my friend (who is a very very casual user) was immediately relatively annoyed about it. (He was the other main bettor in the market in question.)

I don't have a good idea of why it would ACTUALLY be a problem, but (n=2, ofc) we may run into people thinking it smells fishy regardless as the platform scales (growth mindset?).

@journcy That makes sense, thank you. :)