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Should resolve N/A at this point, so dumb bro

@traders @mods

tldr: Let me start with an apology for the confusion regarding this question. The market will remain resolved as it is. The data I posted is correct for the relevant timezone and location and it still shows the same data. I hope you enjoy your morning coffee and have a great start to the week 🧡

Tbh, I expected this market to be a niche market with 10 to 15 traders and didn’t put in the effort to write a full-blown description. I didn’t point out what would happen if RCP didn’t work or if it was hit by a meteorite. Could I have fixed this once it got a significant amount of traders? Sure! Did I want to? Honestly, no. I constantly get feedback from mods and users who don’t read the description anyway (some don’t even read the title) and that I should shorten it. And like most of us, Manifold is a hobby, and I’m not a lawyer drafting 20-page contracts for fun with play money.

It clearly would have helped to clarify that access to the data would be based on the location and timezone of the market creator (CET, Central Europe), which could have avoided the drama. I don’t hide where I live. My location is in my bio for meet-ups, and a third of my questions are about a European niche sport.

I didn’t intend this question to be essentially a coin flip, nor did I expect the polls to be this close. I created the question in good faith and assumed there would be significant changes if a conspiracy theorist with more than 5% of votes in polls dropped out and endorsed one candidate, like probably every trader on this market. This clearly didn’t happen and is one of the caveats of betting on polls. I just didn’t think a difference of a few hours would be significant. Well, lesson learned, it was.

I won’t change the resolution because it was obvious how and where I got the data, as I posted the reference two weeks ago. If anyone had criticized that during the nearly two-week period it was pinned as the top comment, I would have discussed it and found a solution. But changing the method after resolving, just because you don’t like the result, won’t happen. This is not my ethos as a market creator and never will be.

Last but not least: Am I biased? Yes, towards Trump and against the resolution. I lost about M$175 betting on No and about M$1500 in liquidity resolving it this way. I clearly don’t gain anything by resolving this in what I believe is the correct way as a market creator.

If you still want to act like Trump in 2020 after he lost the election, go ahead if it brightens your day. Otherwise, thanks for reading and have a great day 🧡

@Lion I'm not trying to nitpick you over edge cases, it just seems odd that you say it was 1.8% and then I go the RCP website and I see it's actually 1.4%. I shouldn't have to look at your bio and guess that you're going off European time for a question about American politics.

I think a fair resolution could be either No (because her lead didn't increase beyond the margin of error, so that's that's the spirit of the question) or N/A (because there was confusion over what time you'd use for the close). It seems very odd to say Yes based on a minor detail that was only known to yourself.

@CharliePye Have you turned on your VPN? Why didn’t you ask which timezone would be used beforehand? (Even in the US, there’s more than one.) I admit it was a mistake not to specify this in the description (though it’s likely no one would have read it anyway), but would that really have changed your bets? I, and I believe everyone else, placed bets based on what we believed would happen. The question was clear, and it was understood that it would resolve, even if it was a close call.

The result is YES, based on the data I published two weeks ago, and none of the 235 traders criticized it at the time. Coming now and making a fuss because the resolution didn’t go your way is childish. If you wanted to challenge the method, the right time to do that was either at the beginning (which would’ve been fair) or during the two weeks the data was online (which would’ve also been fair). But just because you lost Mana doesn’t make it right to now argue for N/A or an incorrect resolution.

On an international platform, you should expect people to be in different time zones. I apologize for not pointing that out, but I stand 100% by the resolution.

@Lion It normally doesn't matter which American time zone is used, because polls are only published during normal American working hours. That's why I (and probably everyone else) didn't think to ask. But if you insist on using your own European time zone, you're basically cutting off an entire day of polling. It's a very odd thing to do that no normal person would expect. You've basically tricked us all on a bizarre technicality.

@CharliePye I think it’s normal to visit the website without using a VPN. It’s unfortunate that the website displays data based on your location and timezone. Can you seriously say that you would have placed a different bet if you had known this beforehand, or if the question had clarified that the market runs from the 22nd to the 5th, etc.? Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand that this wasn’t obvious, and I should have included this information in the description. 100% my mistake. However, I don’t believe this affected anyone's bets, and it was never my intention to mislead anyone. To be honest, I lost quite a bit of Mana myself - so did I trick myself? Plus, you had nearly two weeks to raise concerns about all of this once the data was published.

@CharliePye Not going to get into the weeds again, but it’s not cutting off a day of polling as the same timezone was used to measure the initial lead.

@HenryRodgers that's true, but the initial date doesn't matter much sense her poll numbers weren't shifting much at that time. It's the last day that really matters for this question, since that's when NYT/Senna poll dropped that cut her lead. It's just an odd thing to say "the second half of the day doesn't count because I live in Europe."

@Lion looking at the description again, my interpretation of what you wrote would be the resolution would be based on 14 days after RFK dropped out - so if he dropped out at 3 pm, you'd resolve based on 3 pm 14 days later. Is this what happened? If not, I think folks complaining about the resolution would have a point.

@MattP From what I understand the amount of time that passed is correct. The only dispute is that the data is displayed under a different date based on your local timezone. Lion originally posted:

Reference is Harris +1.5% on August 23rd

Question resolves YES if Harris (September 6th) > +1.5%

Question resolves NO if Harris (September 6th) <= +1.5% or Trump is in the lead on September 6th

For me (South Australia), it shows August 22nd +1.5%, August 23rd +1.6%

for September 6th I see +1.8%, and for September 7th I see +1.4%.

As far as I can tell, this resolution is fine (no malice, expected process followed), it's just a very unfortunate way for them to load their graph. Especially if the table above does not vary based on local time. If another mod wants to double check, feel free to cross this off the feed if you generally find the same.

@Gen Wouldn't it make more sense to use their table of numbers, which will be the same for everyone, rather than their odd visual graph that loads differently for everyone based on time zone? The table clearly says "RCP Average - 8/22 - 9/6 Harris + 1.4

Sorry, i'm not trying to make a big deal out of this (I don't think he's being malicious or anything, and I only bet a small amount so I don't really care anyway). I just thought it was odd because a big poll just dropped and there was a lot of discussion about it on Nate Silver's blog, so it was odd to see it not get counted for this.

You don't even need to use a VPN to recreate this bug. Just change your system's timezone, restart your browser and you can see the bug for yourself. When I change my time zone to New York it shows 1.8 and if I change it to L.A it shows 1.4 for the whole day. At this point I don't even know what the real value is...

@Agh good catch. In fact I didn't even have to restart my browser, the graph on that website instantly changes once I've changed my system's timezone.

@Lion Do you think it's fair that this question depends on the system settings you personally have on your computer?

@CharliePye I believe this is fair. I've already provided the reasoning above, but here’s a brief summary: The method was published 14 days ago, and there was no live trading enabled. I did not allow anyone to bet it down to 1%, only to buy it up myself to 99% and resolve YES.

Everyone always has the right to contact the market creator and critique the method in my markets, as well as those of other creators, before resolving. I strongly encourage this and will actively do so myself by reaching out to creators with RCP in the future to clarify methods beforehand. However, this didn’t happen here. The method was public for 14 days, and no one asked about it, critiqued it, or raised any concerns. People are only criticizing the method now because they’ve lost, and I don’t think that’s fair to anyone. This market was never about participants looking the data up themselves, and I made that absolutely clear by closing the market early.

Betting on polls always carries a risk, and everyone is aware of that. I don’t believe the method I used affected anyone’s betting behavior two weeks or more ago or it would have changed anyone's bets if I uploaded a 20 page resolution PDF.

Thank you for remaining polite, even though you disagree with my resolution!

I did not bet on this market. After reading the comments, while I understand how the resolution is controversial and agree that Lion's criteria could've been clear, I think the ultimate resolution is logical and correct.

I also don't feel that anyone was particularly scammed. Clearly Harris's lead didn't change much, so neither an emphatic YES bettor or emphatic NO bettor really "deserves" to profit.

@Conflux "Clearly Harris's lead didn't change much, so neither an emphatic YES bettor or emphatic NO bettor really "deserves" to profit."

Then... wouldn't N/A clearly be better? I'm not trying to nitpick. it's just that this result depends on a flukey convergance of:

a) Harris's lead didn't change that much

b) There was confusion about the resolution system (the RCP graph) which none of us understood, including the market maker

If I had personally made this market, with the exact same wording, the result would have been the opposite, because my personal system settings are in a different time zone than @Lion

@CharliePye No. My comment at the end wasn’t about who wins according to the resolution criteria, it was meant as a reflection over this decision not having negative consequences.

With the same philosophical perspective, I see N/A as the option for when traders on both sides have the moral victory (in different ways). (Eg, if some YES bettors won based on the spirit, but NO bettors won off noticing a technicality.) Here it was traders on neither side with the moral victory, really. Unless you were betting toward 50% - in which case the resolution would allow you to get your proper expected value.

So,, are you just not counting the poll that dropped on Sep 6th? Because that poll dropped her average down to 1.4%. I guess you didn't say whether this was 2 weeks (inclusive) or (exclusive) so I don't exactly know when the end date was, but in this case it matters.

@CharliePye @mods

Real Clear Polling shows a 1.4 bump for Harris on September 6th, not 1.8!

Harris +1.8% on September 6th => Question resolves YES

Thanks for trading 🧡

@Lion Why am I seeing 1.4?

@IsaacCarruthers I am not sure, it just shows the +1.4% for me at Saturday (Sep 6th) and that's what the blue bar (which is always a little bit offset) at your screen indicates. I've uploades a short video on Discord, because I can't upload it here.

@Lion not sure what you mean (e.g. Saturday is the 7th, not the 6th), but are you saying that you now see 1.4% for the 6th, rather than 1.8%? Perhaps you should unresolve this market until the numbers settle?

@Lion

Real Clear Polling shows a 1.4 bump for Harris on September 6th, not 1.8!

@IsaacCarruthers The initial lead was determined by the number at the time it was published, not what it was later revised to. Not sure we should change parameters halfway through resolving the market.

@Lion Your browser had a caching thing going on probably. This market was resolved wrong.

@TimothyBandors The line chart clearly shows the same for me, the 1.4 doesn't begin until the 7th.

@HenryRodgers don't use their buggy graph, use what they wrote manually

@TimothyBandors That's not how the initial lead number was decided, the market has been using the line graph from the start.

@HenryRodgers Doesn't matter when the graph is showing wrong numbers for you. That's a glitch. Glitches don't magically resolve in your favor. The start was the same for the line and manual data entry

@TimothyBandors Do you have any evidence of that? Even now, the line graph shows a different number than it showed (and was screenshotted below) when the market closed. I don't disagree that using the spread table would be better if you were making a new market and deciding upon rules for it, but this market has been closed for a while and you can't just change which data source you use based on what you find "more accurate".