I'm giving myself a highly aspirational goal. I want to become the top creator on Manifold Markets by the end of 2023. To me, being a top creator is not merely about how many people trade on your markets, but also a product of how many people get value from your markets, whether your questions are about important topics, and whether the questions are well-defined, with little room for ambiguity.
I intend to write many questions over the coming months about important topics. In the past, I mostly did this on Metaculus, where I currently have 270 authored questions. I will self-describe a market as "high-quality" if it is about an important topic, tracks a salient feature about the topic, and has relatively precise, unambiguous resolution criteria. Here's an example of a market I consider to be high-quality. Here's an example of a market I do NOT consider high-quality.
If I create at least 100 self-described high-quality markets on Manifold after the opening of this question and before June 1st 2023, then this question resolves to YES. Otherwise, it resolves to NO.
1,000🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ1,608 | |
| 2 | Ṁ1,309 | |
| 3 | Ṁ385 | |
| 4 | Ṁ248 | |
| 5 | Ṁ190 |
People are also trading
@higherLEVELING I will need to count...
Just so everyone knows, my spurt at the end was completely unplanned. I dropped everything at 11:30 PM after suddenly realizing that I had half an hour left to get to 100.
😵
@MatthewBarnett If you have a lot of unlisted markets already created, and you make them public all at once, will you resolve this market as YES, or do you consider this to be cheating?
I also want to know the community opinion whether or not such a YES resolution would be considered dishonorable, or perfectly fine.
(I'm asking because I intend to make similar Personal Goal markets in the future, without the unlisting trick)
@MayMeta In my opinion it might be slightly dishonorable if you do it in the last minute because you're exploiting a mechanism not every trader knows about but it's entirely fair play before that (it's equivalent to copy/pasting a bunch of already prepared descriptions with normal market creation if it's in the last hour or earlier).
@MayMeta I still think I'd resolve to YES in that case, but I can tell you now that I have no unlisted markets as far as I'm aware. If this question resolves to YES, it'll be because I'll write 30 or more questions in the coming week.
@MatthewBarnett I think unlisted markets should count if and only if they were created before this one, seeing as it wouldn't be ADDITIONAL created markets unless that was true.
@Natalia If this turns out to be real I’m not going to invest in any of this creators personal markets anymore, this is market manipulation by the creator
Edit: they clarified that it was not on purpose
@ShadowyZephyr market manipulation is an important norm on Manifold, as is honesty and transparency. Creating markets like these can in one sense be viewed as a goal "I'm trying to create 100+ high-quality markets within the time period" and in another as a personal incentive "If I do create 100+ high-quality markets within the time period, I'll prove all the naysayers wrong".
While it would be highly inappropriate to lie in order to manipulate a market, there are no norms against market manipulation.
@CarsonGale So if I made a market called "Will I eat pasta for dinner tonight," then tell my friend "I'm going to eat pasta tonight but don't let anyone else know" and they bet YES and make a profit, and I repeat that mutliple times, that's okay?
There's literally no way to ensure honesty or transparency btw
@ShadowyZephyr There's no way to ensure honesty or transparency, but in my experience, those are the norms on this site. I've begrudgingly resolved multiple markets against my favor when I could have lied or found some interpretation otherwise, and I've seen others do the same.
As for that market re: eating pasta for dinner, I probably just wouldn't bet on it since I don't have any information. I don't typically bet on markets that could be easily manipulated unless the creator states they will not manipulate the market.
@CarsonGale But, you bet on this market. I'm sorry if it seems weird to you, but I'm a new user on manifold, and I thought having a badge would mean some kind of standard has to be met with regards to that.
@ShadowyZephyr I hope you feel welcome and sorry if this experience has been frustrating! I can see how the norms wouldn't be clear while getting to know the user base, and there's not really an easy way to get to know the norms besides interacting with folks.
I bet on this market initially because (i) I perceive Matthew to be highly committed to his goals, and more recently (ii) because Natalia (who I understand to be Matthew's partner) suggested that holding No shares might be a bad idea, so I bought more Yes.
@ShadowyZephyr My impression was that the Trustworthy-ish badge was only created to signal that some user has the ability to resolve markets on behalf of other users, and that they tend to resolve markets correctly, abiding by the resolution criteria stated in the market's name & description, and not by who will profit the most, or what team they are personally rooting for.
https://help.manifold.markets/unresolved-markets
I.e. Trustworthy-ish users might still engage in market manipulation, but they tend not to, to maintain their reputation.
That said, a Trustworthy-ish user can still lose their badge if their actions are judged to be dishonorable, or not abiding by the community guidelines. Examples: 1, 2
@MayMeta to add to this, market manipulation is essential for some types of really fun markets. E.g., I've hosted Manifold parties where the goal is explicitly to manipulate as many markets as possible, I've made goal markets where I'm trying to "prove the nay-sayers wrong" by trying to complete the action in the stated market (like this one).
Also, market manipulation crucially adds information to markets vs taking them away - to the extent you view Manifold's purpose as organizing known information, market manipulation is additive to the ethos of the site.
A norm against market manipulation seems clunky and difficult to be consistent on, which is why I think the community has by and large upheld norms around honesty / transparency instead.
Of course, there are things that I would consider underhanded. As a hypothetical example, if the author is deliberately withholding a bunch of markets for the last day, not for any good external reason, but just to make more profits - I would think that's underhanded. But there is no reason to think that's what's happening, and I would hope the author isn't doing that. If they are, then your complaints might be valid.
@jack To be clear, I'm not doing anything underhanded. What happened was that I noticed the market was bizarrely low, at about 7%, even though I still had a week to create 30 more questions. I then told @Natalia that I intended to keep to my goals and write 30 questions in the next week, even though I had been procrastinating. The insider knowledge that @Natalia has is no more than that.
@MatthewBarnett Thanks for posting that. This is exactly the sort of thing I was telling @ShadowyZephyr was probably happening!