Will Bitcoin truly reach 75 or not? Some analysts think so, but others do not. Choose your route.
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@chrisjbillington thought the confusion present in this market warranted asking other moderators what to do. The mod guidelines are here:
https://manifoldmarkets.notion.site/Mod-guidelines-61389375565d4697be07a96ceae7556d
Chris was specifically looking under the Resolving/clarifying markets section to try to get a resolution on this market. The creator @SyedKhaled does not appear to have used the site for over 2 weeks (bet, comment, create market), so they are considered inactive at this time.
The mod guidelines have the following section:
Resolving abandoned markets & inactive creators
If the close date has been reached, and the resolution is ambiguous
If appropriate, just reopen the market. If the creator is active then ask if you can reopen it/suggest they do so.
If resolution criteria have been “met”, but it’s unclear how to interpret them:
Try to get the creator to resolve the market. They usually do respond to pings after a while even if seemingly inactive. Waiting for a couple of months is fine if the alternative is to N/A thanks to the loan system.
3 out of 3 mods unanimously agree that it’s skewed far enough towards one interpretation to resolve it that way. This process should happen ~1 week after close if the creator is inactive.
Failing the above two, resolve N/A.
In this case, the close date has been reached, and there appears to be ambiguity in the comment section about whether this can resolve immediately or has to wait.
The first bullet point is to "just reopen the market", but the creator's last comment stated the market should close on 16 April. It's not clear if they knew they could CHANGE this date, but it does say that. Any moderator could have chosen to just reopen it, but so far none has done so.
The next set of steps say that if there is not clarity on how to interpret the creator's market, we should try to get the creator to resolve it. This has already been attempted by Chris but it has only been 5 days.
Chris has also attempted to ask 3 moderators chosen from active moderators ( @Eliza, @Gabrielle, and @SirCryptomind ) to see if they unanimously agree that the market can be immediately resolved. @SirCryptomind said it could resolve No right away, @Gabrielle says to wait to resolve until the end of the month, and @Eliza says to wait until the end of the month OR the creator shows up. Since this is not a unanimous agreement, this step didn't help anything yet.
The third point says to resolve N/A but it seems like we can wait until the end of April to resolve No, and only need to consider resolving N/A if the market reaches the Yes criteria before then.
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Conclusion: For now, it seems like nothing is going to happen.
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I am once again pinging @SyedKhaled -- if you intended the market to close on 16 April, you can resolve this No right away. If you intended it to close on 1 April or 1 May, then you can say so. I know you have written "after April by less than 1 hour" and "its in april 16" in the comments below, but it is not clear if you understood you had the ability/obligation to choose the date and make the question text match the closing date/time.
@Eliza Also still seems like some moderator could possibly reopen trading on this based on the above sections, but I'm not going to do it myself.
And if anyone is unhappy with what 'moderators' came up with -- I think we followed the procedures as written and you can write your thoughts to SirSalty if you don't like how it went.
FWIW, I have specifically asked SirSalty to give moderators more leeway on managing closing dates, but the guidelines have not really been updated (2nd page of mod guidelines) to match that.
The process is evolving, but it is often three randomly-chosen mods, excluding anyone with a significant stake in the outcome, and then picking new random mods if the ones chosen do not respond to pings. This sometimes devolves into abandoning randomness and instead using "whoever is online", but still excluding those with a stake.
@chrisjbillington eny updates on this? have any mods been picked, pinged? are we devolving?
@AndrewHebb "By April" is unfortunately ambiguous, it can mean either "before end of April", or "before April", with both definitions adamantly defended as being the dictionary one.
"Before end of April" is the dictionary definition as far as I can tell, but it doesn't really matter because people use the word both ways in practice, and are unaware that it is ambiguous. Usually we just look at the market close date and can see which the creator meant and people are happy enough with that, though it would be better if creators could avoid the language altogether (but they don't realise it's ambiguous when they write it).
Given the close date of the market is in the middle of April and has not changed, and that the most recent clarification from the creator is that the close date is the resolution deadline, that seems as good enough a way to resolve the ambiguity as any other, despite not matching either definition.
The creator did comment prior to that that it was end of April - "plus one hour" (what timezone? Don't know), but there weren't many trades between that and the later clarification, I don't think this is too much of a problem.
If the creator doesn't respond or resolve within 48h, then mods will resolve, and if there's a dispute then it will go to a three-mod vote as to how to resolve - and the rule is that if the vote is not unanimous, the market resolves NA.
@chrisjbillington The close date doesn't tell you what time the resolution is based on and comments shouldn't influence resolution criteria if they're not stated in the description. I can't be expected to read every single comment on every market to see if there is a comment that clearly contradicts the title.
The two reasonable interpretations are "beginning of April" and "end of April". April 16th is not remotely reasonable. The fact that the market was still open several days after the start of April left only one reasonable interpretation. April 16th is not a resolution to the ambiguity as to whether it is one date or the other because it is neither.
Which mods will vote? It should not be any with a stake in the outcome.
The creator did comment prior to that that it was end of April - "plus one hour"
No, they did not ever say "end of". This is the literal quote on their first attempt at clarifying:
after april by less then 1houer
Also note that later, after their final clarification specifying April 16 coinciding with the close date, the author set that first comment as hidden.
@AndrewHebb The title was ambiguous, and so you would have had to do some guesswork in any case - looking at the close date, or reading comments. It's true that the description was inadequate, but it is unfortunately common for clarifications to be in comments only, and for those clarifications to be treated as binding.
At the time you first bet on this market, the comment thread was short, and on the first day you bet here, you did read the thread, which we can tell since you replied to it.
I would also like to raise the standards of market titles and descriptions, like flashing a warning light at creators when they use the word "by", or for deadlines that are part of resolution criteria to be explicitly supported by the platform with a date picker rather than the creator having to specify, which they often do ambiguously such as using "by" or omitting timezone information. For the moment instead we have comment threads. I hope this improves. Moderators will soon be able to edit titles and descriptions, which should help (though they may only be empowered to do this for large markets - nonetheless I'll probably push to be allowed to do it for markets like this, since that would just obviously be good).
The two reasonable interpretations are "beginning of April" and "end of April". April 16th is not remotely reasonable.
Which is why, upon seeing the close date was April 16th, we were all prompted to read the comment thread where it was confirmed that this was nonetheless the case.
Which mods will vote? It should not be any with a stake in the outcome.
The process is evolving, but it is often three randomly-chosen mods, excluding anyone with a significant stake in the outcome, and then picking new random mods if the ones chosen do not respond to pings. This sometimes devolves into abandoning randomness and instead using "whoever is online", but still excluding those with a stake. This situation should improve as of today, because a bunch of moderators who are not active on the platform are no longer moderators, so randomly-chosen mods are more likely to respond to pings.
@chrisjbillington Given my experience that the vast majority of the markets that use "by" use it to mean "by the end of" and given that the market was still open after the start of the month, I had little reason to read the comments and did not read the comments before betting. I only read them after getting a notification for this comment: https://manifold.markets/SyedKhaled/will-bitcoin-will-hit-75k-by-april#6qtd05cd0sw
@AndrewHebb
It doesn't look like that is actually your experience. For fun, I went through the first page of the search results for "by" in your portfolio, sorted by most recent bets first - here are all the markets that use "by" in the title referring to a month or a year (or a quarter in one case) without specifically saying "by end of" or giving a specific date. Here they are listed by what the creator appeared to mean based on the close date or whatnot:
"Before end of":
"Before":
Other meanings/unclear:
/SyedKhaled/will-bitcoin-will-hit-75k-by-april (this market)
/f/will-canada-legalize-lsd-by-2027 (this one turns out to mean "by January 2027" which from the close date likely means before end of Jan)
/j4p3/glyphosate-roundup-will-be-proven-t (close date is EOY 2024, description doesn't help disambiguate)
So you see it's actually just used both ways very commonly, not a vast majority in favour of the "by end of" meaning, and not even a majority of the first page of results that I looked at. It's just an ambiguous thing to say in reality.
@chrisjbillington I have never assumed what the resolution time reference was based on the closing time.
@AndrewHebb that's your choice, and it pays to be careful, but if we're asking how the term is used, the close time is good evidence. It is not used the way you're claiming it is the vast majority of the time.
So loosen your assumptions further and don't assume "by" always means "before the end of", when not specified. That's only true maybe half the time.
@chrisjbillington None of your examples has a clear resolution time. They have known close times only. It's a common practice to close markets well in advance of their resolutions.
@AndrewHebb no it isn't common practice, that practice is pretty uncommon on Manifold.
Every one of those markets that actually resolves after its deadline isn't met will resolve as if the close date is the resolution deadline, I'm happy to bet on that (skipping the 2040 and 2050 ones maybe because that's too far in the future to bet on).
Actually maybe I'll just go through your resolved markets show that you're mistaken about this.
Actually why don't you check yourself?
@Bayesian how would you explain your bet 2 days ago if you were reading the title literally? I guess you had in fact read the author's comment, but I agree with you other traders could have missed the clarification, hence my reminder to all below.
@deagol non-epistemic. I saw big price movement and no big change in the price of bitcoin, so thought there had to be a mistake going on, so bet against whoever moved the market
@traders beware, the author has clarified the deadline is at market close on April 16, not the end of the month.
@Bayesian Don't think it'd be the first time a comment overruled a literal reading of the title. Precisely because it wasn't obvious (given the closing date), traders (including myself) asked for clarification before placing bets well before April, and the author made it clear after a few days. The price and all trading has reflected such ever since, otherwise it would have been down near 1-5% since April 1st.
@deagol The market should be cancelled. "By April" cannot reasonably be interpreted to mean by some random date in April.
@deagol Traders cannot be expected to read all the comments in every market to look for comments that contradict the literal meaning of the title and description. Comments should have no bearing on the resolution. Only the title and description should matter.
@AndrewHebb if you saw this question at around 30-40% during early April, and read the title literally ("by April" = 4/1), then you'd think of betting it down, else you were assuming the deadline had not passed. In such a case, is end of April any more reasonable than beginning, or any other random date? This is why it was asked, and answered.
I got no issue if it gets cancelled (just a couple hundred mana for me) but then that makes any and all clarifications in comments worthless.
Edit: the date matches the close date right from the creation of the market, so not quite random.
comments that contradict the literal meaning of the title and description
Curiously, your own betting contradicts such literal meaning. What were you thinking? Non-epistemic like @Bayesian?
@deagol On Manifold, in my experience, by April means by the end of April. Clarifications in comments should be added to the description so that everyone can easily read them.
@AndrewHebb disagree about 'by' = 'end of'. It literally means 'before' but many use it differently, particularly non-english speakers. That confusion is legendary here, I'm sure you're aware of the infamous Google search market, and many others.
Agree about clarifications getting added to descriptions. This author seemed to have a bit of a tough time even clarifying the simple deadline, so it seemed to me almost futile to request them to update description.
@Bayesian doing a search like "by 2024" or similar and scanning the results, I see most titles include the qualifier EOY or "end of" as part of the wording. But where there are no qualifiers, I do see several that tacitly assume the "end of" and several that assume the "beginning of" interpretations. So perhaps it's a weird coincidence that all I traded at always used the later.
@deagol Yes, I've seen disagreements over this, and since the market was still open, I assumed the end of the month was what was meant. April 16th makes no sense at all.
@AndrewHebb you're still betting as if your assumption were correct, despite knowing what the author intended. At best you might get a N/A, but this can't ever get reopened until EoM for your bets to pay off, against the author's clarified intention and all other bettors expectations. Why keep digging in?
FWIW @deagol, the dictionary definition you're pointing to I think supports the "before the end of April" definition being what the dictionaries say (which is not really relevant since in practice people use it both ways).
The definition says that "by Monday" is equivalent to "not later than Monday". Monday at 11:59PM is not later than Monday, so "by Monday" includes all of Monday under this definition.
Again, no relevance to this market. Dictionary definitions don't take precedent over how people are actually using words in practice, which is a mix of both definitions most of the time, and apparently sometimes the midpoint in between them.
@chrisjbillington Indeed, not 'before' as I had thought but rather 'no later than' as the entry states it. Words are hard. 😅