It’s time for any sleeper agents to activate, if you think you can increase engaged users, it might be time to try and do it .. 🥲🥲

Just a few days left and a lot of uncertainty

I plan to reopen these markets at 05:30 UTC (a little under half an hour from the time of comment) and have them resolve based on the new numbers henceforth, but disregarding retroactive changes to numbers published for previous days.

I've closed this market pending discussion here:

https://manifold.markets/chrisjbillington/will-manifold-have-a-day-below-1200-9a15f1ff7c3a#BAOBITopDV4IRzGXw7Uy

Do you have an estimate of the current adjusted-for-manipulation number?

[edit: sorry thought this was a different market]

@chrisjbillington Is the same criteria in use for /chrisjbillington/will-manifold-have-a-day-below-1200-9a15f1ff7c3a ? If so, can it resolve?

[edit: wrong market]

@chrisjbillington Huh. They both have the same Sep 13th addendum; that's not what I was expecting.

@EvanDaniel Apologies, I thought we were in the comment thread for this market:

/chrisjbillington/will-manifold-have-a-day-below-1150-adf9a441f9a6

That market explicitly excludes the farming operation, but since the farmers were farming mana and not attempting to manipulate engagement figures for the purposes of affecting these markets, they aren't excluded from the rest of these markets.

I am not currently aware of any manipulation attempts on these engagement markets that would require a correction.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I'll edit my above comment.

@EvanDaniel on this market a few comments below,

I am not planning on subtracting these users from the count (29 of them are currently engaged, but more may become so), as they do not appear to be an attempt at manipulating engagement figures for the purposes of affecting these markets.

this is the first time it's been mentioned that they would be adjusted/excluded here

edit: this has been clarified, right as I posted - thanks!

I'm scared I'm going to lose more mana on these engagement markets, but I have a different view than most still, so here is another market.

@PC This will ideally resolve similarly to this market, so I could either hedge or look to make profits.

Traders please note the addendum to the description: resolution will not respect manipulation that runs afoul of Manifold's community guidelines.

@chrisjbillington Appreciate this. There are some small manipulations that I am seeing. Trust that it isn't you, and might not amount to anything, but more comfortable to bet now

@PC For that I left some limits at 14 / 15%

@PC Also happy to send temporary loans for less than 1 day ever to take my limits (I have cash lying around)

@PC we all agree that manipulations should be excluded, but if you know about any big manipulation you should flag it ahead of time.

It will be really sad if this market turns into arguing over whether something should or shouldn't be excluded because team YES actually thinks there are ~100 manipulated users.

The best way to rule it imo would be that an account needs to be properly actioned as rule breaking for it to be excluded - and giving enough time following the end of the month to give proper consideration to accounts that were engaged and believed to be deserving of "action".

Hoping it doesn't ruin our otherwise really cool thing we have going on with these markets

@PC to clarify, I won't be excluding all CG-violating accounts generally, it's only if it seems like they were explicitly trying to manipulate engagement numbers for the purposes of affecting these markets.

And all other "legal" manipulation remains permitted (but discouraged).

If there is controversy about whether CG-violating activity was an attempt at manipulating these markets or was unrelated, since that might be a judgement call and I am trading heavily in these markets, I am happy to defer to trustworthy-ish users who have not traded on this market and accept their judgement for resolution, if resolution would be affected.

Some more details:

The suspicious trading (see the numerous Ṁ1 trades on e.g. this market: https://manifold.markets/AndyMartin/will-manifold-use-a-loan-rate-that) that prompted me to add the extra condition to my market descriptions, currently looks like streak bonus farming, so I won't be excluding it given that it does not seem like it has the purpose of manipulating engagement markets.

These accounts have been doing this for a while and are contributing to engagement to the tune of +24 engaged users on Sep 12th to my calculation, and will contribute somewhat more in the coming days if they keep it up - they recently seem to have ramped up their efforts. There are 44 accounts total that I see (there might be more, haven't really looked).

This kind of stuff is presumably always going on to some extent, so in that sense has always been part of us betting on the engagement numbers. However, getting the accounts banned more quickly of course would help the YES side, so they are free to try to convince David Chee that policing alt mana farming should take precedent over manifest concerns, good luck to them! I plan on sending info to David that will help him make a decision without having to do too much manual investigation, but I haven't done this yet.

I have started running my engaged-user-counting code to exclude these accounts, but this is only to see what the trend looks like in their absence, since there is a chance these accounts will cease activity (due to admin enforcement) resulting in lower engagement numbers compared to the counterfacual. Though, I think the NOs still win this market handily in this case, just not with quite as overwhelming probability (I would not have been betting so aggressively if I thought 24 users would make a huge difference!)

Will Manifold use a loan rate that varies by user before the end of 2023?

11% chance. Re: critiques on https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-82823, another way to boost the "voting power" of superforecasters would be to adjust the loan policies based on factors like: how long has the user been on the site what's the user's current profit what's the user's current calibration grade This idea was proposed in discord here: https://discord.com/channels/915138780216823849/1145904687170723933/1145904687170723933 Related market with some relevant discussion: https://manifold.markets/SG/will-manifold-lower-the-loan-rate-f This market will resolve YES if the Manifold developers say the loan rate varies on a per-user basis at some point between now and January 1, 2024 (even if this variability is later turned off or if the conditions are unrelated to what's proposed above).

@chrisjbillington yeah that's suspect as hell (the trades on that market you linked). tons of M1 bets from people who all share suspiciously similar names...doubt there's been some massive surge in organic traffic from new users who all happen to be from ukraine, which is what the names seem to be.

@dieselbaby1337 They have been donating all the mana to the Ukraine charity Mriya, unknown if it is a group or a single bad actor. Still in breach of guidelines though.

@Gen interesting.

@chrisjbillington Sorry been away for a little while, I just realized this was up to 44 users. I would like to chat with trustworthy users about this. Any suggestions?

I'm sure we can work through it. And if not, I'm fine to lose the mana if it doesn't go below 1150. Just won't put more limits down.

@PC I am 100% sure this market won't be affected. I'd be buying mega bags on the manifold stonks on "pass 1250 again" and "don't go under 1200 markets", but I don't want to end up in a cringe contest of proving foul play

edit: I bought a little on the <1200 one anyway because I cannot resist

@PC I am not planning on subtracting these users from the count (29 of them are currently engaged, but more may become so), as they do not appear to be an attempt at manipulating engagement figures for the purposes of affecting these markets.

My suggestion of involving trustworthy users is to decide in the case of it being a judgement call whether CG-violating accounts were an attempt at manipulating these markets, or were unrelated. Currently, they look unrelated. Do you think they are, in fact, explicitly trying to manipulate engagement numbers for the purposes of affecting these markets? Or that I should subtract them even though they're not?

If the former, let me know what evidence you think there is that these accounts are attempts at manipulating engagement numbers for the purposes of affecting these markets, rather than being the mana-farming operation they appear to be. Then we can see if we still disagree after seeing the same evidence, if there is any additional evidence. In that case we can think about what trustworthy users to rope in and make a judgement.

If the latter, best I'll be able to give you is my regret if there was a misunderstanding - but I didn't commit to removing all inorganic CG-violating activity.

In either case, I think this market would still be overpriced even if these 44 users were not included. Which is just as well because their activity could cease at any moment - I would not be making such large bets if I were banking on these users remaining active.

If you disagree with that, then we can bet about it here:

https://manifold.markets/chrisjbillington/will-manifold-have-a-day-below-1150-adf9a441f9a6

Will Manifold have a day below 1150 engaged users in September, after excluding the Ukrainian mana farming operation?

61% chance. An engaged user is a user who has traded in, commented on, or created a question on at least 2 out of 7 days in each of the past 3 weeks. Resolves according to https://manifold.markets/stats, with one modification: Based on publicly available Manifold data, I will compute how many of the following 44 users satisfy the criteria for engagement (29 do at time of writing), and subtract them off the engagement figure from the Manifold stats page for that day. If for any day in September the resulting figure is less than 1150, this market resolves YES. Otherwise it resolves NO at the end of the month. The usernames and ids of these accounts can be found here: https://gist.github.com/chrisjbillington/b0fe24f1b619f777e5974fd8eb7868ec These are accounts that appear to be farming streak bonuses for the purposes of donating mana to a charity supporting the Ukraining war effort. This is a violation of Manifold's community guidelines and will likely be stopped at some point, admins have been made aware but seem to be short on time given Manifest. As with the other enagement markets, market resolution will not respect manipulation attempts that violate Manifold's community guidelines - this means use of bugs, an army of alts, botting, etc. Regular collusion and other kinds of manipulation that don't violate the community guidelines are fine. In the event that community-guidelines-violating manipulation occurs, I will attempt to correct for it and be transparent about how I have done so. Note that unless evidence emerges that suggests otherwise, the mana farming operation would not be excluded under the above conditions, as it appears to be unrelated CG-violating activity, and not an attempt at manipulating engagement markets. Hence the need for a separate market if we want to bet over what engagment would be without them counted.

Only a moron would look at this plot and buy NO. Engagement is cratering! Definitely should buy more YES.

@brisjchillington You're a smart cookie doin the gaphs and stuff