I think there are a lot of cool ideas here and I love some of these proposals around upvoting and curation. However the proposal in general seems like it's adding a LOT of stuff and feels overcomplicated.

Right now devs are going to be hard at work at making the new pivot work and having to buld all this karma stuff seems like a distraction.

Instead I think they should do a much simpler thing, keep mana as it is. Make the real money currency something else (let's call it spice) and just disallow any transformation between spice and mana.

All you need to do is have special spice markets that only allow spice.

From the user perspective this is very easy. There's a mana market you want to bet spice on ? just clone it into the spicy version and bet on it.

I'ts very simple, the only features you need are the new currency which you were planning anyway + spiceonly markets which seems like it should be pretty easy.

Yes you will need to maintain both mana and spice going forward for a bit, but the advantage is deferring the decision. if the spice thing really kicks off you can then drop the mana markets, if spice is a dud then you drop the spice markets.

my vote was "I am unhappy about the pivot, and would stay unhappy with his proposition" and to qualify it, I would be very happy if Joshua's proposal was implmented, but to me it does not feel like a solution to the pivot issues, it's just orthogonal.

However the proposal in general seems like it's adding a LOT of stuff and feels overcomplicated.

This is the thing which make me skeptical, maybe it is just a no-go from the start because it would take too much time to implement. But I think, if it is doable, it is ok if it is done later, and we know there is a desire to do something like that.
Also some functionalities (like the curation mechanism) can be added after some other ones.
But your proposal is indeed, maybe more simple to implement.

> but to me it does not feel like a solution to the pivot issues, it's just orthogonal.

I really don't think it is orthogonal because it answers to a lot of the problems with the pivot :
- No loan, so long term market will die : There is still karma loans
- The fee will impact accuracy : No fee on the karma markets
- No identification needed for the karma markets
- All the fun markets can still take place like before
- We are worried about whom the pivot can bring here : The karma curation system could at least help with the potential problems.

If I was suggesting a maximally easy version of this idea to implement it would be to just use it for good comment incentivization at first, and add the rest later.

1) Add Karma balance to everyone as described.
2) Let people upvote/downvote comments in Karma, while showing how much karma each comment has and letting people sort the comments by karma.
3) Have a leaderboard for who has the most karma, and who earned the most karma each day/week/month.

I think that's the smallest possible version of the system, just to get its foot in the door.

I think Joshua's proposition doesn't affect all the problems with the pivot, but it's certainly much better and honestly I think that would be best.

@ShadowyZephyr In theory, markets cost $1 at the current mana value!

Oh you edited lol

@Joshua I missed the part about creating markets with karma.

Voted:
> I am currently unhappy about the pivot, and Joshua proposition would make me happy

But realistically I would still be less happy than a play money site.

(To clarify my vote on « I am currently unhappy about the pivot, and Joshua proposition would make me happy » : I think I’d still have a preference for pre-pivot Manifold against post-pivot Manifold with that proposition. But counted separately, Joshua’s proposition would make me really happy)

I think my poll wasn't very well done, I should have thought about the propositions a bit more.

For my part, I think I would prefer the pivot + Joshua’s proposition more than the current situation for mainly 3 reasons :
- Maybe the manifold team is right, and the pivot will bring new people on the site, and I really want it, it was frustrating to see the stagnation in the number of users. Also I want Manifold to be sustainable.
- I think the site need some curation system, and this would be perfect.
- I actually like the fact I could try some almost real money betting if I feel like it.

I propose that all polls have a "see results" option lol

@Joshua Sorry, first time I do a poll, is it possible to add option after creation ?

@dionisos Alas there is not, but not worth remaking over. Not that big a deal.

I'm ambivalent to both

Valid

@Joshua All I know is my gut says maybe