If leaderboard doesn't exist by then, I'll check number of traders myself. If number of traders aren't shared then I'll ask Devs.
1,000
3.00what's old is new again, I proposed banning these markets at the beginning of the year because they lead to this nonsense:
https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/will-i-reach-14000-unique-traders-o#2icxeMlsvb6xJZV97N8F
Okay, after further review I will be switching the resolution back to YES and want to apologise to @BTE for incorrectly assuming his involvement.
To provide some context, I was trying to efficiently go through a backlog of community tasks. Even if it doesn't take too long to message someone, if they don't reply immediately it becomes very hard to wait for them to reply to then make a decision. So it's often better to just make a decision based on the evidence I have. In this instance that included pages of hundreds of markets with 1 mana bet on them in less than 5 minutes.
I will try to be more careful in the future, but realistically when doing a lot of moderation, mistakes like this will happen, and I appreciate your understanding. I have and will always try to remain as neutral as possible.
I have now been provided the context that a lot of these trades were made based on real predictions that were input manually, and they were not just scripted indiscriminate bets. While this was a group effort to manipulate a market, it doesn't go against the guidelines and wasn't done with the intent to benefit BTE for unique trader bonuses. I do think we want to try avoiding this sort of incentive and weird outcomes in the future though, but hopefully the new guidelines should already help with 99% of these cases.
@SirSalty I want to applaud David for making the original accusation in public, and then reversing his stance in public as well.
Community moderation is hard and time consuming, and where actions are reversible (such as a ruling that can be overturned), I think David proceeding without waiting confirmation is very reasonable
Because this was posted in public, there's now a cite-able case study for anyone wondering about eg the legality of what FUH/semiotic/joshua did
David quickly updated his stance based on new information, and that's exactly in the spirit of betting on Manifold markets
the legality of what FUH/semiotic/joshua did
No idea why I'm being mentioned here, ahead of everyone.
@BTE I'm sorry that you were wrongly accused here. But also you've been like, pretty antagonistic against the Manifold core team lately and I think that colors our impressions of you. (I know it's a bit grating for me personally, when we've been spending our time over the last couple of years trying to make this site a good experience for y'all). I think if you aimed to play nice (or at least civil), you would tend to get more benefit of the doubt.
@Austin I've provided both positive and negative feedback where I believe its required. Negative feedback stands out because of its very nature, and I doubt I've given any negative feedback that sooner or later was not echoed by other users such as @MarcusAbramovitch, @Mira and many others.
I have been a regular user of Manifold over the last year, and I like spending time more on Manifold than any other website in my free time. I've always been appreciative of the work you've put in for Manifold, and I've applauded that, but if some issue comes up, such as users' privacy, I do not think it right to not voice my opinion for the sake of upsetting someone.
@Austin I just want to say I feel really bad about any of this hitting FUH when he was barely involved.
To reiterate what I said in Discord, me/jackson/semiotic/chris got together and did this whole operation without FUH or BTE. I've been betting on BTE for weeks in this market and the other one, and when I saw Isaac's limit order I got the squad of the most active users together so we could win the 10k bet against Isaac.
If anything we did was bad, I should be taking the blame as the guy whose idea it was. I see that FUH's trustworthy-ish market dropped today and that makes like no sense to me, as again he was barely involved.
I think the culture of manifold lends itself to vast conspiracy theories about how the best traders have evil schemes and insider info and are secretly manipulating everything. And fake conspiracy theories are fun! I joke about Catnee secretly controlling everything all the time.
But I think it's also escalated to the point that now people are constantly accusing FUH of dishonesty and conspiracy when he's less active on the site than he's ever been. So I sympathize with him feeling frustrated when it seems every time something crazy happens, people go buy down his trustworthy-ish market.
@firstuserhere Wait -- sorry the threading probably makes things unclear here but that message was directed entirely at BTE!
I have nothing but respect and gratitude for you, FUH, and personally think you should be trustworthy-ish (I suggested you as a candidate a while back, then others said something about some scandal I wasn't aware of, and I got distracted. I've bet up the market of you becoming TWish accordingly :P)
@Austin While I agree that BTE has been needlessly critical of and antagonistic towards Manifold, it seems like quite a jump to generalize that to "is likely to break our site guidelines on market manipulation".
@IsaacKing I agree! I don't know what David's decisionmaking process was here, but speaking for myself: I oftentimes am subconsciously influenced by my gut judgements of people. This isn't how I would ideally operate if I were like a perfectly rational actor, but something the rational thing to do in response to less-then-perfectly-rational-actors is to indulge in their emotional whims (in this case -- act as a kind, upstanding member of the Manifold community)
@Austin ohhhh i totally did misread the threading! Buying FUH's trustworthyness back up now!
@BTE
You have had multiple users @firstuserhere @SemioticRivalry @joshua bet indiscriminately on several hundred of your markets, over a few minutes, using a script of some kind.
You have clearly violated the new guidelines (which were admittedly still considered wip at the time, but still public, announced, and published). And violated the expectations laid out in the first section of the old guidelines. There has also been a lot of very public discussion about how the alt guidelines of the old rules also include accounts which aren't technically alts, which has been reflected in the new guidelines.
And, regardless of whether it was the primary goal or not, you have effectively farmed thousands of mana of unique trader bonuses from this script. Which is clearly ruled against in the old guidelines in the first section.
The fact that the culprits are all very active users who have been aware of these discussions, some of whom have strongly advocated for others to be punished in the past for using "technically non-alts" for manipulation makes it even worse. On top of that, you have been warned and fined multiple times over the past year, by multiple Manifold admins, to stop farming unique trader bonuses on your markets.
I need to think and decide if any punishment is necessary. But at minimum will be fining you for the unique trader bonuses earned from this and will unfortunately have to N/A this market as one of the colluders was the market creator.
@SirSalty I did not do that at all. They did it on their own. And they were motivated by ISAAC!!!!! He bet a ton against this happening and then they took it upon themselves. Why didn’t you contact me before making this accusation publicly?
@SirSalty Oh wow, this is actually totally out of the blue to me. Happy to clear things up in discord, but just to quickly address a few points:
BTE didn't ask us to do this at any point, we did it because Isaac put down a 10k limit order on "no" in this market.
There was no script for betting, we just actually went through and bet on all his markets. And we found a lot of mispriced markets that needed to be corrected before the end of the year!
@SirSalty This is totally fucked up and just reinforces my belief that this site is on the decline. I can’t control other users activities. No alts of mine were used I had no quid pro quo and in fact I had a TON OF SKIN IN THE GAME legitimately. Is treating your most active users and content creators like cheaters a good strategy for success?? Fuck no, it’s self-sabotage.
@SirSalty We can clear the rest up later, but I don't think it's right of you to just accuse a longtime user like BTE like this without much investigation. He had absolutely nothing to do with it.
@BTE It was heavily inferred from your comment below, and I think a reasonable assumption to make. Also as a trustworthy user not alerting me of known action that goes against the guidelines further led me to believe in your involvement. Not saying you are necessarily expected to report everything to me, but just that it contributed to my assumption.
I do not have the time to dm with people and start private discussions every time manipulation occurs. I tried to remain as neutral as possible and follow the evidence. It's nothing personal.
Sorry if you weren't at all involved and I made an incorrect assumption. If the colluders confirm this to be true then I obviously won't punish you and appreciate you understanding why I came to the conclusion I did and it being an honest mistake.
@SirSalty You took the time to write a long post here!!! It would have taken a fraction of the time to discord me. You have done it before. Also the bets made by the group you reference were LEGIT. I have like 1,000 open markets and many of them needed a correction.