Specifically on adding bonus 'house' subsidy to pools of 'good' markets:

• I really, really like the idea that Manifold could do more targeted liquidity injection into markets that it deems are "pretty good" or "pretty important".

• When a creator puts in 1,000 or even 10,000, and the market turns out to be a hit, Manifold should be really reinforcing that!

• I like the idea that more individuals/processes than just Joshua/ManifoldPolitics could cause a market to get an extra 1,000 or 10,000 liquidity.

• I think the old system of putting in a few mana per trader on almost every market was too broad and too much per trader.

• Maybe a very small amount like 1-3 mana per trader of direct liquidity injection would still make sense.

@Eliza

I think the old system of putting in a few mana per trader on almost every market was too broad and too much per trader.

For a good period of time the figures were:

• 5 mana of direct payment to the creator

• 20 mana of liquidity injection per trader

This meant that while it nominally took 20 traders to 'break even' on a 100 mana market, the reality was in many cases that as few as 3-4 traders was enough to break even because market creators were trading in those markets directly against Manifold's liquidity injection.

I personally benefited from this! And I like the idea that attracting a core group of 3-5 traders interested in your questions could lead to a sustainable pattern of site usage.

But I'm a little concerned that the meta result, which was spamming many dozens of repetitive "daily" markets or markets where only one element was tweaked, was causing an overwhelming amount of attention-splintering that the site was totally incapable of handling in feeds/search/etc., while self-reinforcing to creators that "this is making you a ton of mana, keep doing it".

So if we bring back liquidity injection, it should come with some form of a brake pedal.

@Eliza Yep, but back then a side effect was that sorting by liquidity was super useful as a trader, which was damn cool. A good brake pedal here is my old argument to split trader bonuses across all subsidizers, and implement more sinks in general so those niches can be healthy and fruitful with only a few rabid traders while not bloating the economy

@Stralor also lol yeah 5 vs 20 was pretty heavily weighted in traders' favor and encouraged self-trading but we did develop some excellent cultural standards about trading on your own markets because of it that feel vestigial today

I stumped hard for Unsubsidized to get removed back in the day and I'm glad I'm back in time to fight to keep it dead in the ground where it belongs.

Unsubsidized is a huge punishment in an economy that really needs rewards for markets to flourish. And the worst part is it's like a hanging guillotine that creators have no idea if/when some mod will come along and drop it on them (see: all of the poor creators who have been rightfully railing against my recent spree of unlisting; it's not a good solution, it's heavy-handed, which is only appropriate to make drastic corrections. Making more tools like that isn't the best way forward).

Unsubsidized hits creators where it hurts: in the mana. Who wants to pay to have to manage a market that doesn't give them something back? Our current incentives are: answers to burning questions and mana. Only leaving one of those on the table kneecaps the quantity of markets we get, the quality of how they're written, and the reliability of the management on them.

Compare to Unranked:

• only affects leagues, probably of mild importance below the big boys: net worth and profit

• mostly only hits traders, not creators, who have much less commitment to the market and still get to keep their biggest incentive: the rush of big wins and losses

I heard the argument earlier that post-unpivot market creation hasn't seen the bounce-back we'd expect, now that the mana drip has been turned back on. I think that's actually making my case for me. Let's compare numbers:

• Current trader bonuses: 3/10/15/20 for 100/1k/10k/100k subsidy

• that's 34, 100, 667, or 5000 traders to break even, in an economy where whales have millions, don't care about tiny markets, and the MAU is <5000

• Pre-Pivot: 5 for 100

• that's 20 to break even, in an economy where whales had hundreds of thousands, could invest early in markets to later capture subsidy as it grew, and the MAU was trying to trend around 8000 iirc

• Very old trading bonuses: 10 for 100

• you don't need me to do the math for that but here it is in bold: 10 traders to break even

• (in an economy where whales had tens to hundreds of thousands, subsidy was plentiful relative to net worth, and the MAU went from like 100s to 1000s)

• and we're not even getting into the REAL original meaning of Unsubsidized which was "no more house subsidy" bc that hasn't been a thing in ages (that's awholenother thing that I think should be revisited in a full economy overhaul like my alternate Pivot universe /Stralor/will-manifold-enact-any-of-the-idea , and Eliza mentioned it above but I'll only touch on it briefly below)

Most markets don't get 34 traders, let alone 100. Most markets don't even get 20 or 10. So OF COURSE making a market you want is a bad bet when you're tight on mana, and we only get stuff that:

• is tied to the most popular topics

• is low effort and very simple for traders to understand

• tries to be viral

• comes from ancient wealthy and carefree Manifolders

• or all of the above

I don't blame users who get hit with Unlisted and go "fuck it, this market is cancelled. resolved N/A!" and I wouldn't if it were Unsubsidized instead of Unlisted. That's not a good creator economy.

Okay so what are our options instead?

Extra subsidy for the good stuff (ye olde House Subsidy!).

• rewards traders rather than creators

• but since traders are incentivized, markets will grow and draw in more activity

• and calibration will improve

• has obvious economy bloat downsides that Manifold struggled to address appropriately in the past (I'm glad the Mana Merch Shop is finally coming. I hope we see more sinks soon. [aside: I know revenue is tight but my offer stands to come onboard to bring the full weight of my game design expertise to bear. This is my fucking wheelhouse man])

De-boosting in feed, aka mild shadowbanning.

• good for site presentability and reducing brain rot memery

• a bit better for ecosystem health

• doesn't elicit rage

• but instills fear

• and not great when the current way markets are discoverable hinges almost entirely on The Algorithm

• opaque to users in a place that highly values transparency

• will impact the lifecycle and retention of new untrusted users harder than existing users with lots of followers

Boosting the good stuff in feed.

• we kinda have this already, though a supercharged version

• Catch-22 of hard to find for mods to boost it

• a milder option might be too opaque? (the current one is pleasantly obvious)

• doesn't slow the down the growth of the most bland manafarming markets once they take off, which is okay on any given day BUT hype cycles mean this quickly gets out of hand and it becomes a net negative

Granting the good stuff a Blessing of the Holy Mods (higher trader bonuses).

• doesn't help small markets grow and climb the feed

• redundant on big markets

• capricious and prone to begging

• BUT super good for encouraging niche and diverse content which is a sore weakpoint

A mild form of Unsubsidized, with partial decreases in bonuses (say, halved, dropping a tier, etc.).

• has the same chilling effect, but doesn't absolutely kill otherwise healthy markets

• can be transparent

• compounds the economy problem of trader bonuses being too unforgiving right now, that would need to be solved

• but a slap on the wrist is better than getting thrown in the clinker

And, hell, I know we can come up with more, these are just the ones I've heard talk about. I'm not trying to solve the problem perfectly here though. What matters is that FULL UNSUBSIDIZED IS AWFUL, absolutely the worst of the bunch

@Stralor Thank you!

While your post is heavily weighted toward your campaign against "FULL UNSUBSIDIZE", the parts that present other options seem to be very much in alignment with my own proposals from the top of this discussion topic.

We seem to both agree that:

• Some markets deserve extra attention/eyeballs

• Some markets do not inherently deserve extra eyeballs

• Most markets should generate some reward for their creators

• Some markets should generate extra mana for their creators

• Some markets should generate less mana for their creators

And in all of those cases, the actual discretion levels are mostly up to Manifold to decide -- but we currently have only extremely heavy-handed tools to either boost or deboost.

So, it kind of seems to me that we both agree some form of a Subsidy Button (perhaps under a different name) would be good for the site.

I didn't mention a "complete full unsubsidize" in my posts to this point, but since you have brought it up, I will argue that even a market with zero trader bonuses and zero feed ranking is better than an unlisted market, which will not even appear in direct searches or on the user's own profile. Our current tools are too limited and too extreme.

@Eliza yeah I agree wholeheartedly to everything with the only caveat being that unlisted also being unsubsidized is true for very obvious reasons but also completely batshit for the exact circumstances we're talking about

@Eliza Okay maybe not wholeheartedly to everything 😅

I do think it's worth considering whether

Some markets should generate extra mana for their creators

Some markets should generate less mana for their creators

is necessarily true. It's an okay bandaid but I think all of the solutions I compared are fundamentally flawed. I wouldn't implement any of them in a vacuum. A real solution is adjusting the flow of the economy, increasing trader bonuses across the board, rewarding creators in more ways that aren't simply mana so mana can be self-sustaining without being this kind of issue, and fixing the algorithm.

@Stralor

fixing the algorithm.

Yes. A lot of the issues that have resulted in subsidy adjustment and listing/unlisting in the past really relate to what is visible to everyone, and what stays within a sub-group.

@Eliza there was a time where we were finally starting to see the possibility of a healthy Manifold economy on the horizon and then the pivot undid all of it and so many cool parts never came back

@Stralor

Instead of

Some markets should generate extra mana for their creators

I would say

Some markets and some comments should generate extra mana based on the effort they took and the value they add

Maybe we should aim for a cultural shift towards tipping creators and traders for additional valuable efforts, such as:

• Carefully considering what are most meaningful questions which deserve a market to be created, and adding a novel market after this process

• Taking the time to write clear resolution descriptions

• Providing context valuable for the market question

• Summarizing links to related markets

• Sharing relevant up to date information that may influence the market probability

I don’t know if this list also makes sense to others, and whether I missed other topics that are valuable for other people.

Differences I see compared to the initial proposal:

# A) Cultural shift towards tips:

1. Each trader will vote with their tip

2. More value will be tipped with more mana. The amount is defined by the person who feels the additional value is relevant for them

3. We could also affect how the market is sorted in the searches if the tips received affect the sorting criteria

# B) List of “good” markets:

1. Only the mods will list or unlist good and bad markets

2. The market can only be good or bad, without a gradient

3. Valuable comments are not in scope

4. Mana subsidies seem a more natural incentives mechanism than tips

I’m not sure whether such cultural shift would be realistic, nor how this could be promoted. Maybe some achievement badges for both receiving and giving this kind of tips, or some special buttons.

If we go for this, I also don’t know how to address the fact that a few users own millions of mana while most only own hundreds or a few thousands of mana.

Note: I’m quite new to the site, so I miss the context of how well the Subsidized option worked in the past.

I def like the idea of adding some parameters that allow mods to subtly boost or deboost the sorting score of markets. I'm not sure that we want to mess with trader bonuses, though. I think it'd be fairly easy to add mini boost/deboost input that mods can use. But I suppose I do like the visibility of the 'subsidized' tag - so users know what's going on

(I'll respond more later)

Very timely, we have a fresh example from the homepage view of a not-logged-in user!

I would personally unsubsidize the bottom market on this list if I had the option. That would deprioritize it from the home page feed:

It seems to have reached the homepage feed due to chaotic trading in the initial moments after creation, and then gained more and more traders who clicked in based on seeing it in their feed:

Here are some things I believe, see if you disagree with some of them:

• This market absolutely belongs on the site, users should be able to do fun/interesting/weird things if they want.

• It does not belong on the home page of the entire site where every single person who visits the site will see it. Unsuspecting users may not understand what is going on, and then be upset that they lost a lot of mana on a joke market.

• It can be shown to users who subscribe to the specific topic it is in, or that user, etc. It does not need to be totally hidden.

• Manifold does not need to encourage markets of this type by paying out (already) over 50% of the creation liquidity as a trader bonus. Users who want to do fun and games should expect to spend a little bit of their mana on it instead of having it be mana-positive every time.

@Gen @shankypanky @ian See if I can get any of you excited.

Also @Stralor for the rebuttal! And @EvanDaniel and @Gabrielle

(Wish I could 'repost' from the comments on a Post....)

@Eliza I agree that it’s probably bad from a content-delivery perspective but I don’t think it is specifically important to tackle it by removing the subsidy

What’s the full pitch? A button which removes trader bonuses? Extracts liquidity?

What’s the crime here? (from the market creator)

@Gen I assume you meant to reply to the other comment thread, regarding October next month.

What’s the crime here? (from the market creator)

First and foremost: Absolutely no inherent crime in creating a market with this title and description. The market creator should be totally free to make whatever market they want as long as they follow the site guidelines, resolve appropriately, etc. If it looked like I was accusing the market creator of doing something wrong, I was absolutely not doing so.

But, just because you are able to make a market doesn't mean it belongs on the front page of the entire site. This is an area that any user sees as their home page and is also visible to any new/non-user just coming for the first time. Every single slot is valuable! This particular one might top out at 7th place, but other similar markets sometimes reach the top 3, or stay in the top 10 for a week or more.

Put it on the 2nd page! Share it to your followers! If you follow the topics that market is in, make sure you see it! But every single person??? No.

What’s the full pitch?

Bring back the Subsidized toggle that we had before, possibly with extra features or small changes. That's it.

Please note that all the guidelines about the Subsidized toggle are still present in the site guidelines.

I don’t think it is specifically important to tackle it by removing the subsidy

I don't really care a ton whether the creator gets a trader bonus for every unique trader, but "you get what you pay for" in this case means if creators make a lot of mana with this type of market, they will keep doing it. I don't really care if you think that is good or bad here. The real thing I think we can fix here is when:

1.) low quality markets that are not predicting anything

2.) markets that are either intentionally or unintentionally crafted so many traders accidentally bet without fully understanding what they are betting on

take over the home page and become self-perpetuating.

@Eliza this makes sense, I don't know much about the content delivery mechanism or the impact of subsidizing, but I do understand from the perspective of creator incentives

Thank you for the thoughtful post, I will make a note of it and probably/hopefully/eventually discuss it with the team or do something about it myself