This just removed some profit I already took from selling - what the heck?

Can we na then ?

Trump is currently behind Harris in 538 polling, but still ahead of Biden. The Trump vs Biden forecast has also stopped updating, so this will resolve to YES:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/biden-trump/

Although since there is some ambiguity here clarification would be helpful @strutheo

i think the @mods went through and NAed the other biden ones when it happened

Does that mean this will resolve to N/A then?

It seems like it should (likely) resolve No (once we have an August 8th (non-)update)?

If the 538 average as of August 8th shows Trump as having been in the lead on August 1st, this market resolves YES. In all other scenarios, this market resolves NO.

Assuming nothing changes, there is no Aug 1st data point. So Trump is not leading ("shows Trump as having been in the lead on August 1st"), because it does not "show" anything for Aug 1. And therefore "In all other scenarios, this market resolves NO". I think the market fully anticipated this outcome, if in a slightly weird way.

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wait no this is counterintuitive can we just NA it @mods traders will expect it to go YES because biden is no longer in it

It is definitely counterintuitive! The world is like that sometimes!

You wrote a good market! It was clear about how to deal with a wide variety of unanticipated outcomes. Lots of markets do far worse!

A lot of what makes forecasting hard is dealing with the unknown unknowns, and writing good predictions that are robust in the face of weirdness. Claim credit, you did well there!

.... can we na pls @mods

Fundamentally, this market was a forecast about a data source; not just the real world. "Data sources do weird things and sometimes stop updating" is a fundamental reality when it comes to forecasting on data sources. This data source did, in fact, do that thing.

that is not the spirit of my market

Fwiw I’ll be pretty disappointed if this resolves no and @EvanDaniel think that’s a pretty weak case, especially in light of the creator disagreeing.

What's the basis in the question text for the N/A or Yes resolution?

I feel like this is a fairly clear case for "weird shit happened, and that means we look to the details for how to resolve weird edge cases".

(I'm not going to resolve this on my own; I'll make my case but am not going to take action without some sort of clear consensus, mod vote, or similar.)

The question is whether Trump beat Biden in national polling at the beginning of August. Trump was ahead of Biden for months until July 21, when 538 suspended their polling forecast. There is no way you can argue that Biden was ahead of Trump. Given the absence of new data, you default to the most recent data. Any continuation of 538's polling aggregate would have Trump ahead of Biden.

Trump polling behind Harris has no relevance to the question, which does not mention Harris at all. Harris has been polling ahead of Trump as far back as the aggregate goes.

The NO argument relies on the "in all other scenarios" technicality and is very much against the spirit of the question. Typically, when a resolution hinges on a technicality that is against the spirit of the question and is not caught by traders, mods will resolve N/A.

I have to stop betting on unclear markets. Whether I go with the letter-of-the-question or spirit-of-the-question interpretation, I seem to lose mana every time. Very frustrating

@EvanDaniel i mean the most straightforward case here is that the creator wants it N/Aed, and manifold generally defers to the creator unless it’s egregious which it’s clearly not.

The YES case is just that since Biden isn’t competing, the average implicitly shows him as ahead. It’s the most common sense reading of the title, clearly the spirit, and fits within the question text, if loosely.

There is no way you can argue that Biden was ahead of Trump

I'm not; I'm arguing that neither is ahead of the other as of the August 1st data from the intended source, because that data does not exist. Which means Trump is not beating Biden either.

you default to the most recent data

Why? That seems explicitly in conflict with the question text:

If the 538 average as of August 8th shows Trump as having been in the lead on August 1st, this market resolves YES. In all other scenarios, this market resolves NO.

If that text was not present, I think there might be lots of reasonable interpretations, including your approach of defaulting to the most recent data; personally I'd probably advocate for N/A.

I would also advocate for N/A. Seems like everyone is doing so now.

If the 538 average as of August 8th shows Trump as having been in the lead on August 1st, this market resolves YES. In all other scenarios, this market resolves NO.

I agree, unclear markets and edge cases are a pain. But doing better, or realizing in advance that a market has that problem, can be really hard! I've certainly written my share of markets that I didn't realize until later were unclear.

I would also advocate for N/A. Seems like everyone is doing so now.

I'm not. I was simply saying that in the hypothetical case of a less clear market that didn't cover a weird event I'd advocate for such.

"Resolves to data source X", with no further specifications, has a pretty clear case for N/A if the data source doesn't exist.

"Resolves Yes if data source X says Y, No in all other cases" is a very different beast!

aaaaand the link in the description is now a redirect to the Trump vs. Harris polls, where Harris is winning.

I think it's just a clean N/A here. "The 538 polling average" is underspecified, so we can't say whether the "all other scenarios" clause of the description triggers. @EvanDaniel can you get behind the N/A resolution? That seems like the trader consensus.

No, I can't really. That doesn't mean it can't be resolved without my support; I'm not in an especially privileged position here, I don't have veto power.

I would hope that if some other mod (or group of mods) decides to resolve it in a way I disagree with, that they'll explain their reasoning. (But I don't think they're under an obligation to do that; mod energy is a limited and precious resource.)

I continue to think this market is unusually good at not requiring an N/A answer; either the data source says the thing or it doesn't. I suppose hypothetically you now have the question of whether to give precedence to "Trump in the lead" or "Trump beat Biden", but I think in either case the data source doesn't show that. So you might be No in the easy sense (Trump is not in the lead) or in the messy sense (all other scenarios), but you got lucky and can avoid resolving the slightly harder question.

I'm not in general a fan of N/A resolutions, but in cases where the N/A is clearly spelled out I can support that being a me problem and I should just deal with it or not trade. And "resolves according to data source" often has an obvious and predictable problem if the data source doesn't exist, and I can see N/A as the least-bad option in a lot of those cases (though I wouldn't cry if it was taken away and people were forced to actually pick a resolution). But this market continues to not seem like such an instance, to me.

I reread the whole argument, and I don't think you countered the strongest argument, raised by @Sketchy, of "the creator wants it N/Aed, and manifold generally defers to the creator unless it’s egregious which it’s clearly not."

I think the spirit of the market (and the title, tbh) point toward YES, while certain (arguably pedantic) interpretations of the description point to NO — another good argument for N/A.

(To your point about all the literal interpretations of the description pointing to NO, I think that's dubious, because if you look at the Trump-Biden polling average, even though they don't have a data point for Aug 1, their most recent data point, which was like the Aug 1 average, showed Trump winning. But this is something which you might disagree with, so I'll note that it's not very central to the fact that I am now resolving the market N/A, with all the moderation powers vested in me.)