How do I deal with ambiguities?
"I swear to seek justice, to let it guide me, until I find a more perfect Ideal."
The text of the answer and any clarifying comments added by the creator will be the primary factors I consider when I decide on a resolution. Of course, no text has any inherent meaning divorced from people, so a key question I will consider when resolving is: "What would a reasonable person think the creator meant to ask?". However, the intentions or thoughts of the one creating the answer themselves won't be relevant any more than any other person's, so I strongly recommend anticipating and preempting any ambiguities by writing clarifying comments after adding an answer. Consequently, to the predictors, I strongly suggest reading every clarifying comment, because the true criteria may not be apparent just from the short text of the answer (I recommend using Ctrl+F to quickly search for the comments of an answer, and I will ensure that even if the creator comments elsewhere, you will find the text as a comment under the given answer).
In cases of controversy, I will leave at least a few days for both sides to make their case, after which, if I can, I will make a resolution. Note that I strongly dislike resolving to N/A, so even if I am merely 60/40 towards one interpretation, I will resolve that way.
If I don't lean towards either side, I will ask 3 mods to choose between Yes, No and N/A. If more mods choose Yes than No, I will resolve Yes. If more mods choose No than Yes, I will resolve No. Otherwise, I will resolve N/A. (Therefore, if the mods choose N/A, N/A, and Yes, the question will resolve Yes.)
How do I deal with spoilers?
"I will remember those who have forgotten to turn off notifications."
Before the book's release, I will make a comment with the @traders mention to remind everyone that it's time they turn off notifications to avoid being notified about comments possibly containing spoilers and resolutions. Even then, I won't resolve anything until at least a week after release. (I also won't close the market at the book's release, so you will still get your profit quickly because of the faithful Vorin people who only predict the past.)
Because Manifold sometimes features comments on feeds, I will mark my comments as spoilers and I recommend others do the same. (To mark a part of a comment as a spoiler, surround it with "||")
1,000
3.00@traders I will resolve in a day, so turn off your notifications if you haven't finished the book yet
@Rocks I'm very surprised this went unnoticed for so long. I literally read this a bunch of times yesterday and still got confused by the spellings. Very nice
Preview chapters will actually be released in 10 minutes. Sorry everyone, timezones are hard.
Edit: and sorry again, they are released in 1 day and 10 minutes, but at least this way most will see this notification before release.
Stormlight 5 Preview Chapters starting on Monday, July 29th !!!
Starting next Monday, you can read a few chapters of the book every week on Reactor Mag until its release in December.
Don't forget to turn off your notifications if you don't plan to read along!
I've finished Stormlight 4. I wonder if betting here will tempt me to not read at my leisure and savour the book as I should. Probably not, because I know some are manyfold more concerned with mana than I am, and there is no chance I beat them. Still, someone will be pressured, and that's a bit sad.
Maybe it would have been better to close this at release, and delay resolving a month, not a week. Maybe you could create a market like that too?
@Eliza Happens at the time originally planned? Then it will resolve NO (but good question, I didn't consider that). If it happens at a later time, then it will resolve YES.
@Ziddletwix Thank you! Totally understandable, I had my refresher following along with my brother on his first read-through, so I'm already done with mine. Fortunately (and unfortunately to others I guess), you will have plenty of time, because the book got delayed to December 6!
@koadma Some comments!
- Cool market idea, I have been thinking about markets like this for months -- hoping people will make more markets in this style. However, I'm not brave enough to do it myself because I keep thinking "How in the world will I possibly be able to manage the resolution phase of a market like that". If I choose a subject that I am very interested in already, I won't want my own enjoyment of it to be 'ruined' by the need to overanalyze everything in a rush to resolve a silly market. Good luck!
- I know you want to do it as a free response market, but I guess I just want to include a nudge toward "You should have people suggest answers in the comments and translate them into your own words and add them yourself" instead. It feels like the valley of confusion between "creator's version" and "resolver's version" is just a disaster waiting to happen. I know you've set out some rules about it, but that's just my own opinion. (I think if people want to do their own resolutions on the same topic, they should be able to host their own market page instead so they can resolve them.)
- Once you have opened the floodgates of a topic like a book series, and gotten a few users hooked, you should be ready to follow up with related questions during the course of the market. Try to expand some of the good options into their own variants like "How many", "Which of these", etc.
- Do you have any plans/ideas how to get a market like this in front of people who are not already site members? I find that Multiple Choice markets are a more tricky to share to someone new because the title/preview is not nearly as clear about what is being predicted.
- I'm not entirely clear if they changed the effect of Boosts or not, but the Books related topics do not have huge follower counts -- if boosts are limited to just people following that tag they won't be very effective to spread the market among current Manifold users. I'll boost it some anyway.
@Eliza
Oh, immediate follow-up:
I think having a "Who will die in Stormlight 5" or "Who will be alive at the end of Stormlight 5" market that is specifically about who lives/dies would be a really good variant of this market to focus all those individual "Is this person alive" answers into one spot. That could save dozens of answer options for this one.
@Eliza Thanks for your comments!
- You don't have to worry, my enjoyment won't be ruined by overanalyzing the book at all! I'm not sure how familiar you are with this fandom, but overanalyzing stuff was a part of it from its beginnings. There is a whole site (https://wob.coppermind.net/) dedicated to recording every statement the author has ever said on the story/world (from interviews, book signings, livestreams, etc..), another site (https://coppermind.net/wiki/Coppermind:Welcome) collating every piece of information into a hyperlinked wiki which is by far the most detailed wiki of any media I've seen, I've seen 3 hours long podcast episodes analyzing just the information gleaned from the short epigraphs before chapters. I will only resolve after a week at the earliest counting from the release of the book, so I won't be in a rush. I've read the previous books of the author in a few days, so I believe this will give me plenty of time.
- I might rephrase the part of the description addressing this, but there is no "creator's version", if you add an answer to this market you waive your rights to have anything in your head about the interpretation matter (In line with the fact that I bear the risks of controversial resolution because of the review system). Of course, you've made a lot more questions than me, so I might just be naive in that this will prevent any complaint. I believe in practice, what you suggest will actually happen: people add an answer, I or some other commenter notice some edge case, we ask the creator of the answer what they meant and then I may edit the answer based on their response.
- New markets are a good idea as we near the release (it's in december, so we have plenty of time), I might make a few more specific ones later.
- Yes, I predicted on nigh every Brandon Sanderson question on the site and I saw that usually there aren't many people predicting, so I am planning to share this on 17thshard or r/cremposting or sth, but I will probably wait until my brother finishes the fourth book for him to be able to join the fun.
- Yes, many types of support for preventing spoilers were really good imo, there are probably a ton of people who want to predict various media. One notable feature of Manifold is that when showing questions on feeds it shows the first 4 option, so I had to try to set a default sort where the first four answers spoiler the least amount of stuff from previous books, but it's still not a zero amount. It would be nice if I could set it to not show the first four options for those who have not clicked into the question.
@JamesGrugett Let's do a spoiler mode, for real! Markets like this can generate a ton of new users if they take off in the right groups, but everyone is sitting and looking at it like "Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah I don't wanna get spoiled"
I will resolve YES even if they later Return or become any other kind of cognitive shadow. We have to know their names from previous books for them to count as having been introduced.
Any equivalent action counts. For example, if a given order allows progression in ranks without saying an ideal in exchange for something else, I will resolve YES if that something else is accepted by the spren. Saying it before the main events of book also counts if we get to know about it first in the fifth book.