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, posts: 64, latest: Super Userkruijs
Post anything here you find annoying about Knew The News, or what simply doesn't seem to work.

Replies:

I have had trouble with making questions..... (i have had so much trouble, that i have taken
to trying to just modify an existing one, and twist it to do my bidding). I tried to make a question
on the debt ceiling.... what will the results look like.. essentially what will happen), so i took and existing question
but the server was slow (either here, or at your end), and I couldn't modify the percents / responses, etc.
so, i just had to leave it.. I do not know what happened to it, but this has
prevented me from making essentially any questions... (it may be here, and nothing to do with your site, i do not
know...).. In any case, i have had trouble like cici.... Except that betting goes fine... i am not
sure what the trouble is...
Anyway appreciate all you do..

Hi Ken,
while modifying an existing question, you are not allowed to change percentages on options. this is by design.
could you please line out what actually doesn't work, besides from the server being slow? what kind of browser are you using?
did you try to use the all-in-one form, or the wizard?

Oh, hey, just found and corrected a bug with the "add option" button in the edit market form.

I earlier tried making my own questions, but a couple of times, i would lose the info. and wouldn't be able to recover the info..., so i just gave up on that.... (i just used the make a question star at the top, adding my own picture, etc...)..
So more recently, i have tried to modify an existing question by "duplicating it", picture and all, taken from another user, for example, and then to modify, say the wording, and the options... I think by trying to change the
words and percentages..).. I have had mixed success at this... about 60-40 , but the failures have been very frustrating, particularly when i just sit there, and wait to see if what i am putting in is getting picked up...
I am not sure what the hold up is... (like i said, i do not know if it the server there or here)..
I use Mozilla; i have lately just been duplicating the question, so am not sure if this is the wizard or what..


the wizard runs in its own dialog, eventually leading to the preview screen from which you can go back to the edit page. the edit page is the only place where you can add the picture. since mid april, the wizard start on clicking on the make a question star. the wizard offers you a link to the edit page, so you can decide to omit the wizard.

so what you do is: duplicate and modify an existing market, than, click "Preview". you should then see the question as it would be published. you than click "Approve".

if I understand you correctly, submitting from the edit screen to the preview screen doesn't work?

I know from one case that the market options disappeared from the question. I think that's a bug in the system which arises when you remove options from the list on the edit screen. It works if you remove the last option, it might not work correctly if you remove options within the list (say, the first or second on a list of 3 or more options).

I MANAGED to post a copied question today, using what i think is the simple "text editor"..

One problem is i use a laptop and am a very big guy with big old fat fingers, and the computers these
days are made for people under 4' tall, and i am 6' 4" ... so, i have large lion like paws.. not mouse fingers..

anyway, i think it worked.. it is on the debt question..

yes, if you copy (duplicate) a question, you automatically use the integrated edit page. only if you click the "sun" icon on top of the page, the wizard is started.

let me know if you encounter any issues, I will investigate them.

Hi,
Leaderboard - ?timerange=ThisMonth
and
Leaderboard - ?timerange=07%2F2011
give very different results - shouldn't be so in july.

zv, kruijs, Looks like it may simply be the ordering which is different.. Is this right?
nice that u found it..
Ken

no, this is actually a bug. the second link should be:
Leaderboard - ?timerange=07 - 2011
where did you get yours from?

It was from the settlement on your KtN Commununity M - I posted the different links there.

ISSUE: OF WHAT ISN'T WORKING -
1) The main thing, that i see, that seems to be disappointing, is when some with lots more $ than me, and i have above average funds, grab up all the probabilities on a question, so that there is very little chance to buy any amounts on a question...
THE GOOD NEWS- I might be wrong, but i see an obvious solution, that would also bring fairness, and help create an environment so that new people would not be hurt by the above "hijacking the question" (which is the way i am phrasing it, however, i know this is not the intent of the people doing this, and we probably do not recognize how our own behavior, which we can justify well, while others interpret from their perspective)...
The solution is simply: make a MAXIMUM that anyone can bet on a question. say $1,000 or $500, whatever, as long as there is a reasonable amount that doesnt drive the whole question into no chance for new people to be totally driven away from each question!!
Any thoughts about this _ pro or con..?

this is a solution to prevent a single user from profiting from undervalued options.

it does not prevent you from simply being too late on the site to buy, after multiple people already had the opportunity to buy their maximum stake, though.

the situation for the late coming will always be disappointing, regardless whether a single person buys one large stake, or multiple people buy smaller stakes each.

if the question has been created with an option valued far from a realistic likelihood, though, the question should be voided upfront.

like, say, "will sarah palin win the 2012 elections" with 95% "Yes" at creation is definitely a lucrative question to buy "No", but is due to be voided because of inaccurate starting odds.

@kenneth1: With indeces Ms its mostly 2/3 options that share 90% - only few cases when the stocks are so bad / good that the extremes gets 90%. And sometimes those are not right like yesterdays DAX.

There were many undervalued Ms that settled end of July - they were at 60-80% allready and to earn any money at all i put in a few $5000 till about 90 or 92% this weekend the averse chances were about 1%. There was still some money left for a one/two day investment.

I found them very late best look aut for End of August/September Ms now that show the wrong probabilities or bookmark.

I sometimes follow zvassil and he sometimes follows me in the look for missed opportunities. Why not follow some players for ideas (my betsa re open, indices are dangerous and there are many corrections)

On the big ticket Ms (indices) Zvassil and I try to vary our strategies a lot because the follower would lose 75K a day real fast in our Rat Race to 5M.

I support the idea to set limits to players in every market eg. 10K and with market capatalization > 100K 10%

With a stake of 10,000 you can currently move most markets entirely. What about 2-3K? A limit would encourage players to create more markets to put their money into.

"With a stake of 10,000 you can currently move most markets entirely" is only true on newly posted markets, but the effect decreases as the volume of the market increases.

I know, but currently only very few players share that volume. A limit would open the field a little for players who are a couple of hours late.

@kenneth1, @hfl1: Any limit on bets will be... you guessed, limiting the game. Besides, it will require a lot of policing, and involve the Editors a lot.
In principle, a system of markets should (mostly) regulate itself, without much management labour.
I think that some form of anti-monopoly taxation may do the trick with very large bets that overwhelm a market.
Or, do the obvious - publish lots of markets. If there were 25 instead of 5 index markets on a weekday (and 20 instead of 2 weeklies), there have to be more than 10 people with daily investments of 500K to flood the market.

So, less limitations and more taxes and fines as regulatory measures, and of course more betters and markets.
In my humble opinion ;)

@kenneth1, @hfl1: Any limit on bets will be... you guessed, limiting the game. Besides, it will require a lot of policing, and involve the Editors a lot.
In principle, a system of markets should (mostly) regulate itself, without much management labour.
I think that some form of anti-monopoly taxation may do the trick with very large bets that overwhelm a market.
Or, do the obvious - publish lots of markets. If there were 25 instead of 5 index markets on a weekday (and 20 instead of 2 weeklies), there have to be more than 10 people with daily investments of 500K to flood the market.

So, less limitations and more taxes and fines as regulatory measures, and of course more betters and markets.
In my humble opinion ;)

@bernardo: some index markets can be layered to about 8-12% at all options with as little as 800, others - at most 1500.
However, if I set initial values at 50+% for an option, even if it is based on actual futures markets, or oddschecker, it still can be quite at odds with the index. Besides, a sharply higher initial value (compared to values of all other options) can be "moved" with lower investment by betting on lowest options first.

absolutely, I finally discovered that. Only problem is when another player is betting on the same thing at the same time I am.

RE: QUESTION CREATION:
CICI found a problem with a hurricane ? because there was a chance of an event not covered...
This kind of problem could be handled generically, by a general choice of an nth option-
"OPTION n: other or generally otherwise; none of the above; not by settlement date, or
more than one of the above, etc."

This extra chance, got some of my questions prohibited, when questioned,
despite that i found other examples of similar
questions getting through, with similar logic. Thus one
might have
1) A
2) B
3) C
n) other or generally otherwise; none of the above; not by settlement date, or
more than one of the above, etc.

Such an nth option allows for cases when the previous options are not yet clarified,
for example,or the 1 option, the 2 option, etc.. do not fully fill the logic space, so
the n th option does this..... and if that option has little to no probability, then people won';t bet on it,
so no harm done....

Re: COMMUNICATIONS AND OR COMPUTER PROBLEMS ----the problem i mentioned earlier- MONTHS AGO
ABOUT TROUBLE WITH KtN ... . I unfortunately had some more experience with it today, and it came at a time, that was bad news, and good news tied into it

First the Good news (as nobody but me cares about the bad news...
The good news, is a reasonable diagnosis of my problem with connections... (it maybe atlantic connection, but
i expect it has to do with KtN computers, routers, etc..handling too much data or doing calculations, at crucial times (making it impossible for me (and likely others) to place bets).. I am not 100% sure that is the problem, but i was able to log on to USA sites... so, it wasnt the USA portion of my linkage, etc... (so it was beyond my purview>>) That's the good news.. SO i am placing it at your doorstep, or somewhere outside of my house.., as i am not there, and cannot be sure it is localized there..

NOw , the BAD NEWS.. I lost more than 200,000$
likely ~300,000 $ (of KtN money, so not so bad), because of being unable to switch bets near key times --
around < 2PM or so, when a number of USA financial markets close east-coast time.. I was trying to change bets on Dow and Nasdaq, etc.... I could not get a response from KtN for a good fraction of an hour, and all my bets from early in the morning were still in place... So, they were well off, because it was a volatile day

logging rendering times now to have a better idea of any response time issues. this does not take into account any third party resources used by knew the news though, which are loaded in the browser. (like sharing buttons, etc).

re kruis last comment,
I guess this refers to my previous comments involving not being able to connect to KtN for a long time
today (8 9 ) for about an hour around 2 PM East coast time... , does the response, "third party
resources used by knew the news....etc." indicate that it is something outside KtN's control?
So, i just need to hope this gets better, or not so bad, as today was a very busy day because of wall street, etc.
I presume this is what that means.. Thanks, I can understand that..

I noticed a problem yesterday and still the same today. Is it just me or has anyone else noticed?

When I go to any market where I have multiple positions, go to Open Positions and try to sort by Option / Bought all of the option titles are listed first and the numerical information is listed on the bottom half of the window. Nearly impossible to to tell which numbers go with which options. Only way to know which option I am selling is to match the title to its current %.

Also same thing happens when I go to Profile, Positions, Open, and try to sort by Market.

Same results with Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 5.0. Will try my other browsers if you want me to.

thanks, charlesf, this is a bug which results from restructuring the positions table after people noticed that when large amounts were in it, the "sell" button moved out of reach.
I'll investigate

Fortunately, i have not noticed this particular problem..
The only one i have, i think, relates to either too much demand on the internet, or the KtN server/computer, etc.
wherein my program just sits waiting for a response, and they nothing has been done.. (so i am back where i was 5 minutes ago, none the better, for attempting to buy/sell an option).. In my case, it clearly is simply a throughput
problem.. I would think charlesf, it might be your machine; this is why IMO, it would help to find anyone else who has the problem.. If it is system-wide, then others might be having this problem... Good luck.. Is there another machine you can use to see if it happens there too? What about reinstalling your browser(s)?

@Ken, I have the same problem with stock market bets, 10 - 15 min. before cut off time. I just think we're all trying to buy, sell, whatever at the last minute. I'm on Safari

I still have the same problem that I reported 3 days ago. I have my friends net book and the problem looks almost exactly the same on it to. Because of this I don't think reinstalling the browsers will help.

Kruijs seemed to think that he knew what the problem was. Maybe you could check with him because I know very little about programing or creating web pages as elaborate as this one.

I think I understand the problem from a users point of view and have 2 possible solutions. The amount of information and/or the number of columns in the positions table is too much for the width of the positions window to handle so each line is being broken into 2 lines. When I first enter the position table(cronological order) the broken lines stay together as in Option title, about 6 to 8 blank lines then the corresponding information(date to sell button). Only difference with net book is no blank lines. When I try to sort my open positions by Option/Bought I get all of the option titles in the top half of the window and all of the lines with the information in the bottom half of the window(still 6-8 blank lines between every title ane every line of information). There is no way to tell which option title on the top belongs with which line of information on the bottom.

I don't if it is possible(or easy) but the best cure would be to make the position table window wider. If that can't be done could you add a scroll bar going across. May not be able to see everything at the same time but atleast everything would be together.

Ken, thank you for looking into my problem. I am open to any other suggestions if It only looks like this on my 2 computers.

Same in Google Chrome browser except no spaces between lines.

Same in Apple Safari browser, no spaces between lines.

Same in Opera Browser, no spaces between lines.

All out of browsers. Hope this new Info helps.

A connection problem with Knew the News (KtN)
from (EAST COAST US TIME) 1:20PM + till just before 2PM.. (a time when KtN financial markets (daily) close
on US finanacial questions.. The German times are 6 hours later so 7:30 PM to 8PM)..
Not sure what the situation is , but for a number of times, (other days),
I have been similarly unable to connect during the above times... When i do get connected,
as I was able to today , then of course , the markets are quite diffferent..
On other days, I have totally unable to connect from 1:15 till 2 PM, so totally lost out
on any possible interactions when the Ktn financial markets are closing...

I do not think it is just me, as i am but one person. Anyone experiencing slow downs in KtN at these times?
These are east coast times, so has anyone run into this trouble?
I know others are connecting, as the markets have moved substantially, when i finally am able to connect..
I imagine, i just am getting placed on some kind of "hold" and my machine isn't happy with finding
markets NOT what they were when they last were "seen" by my computer, and it is unhappy with a bet that does not compute... but then i cant get it to re-establish to the KtN site..
thx, ken

Ken, since I don't know anything, and as I said the other day, I have the same problem as you. I have come to the conclusion that only 1 person at a time can make bets. You and I were logged in at the same time today, and neither of us could add or subtract from out bets. But "anonymous" was also on and making his bets. My conclusion was that he beat us to it and locked us out. Simplistic yes.

Couldn´t bet on Nasdaq, DJIA and Vix the last 35 min before suspend (FF5):

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message 'A database query error occcured: MySQL server has gone away (2006). Executed query: SELECT u.*, CASE WHEN ISNULL(SUM(p.currprice)) THEN 0 ELSE SUM(p.currprice) END as predictions, CASE WHEN ISNULL(SUM(p.currprice)) THEN u.cash ELSE SUM(p.currprice) + u.cash END as networth, a0.rank as lastmonth_community_rank, a1.rank as lastmonth_marketcreation_rank, a2.rank as lastmonth_predicting_rank, a3.rank as lastmonth_communication_rank FROM predictionmarkets_useraccounts u LEFT JOIN predictionmarkets_marketpositions p ON p.userId = u.userId AND (p.state = 'Open' OR p.state = 'Suspended') LEFT JOIN predictionmarkets_userawards a0 ON a0.userId = u.userId AND a0.awardtype = 'community' AND a0.month = 7 AND a0.year = 2011 LEFT JOIN predictionmarkets_userawards a1 ON a1.userId = u.userId AND a1.awardtype = 'marketcreation' AND a1.month = 7 AND a1.year = 2011 LEFT JOIN predictionmarkets_userawards a in /www/htdocs/w00d2136/lib/storage.db.class.php on line 215

i have my bets with the option to keep "anonymous," (my bets) so perhaps it is my own account...
which is interfering with its own bets... I wouldn't put it past these computers to undertake such actions..

Maybe i need to remove this Anonymous option.. and sorry if i prevented your bidding cici,
Ken

Well, cici, I now reset my betting to not have it private.. I wouldn't think that the name business would foul up the computer... but it not being happy (the KtN computer) when two of us are trying to change things nearly simultaneously, and my computer just bouncing back messages back and forth, seems like a reasonable hypothesis...

I once encountered an email equivalent, because of two servers acting like optical plane parallel mirrors in a barber shop, where one can see multiple images of oneself, due to multiple reflections , except with emails, where i had cc myself , but my user name was identical, except with a different domain, and it just
assumeed the domain so, it kept duplicating the message and forwarding the copy back and forth
between 2 computers in the washington area (it was incredible: hundreds of messages every hour).. I had
to notify the computer people who shut their computer down for awhile to let the bouncing stop, and stop my user id, to "capture the messages", etc.. and start things back up...


silly me, I thought anonymous was a person, not just anyone who put his bets private.

I am East Coast USA and noticed KtN first responding slowly and then not responding at all. I reset my modem and router but that didn't help. After I checked CNN.com (also East Coast) and that worked fine I figured either
KtN or Europe was slowing things down. I gave up and just got back. Seems to be working OK now.

I am not sure about the anon... but i imagine that anyone who sets their bets on private would be referenced by this generic wording... (i do not think it was exclusive to me).. From what i hear from you and charlesf , it looks like it is the Atlantic connection... Perhaps there are priorities reserved for "BIG USERS" of people doing their info transport around then... But it does seem to me, to be "correlated" with the timing of the end of the US financial markets... (but it maybe that people just run into time delays around then,and the packets of info get clogged up at the KtN machine--- they need to recalculate their rates whenever someone places a bet, so if two bets are coming in close together then the second one cannot be entered while the first one hasn't gone through yet, because of the way the bets are calculated... - I imagine... , however, i do not know the KtN protocol, etc.). and how the market deals with bets that get turned down, and how our machines deal with it... I have at times just tried turning my machine off and on again... a painful process, as i have about a dozen windows open all the time... i have a messy desk too.. it is the sign of a neat mind..) -- having to do with some kind of entropy thing... :)

Maybe all of the East Coast workers are checking their e-mail and surfing the internet on their lunch breaks?

To me, one thing that could very well be a major factor, is the likely need for KtN to set the particular question being altered , on hold, while the necessary calculations are done, in order to update the odds...

Perhaps a faster algorithm may be chosen to allow this problem to not occur....

@all
Clearly, outage, especially recurring, are not acceptable. Knew the news is ran on a "shared hosting" environment. This means, the site doesn't have its own computer which serves the pages, but is one of a number of sites. Additionally, the database is also located on the same computer, making the situation clearly worse. This environment is the only affordable at the moment for me, since I don't have my own broadband upstream connection to the internet, nor own servers at home.

A dedicated environment, which would only serve the Knew the News site would be rather expensive.
And obviously, your geographical location also has an effect.

Personally, I haven't encountered that massive problems as you outline, but I don't bet that heavily on stock market questions.

"Anonymous" is used to indicate transactions market "private" by a user. That's why "Anonymous" is not linked to a user profile.

Faster algorithms aren't necessary, but more server performance would be nice.

From my point it would be nice too, as today 8 /18, was a day when the weekly dow and another US weekly market were closing, as well as the daily dow and Nasdaq, and i could not get on for a couple of hours (i also had
a Doctors appt. in that interval, so that necessarily interfered too...) my time was very limited, and indeed
it was during that limited interval (for >~ 1/2 hour when i could not communicate to erase any of my previous bids
on the weekly or daily values..., so i was out of the loop for several crucial hours...

But , c'est la vie..

Small matter, but not sure if it is me, or the system... i used to get mail sent to me, when a market i bet on
was settled..(so i could see how much i won and lost on the market... usually i bet on a wide variety, and sometimes i lose ~ what i make.. but at least i know how the two balance). This doesn't happen anymore... I made my bets public, but i dont think i did much else..to my system account info. to mess it up..
anyone else have this trouble?
thx...

@Ken, we are twins you know. No more notification of wins or loses. You can make your bets "private"

@ cici Well, if we are twins, I am the ugly one...

1) kruijs, now that you are making possibly costly efforts to increase the user base it might be the right time to work on the technical issue of reversing cashed-in positions when markets are settled. Fair play should be an important part of the game and I consider cashing in after settlement conditions are met as unfair.

2) All the graphs need some improvement to be meaningful/useful. For example in the individual net-worth change graphs the range of the Y-axis should adapt to the range of displayed values so that lines don't get nearly horizontal in short-term overviews. The month-labels in the yearly overviews are somehow wrong (It always seems to be January in the present). And in the market movement graphs the option labels are almost always incomplete, so I think you should consider placing them below the diagrams to have enough space to show them completely. As a bonus wish: To reflect the actual prediction values of a settled market before the settlement date the option values (and graphs) should be reset to account for voided predictions (and cash-ins) which were made after the determined settlement date.

- corrected month labels
- corrected selected range of display
- option labels would take too much space if underneath the graph
(working on the last one)

done, check it out

Ok, you fixed the month labels in the year-overview. But I can't see any of the other changes you mentioned. The range of the net-worth diagrams (and market diagrams) still starts at 0$ no matter which time span you select (and which range of values is covered by the options); there are still only a maximum of four option labels shown next to the movement graphs (missing labels make it hard to read more complex diagrams) of the markets with no more space than before, so longer labels are cut off (especially when these are dates like "between September..." they sometimes get cut off to a degree where they are not distinguishable anymore); and the percentage on settlement date isn't changed at all, as can be easily seen in this example: Will Anthony Weiner resign over his "sexting" scandal? . If this change doesn't work retroactively it is hard to find out, because sorting settled markets by suspension date/settlement date doesn't work/is not available.

okay, I see. trying to figure out.

I've experienced and continue to notice new markets that go into pending for up to six hours after creation unless you know what you are doing and go out of your way in expert mode to schedule them a few minutes in the future. Can't they just start immediately by default? It's confusing to the question creator and makes it awkward to send challenges after creating it because nobody can bet on it yet. Is it a time-zone issue?

I just went to bet there too, why are they "pending"?

FYI: I didn't edit anything but the publication date in the mentioned market now. Not sure what's going on with the HTML tags there.

if you've set your local time zone in your settings, the markets should be published on creation.

They should be, but they're not. My time zone is set correctly and they go into pending every time unless I go way out of my way to fix it.

Tried to place a negative bet, got an error message:

An error occured while processing your trade: total (0.018) obtain lock (0.018) start transaction (0.000) check user (0.000) check market (0.000) check option (0.000) commit transaction (0.000) release lock (0.001)

I was in market #15271, "What will be the daily change of the DJIA on 19.10.2012?", and entered a negative amount on the "Considerable Gain" option, then clicked "Predict".

Hi Knurled!

Thanks for trying short selling of positions ;-) It was implemented as a feature but showed some unwanted side-effects (some might call it a bug) an since was deactivated. I haven't had the time to thoroughly retest the implementation to ensure that it all works as intended, but hope that I might be able to in the future

The message you got was misleading, I see...

Tried to place a bet, clicked "Predict" button, "Make Your Prediction" table disappeared, and after refreshing page, no bet shows up. Market was #25022, Soccer - English Premier League: Chelsea vs. Man Utd - Who will win?

Using Chrome v22.

Problem seems to affect all markets I've tried, and also occurs with Firefox.

Knurled is right. My bets aren't being placed either.

sorry people, a release went wrong, unnoticed. I've corrected the issue. thanks for bringing it up!

I couldn't find a better place to put this technical question, so it's here...
On a question with 3 or more answers, buying one answer changes the prices, raising the price of the one you buy and lowering the prices of all the others. How is this calculated? If the user wants to buy two or more answers, does it make any difference in which order he purchases? For example, if there are 4 answers, (A 10%, B 20%, C 30%, D 40%), and the user wants 100 on A and 50 on D, should he buy D first, causing a drop in A? Or will it make any difference?

There are members here who could give you a detailed mathematical analysis of your question but I am not one of them.

The larger the amount of money already invested in a market the smaller the effect of your investment on the change of the prices of the other options. Also the more you invest the greater the change in the value of the other options.

For your example with small investments you propose to make the change in value of the other options will be small.

For practical purposes I suggest that when you purchase multiple options on the same market buy them in the reverse order of the likelihood you believe each option will win. This way you will get a slightly larger return on the option that you believe is most likely to win.