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by jessriedel
5323 days ago
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The problem with longbets is that you can post a challenge without being required to accept a bet. I emailed the organization and they helpfully confirmed this. >[Me:] "Must the makers of predictions (eventually) accept a challenger? I get the impression that several of these predictions are dubious yet have been sitting for awhile without forming a bet. It seems against the spirit of the site to allow predictors to grand stand without having to put their money where their mouth is." >[Them:] "Predictors put their money where their mouth is by paying $50 to be published. They do not, however, have to accept challenges to their Predictions." If it were up to me, they'd also allow bets with odds other than 50-50. Still, I think it's a great site. |
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That's pretty shady, especially since it sends a misleading message to see a bet being offered with no challenger - without knowing about that part of the policy, I'd assume that meant nobody had the balls to take them up on the bet, not that they themselves didn't have the balls to accept any challengers!
Longbets should be removing bets from public display if too many reasonable challenges have been submitted without an acceptance. I'd leave it to them to decide what "reasonable" means, maybe something like falling within a certain range of amounts (perhaps making the offerer specify this beforehand?), with argument content that passes a cursory review.
I'd at least suggest that they manually review "bets" that pass a certain threshold of page views and/or challenge requests, and tried to determine whether the bets were proposed in good faith or not, up to and including interacting directly with the people offering the bet and asking them for explanations about why the challengers didn't meet their requirements.